EP 35 - The “One Stop Shop” Edition

As children of the ‘80’s, George and I were barraged with images of the shopping mall in movies and on the 5 TV channels we got - the mall was the place to go to see and be seen, and to find everything you needed, all under one massive roof. So, the mall offered a place to socialize, to find the durable goods one needed from corduroys to bestsellers to the latest releases from U2 and Run-DMC, and to eat something deep fried in the food court. Getting in our hot tub time machines, we’re going to teleport back to 2021, a time when one could argue that the mall has been replaced by our public schools. Where schools have always been about more than just the learning, today they are restaurants, transportation hubs, community theaters, sports stadia, vaccine clinics, health centers, and yes there are dances and they even have classrooms. So, today, we wonder about the role of public schools in American society when we ask, “Are our schools trying to do too much?”