When Twitter isn't plying me with bits of blow-by-blow of the violent protests in Egypt, the prospect of a panther on the loose in southeast Louisiana (reminds me of when the white tiger took a stroll down Myrtle Avenue not far from where I lived in Queens, but I digress), and the biases and angling of non-independent oil disaster claims czar Kenneth Feinberg, not to mention the efforts of BP itself to try to convince everybody the Gulf is hunky-dory, it's telling me a few things about education and our attitudes towards it.

The school buildings are still being treated like garbage here.

The parents who want schools to reopen are faced with Paul Vallas' "now you have to be a charter school if you want to have your schools":



And, if education trends hit this part of the country belatedly like most of the latest fashions do, here's what could be coming our way:

• Arguments that closing schools would be of great benefit to our children, complete with scripts for bused-in protesters to help bolster that decision.
• Pardon me for this interlude...I know everybody's kinda chilly right now so I figure the heat welling up from the bazillion comments on this article about how the former NYC public schools head would've fired more teachers if he could have will help keep you warm.
• From the business model-mongers: Let's use facts gathered to strengthen public education to instead circle our wagons in private education and make people pay $50,000 to send their darlings to kindergarten.

I see this kind of thing and I know I'm gonna be sicker than when the stomach virus I had last week laid me out.

We are a schizophrenic nation when it comes to learning and education.  We speak of its importance then cut its funding to shreds and belittle the people who do their best to bring good practices to it. It's an extension of how undervalued child-rearing is in general when I know of parents who would be fighting this kind of power if it weren't for their trying to just make ends meet.  Our ambivalent educational experiences may also come into play - I know my grade school years were a hell on earth for me, personally, and most folks I know are damned glad that that time in their lives is past.  Reliving those kinds of tsuris through your own child's experiences can be exhausting as a result.  Thus, school is an exercise in endurance rather than something to really fight for.  Forget planning for the future - what matters most is you and yours.  And the same ol' attitudes keep getting passed on...and on...and on...

We don't need any of this.

How the hell can we break this vicious cycle, though?