Legibility

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Legibility
/ˌlɛdʒɪˈbɪlɪti/ (n.)

I began to see legibility as a central problem in statecraft. The premodern state was, in many crucial respects, par­tially blind; it knew precious little about its subjects, their wealth, their land-holdings and yields, their location, their very identity. It lacked anything like a detailed “map” of its terrain and its people. It lacked, for the most part, a measure, a metric, that would allow it to “trans­late” what it knew into a common standard necessary for a synoptic view. As a result, its interventions were often crude and self-defeating.

—James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State

In the Times of 19 January 2021 there were reports of schools identifying unruly pupils and taking them out on long walks (cunningly branded as “alternative PE”) while the OFSTED inspectors are in, or — worse —locking them in squash courts for the duration of the OFSTED site visit. Now leaving aside for a moment that in the JC’s day we unruly ones used to get taken to the squash courts to be caned, so the modern-day unruly should thank their lucky stars —this strikes as as an interesting, and inevitable consequence of the OFSTED inspection regime in the first place.

See also

• Deep dive
• James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State