The secret to learning Reading had little to do with school — or the latest teaching techniques found on college education major syllabi — or insights delivered at workshops by expensive consultants.

Instead, what if a positive attitude, curiosity, and learning Reading stemmed from a stable family structure, the inculcation of values, books in the home, affordable time and available energy.

Maybe a series of societal changes would be more likely to produce acceptable Reading outcomes than teachers seeking to be heroes. Or is the former one of those necessary, but not sufficient situations.

Here are a few examples of societal changes with prospectively highly leveraged positive returns:

Inexpensive daycare … Higher minimum wage … Restructured marijuana laws … Availability of Pell grants for prisoners … Ability to choose the school to which a child attends.

Fast forward, at the upper end of the school age spectrum, long after Reading has supposedly become a habit, why not make this ask of rising high school graduates:

Agreement that the sequence of high school graduation, then a job, then marriage, then a child is clearly preferable socioeconomically (demonstrated to be the case by Brookings Institute research data) to any sequence which switches around these four milestones of life.

Perhaps the combination of said agreement and the aforementioned multiple societal changes would lead to more family cohesion, which would lead in turn to increased success in Reading.

Or maybe my “What If” mutterings are meaningless in a world of Googled “education’ and social media addiction. Why even care about in-depth Reading when “answers” to all of life’s questions are merely a click away.