Columns

5 months. It has been 5 months since the unthinkable happened. The creators of the Walking Dead teamed up with George Orwell and Dean Koontz and wrote a book about a virus that took over a globe. Heck, Isaac Asimov penned the intro and convinced us other worlds in other solar systems have been decimated, too. Stephen King was really busy, but he did a fair bit of editing. What we have here, folks, is Eyes of Darkness meets Asimov’s Guide to Earth and Space meets 1984 meets Tommyknockers meets that episode where Negan and his bat are first introduced. It’s a nightmare, or not, depending on who you ask and whether you favor Fox or CNN. And, in Texas, where we need to change our state motto to Go Big or Go to Cali, we can’t decide whether we want to go to the beach, go to a protest, or go into a bunker for the rest of the year. In the words of Zach Galifianakis as Marty Huggins in The Campaign, “Bring your brooms because it’s a mess.” One thing is clear. We, as a society, were unprepared for this pandemic. We have forgotten so many things: how to entertain ourselves, how to unlisten to people without the act of violence, and how to just breathe in a space without advertising to the world that you are just sitting and breathing in a space. For some of us, one thing is apparent. Y’all ain’t cut out for this! Others of us aren’t having such a big issue. We are the chosen ones. We are the only children of the world.

He knew it was getting real when they went after his girlfriend. The law is like that. They hit you in your soft underbelly where it hurts the most. He’d half been expecting such a reaction, however. They’d gone after many of his friends and most of his co-workers. He’d long realized it would only be a matter of time. Just last week (wait – was it only a week ago) there’d been that really odd clicking noise on his phone. Tapped? Seriously? And, that black car parked across the street by the park, hadn’t that been in the same spot for days? The few as yet to be accused friends he still had left in this world were running from him as if he were a plague – totally understandable. He did not blame them. Finally, there was nothing left to do but leave. Maybe he’d go abroad, look up Charlie, see what was shaking. Maybe he could even sweet talk Delores into going with him. One thing was for sure. There was nothing left for him here. Everything he had worked for was gone. For him, this American dream he’d chased tirelessly had erupted into the great American nightmare. Rosebud, out.

I love education and take teaching human beings seriously. The social consequences of academic failure are very costly, especially for the disabled and minority learners. To give less than our best to our nation’s learners is unconscionable and contributes directly to the failure of Americans in the global business, medicine, technology and military arenas. If we are to be the America we once were, quality education for all students is critical. Therefore, we must examine closely public education and where it is headed in America.