But Can Johnny Still Read?

When doctors in L.A. went on strike in 1975 to protest the cost of liability insurance, fewer people died.

When RTD bus drivers went out in 1982, traffic congestion lessened.

When writers hit the bricks last year, television improved.

The question naturally follows: Did Johnny get smarter during the teachers strike?

Probably not. I doubt, for instance, that kids who didn’t attend school during the walkout sat around reading Dostoevsky.

They kept busy, as a group of them said to me, shooting baskets, hanging out, scoring sex or just kicking back.

Those who shot baskets numbered themselves among the more motivated stay-at-homes. They didn’t deny that scoring sex or kicking back had its alluring aspects, but hanging out was for nerds without goals.

Shooting baskets, they reasoned, kept them physically toned and mentally alert to that degree necessary to work on their mini-trucks.

“Look at Magic Johnson,” one of them said to me in the triumphant manner of an adherent who has furnished ultimate proof that his pastime is both useful and profitable.

Magic Johnson represents the epitome of those who make big bucks by simply knowing how to slam dunk a ball.

Not one of the kids, by the way, shouted, “Look at Arthur Miller!” or “Look at Joseph Brodsky!”

I’m not sure they even know who Artie or Joe is.

But I’m not here to pass judgment on boys who prefer the stimulation of basket-shooting to looking at pages with letters on them.

The question remains, did anyone learn anything when Teach was out raising hell on the picket line instead of trying to explain the function of an intransitive verb to an intransigent kid?

I asked that question of a half-dozen teachers I reached by phone the night the strike ended.

One of them had been out celebrating, a bacchanalian activity that crosses class lines and reduces us all, butcher and baker, to a state of fuzzy inarticulateness.

This particular teacher, for instance, had the annoying habit of punctuating his sentences with the word yahoo, as in, “Now we have more respect, yahoo!”

Sober he would have recognized the irony, but in his state of insobriety it sailed past him like pussy willows in the wind.

The man, by the way, found the media responsible for any of the unpleasant situations that arose during the strike, yahoo.

When I asked him to explain, he said, “You know the kid hit by the rock?” He was referring to the striking teacher who tossed a rock at a car, missed the car (obviously not a gym teacher) and hit a 12-year-old girl on the head.

I said I was aware of it, and he replied, “How come you people report that kind of thing?”

I promised we would never do it again and hung up, yahoo.

A teacher from the Valley who refused to strike said the walkout taught lessons of greed, misbehavior and divisiveness. This is obviously not a union booster.

“Students saw teachers with their faces contorted like the women of South Boston trying to stop racial integration,” she said. “They shouted ‘scab’ at anyone who crossed the picket line, including me.

“Students saw teacher against teacher, teacher against administrator and in a few cases teacher against student. After the 1970 strike, some teachers didn’t talk to each other for years. It will be that way this time too.”

Others felt that Johnny learned something about the cost of dignity.

One, a teacher for 28 years, reasoned that low pay creates a public perception of teachers as menials.

“They think of us as unimportant because school boards pay us unimportant wages,” he said. “I spent six years earning a master’s degree at night to improve my knowledge. What did that mean in terms of salary improvement? Fifteen dollars a month.

“The raise will help. I hate to say it, but money does buy a lot of things . . . including respect.”

Like the end of a war that leaves one man standing, victory is often an uneasy mantle to bear. But I have a feeling that, notwithstanding fleeting animosities, the teachers will bear this one well.

There may already be a beneficial byproduct. The kids granted nine full days of unbridled basket-shooting may go on to fame and fortune in a world where more people know of Larry Bird than Saul Bellow.

That’s OK. Basketball players have their own talents. I ask you, did Isaac Singer ever make a fast-breaking fadeaway shot in the last three seconds of a playoff game?