A superficial review of the academic discipline known as sociology might shed light on the contract crisis in South Butler County School District? Let’s consult our Cliffs Notes and see if we can make any sense of it.

According to the venerable Cliffs Notes, current theories of sociology can be categorized generally into three primary schools of thought, or perspectives:

-Symbolic interactionism focuses on the symbolic details of everyday life, what these symbols mean, and how people interact with each other — green lights, red flags, little black books, the old rugged cross, notes on a page of music.

Words are symbols, too — clauses in a contract; slogans painted on posters and shouted on a picket line; or chapters in a book; newspaper headlines and editorials; words on a chalkboard or in a Twitter feed or YouTube video.

-Functionalism abides by the theory that consensus holds us together — that society agrees on and works cooperatively to achieve the greater good. This is the backbone of the democratic process and the nerve center of public education, national defense and infrastructure. Everyone contributes and everyone benefits.

-The conflict perspective, as its name suggests, focuses on disagreement rather than agreement — think Karl Marx. labor unions, class struggles and union demands. While interactionism and functionalism draw on the positive aspects of society that contribute to its stability, the conflict perspective agitates the negative, conflict, and ever-changing nature of society. The underlying belief is that the rich and powerful elite must be stopped from forming their social order on the poor and weak.

The conflict perspective arrived late to the party. Sociologists in the 1940s and ’50s ignored it, lulled by Marx’s contention that the key conflict was economic — hardly the biggest problem in post World War II America.

These days the focus has shifted dramatically. There’s abundant conflict on virtually every issue: racial, gender, religious, generation, political, economic. And Marx appears to have been right: It does seem to boil down to economics.

But examine the assault being undertaken by the three schools of sociological perspective.

Symbolic interaction suffers. New memes surface every day on social media, many based on grossly inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or outright false information. The five-second sound-bite rules the day. Photoshop is a high art.

Functionalism infects our television network news coverage. There’s liberal and conservative slant — pick your preference. Apparently you can pick your judge, too. Courts are politicizing and legislating, in part because overly partisan legislative bodies have become paralyzed in their refusal to find consensus.

As for the conflict perspective, community organizing pioneer Saul Alinsky always noted the importance of galvanizing his followers’ message and objectives as they attack and discredit their opposition.

A report on last Tuesday’s front page of the Butler Eagle stressed the teachers’ belief that the school district could afford their demand for wage and benefit increases plus back pay without increasing property taxes.

Solicitor Tom Breth concluded otherwise, advising the board that the teachers’ demands would result in $2 million deficits each of the last two years of the contract.

From our observation point, the South Butler teachers contract stand off has lost its focus.

Somehow we’ve lost sight of the sociology lesson going on. We’ve lost sight of the fundamental question: What’s best for the community? Where is the consensus? What will the taxpayers get for their investment?

Perhaps more important, how much long-term damage to the community is the South Butler standoff actually doing?