What it needs is an icon, a truly universal symbol of all that is us. I hereby nominate the portable classroom. It's as tacky as a rubber alligator. So here's to the forlorn-looking box that floods every time it rains, a semipermanent monument to mediocrity with a noisy air conditioner sticking out of the wall. Last week, a broad coalition of groups demanded something be done about the fact that so many children are consigned to boxes.
Children attend classes in cafeterias and in corridors.
Many more attend real buildings that crowd in more kids than they were built to handle. Newspapers, including this one, leveled forests writing about the problem. As usual, politicians took the expedient way out. The crisis mentality went away. The crisis itself didn't.