The problem with building a thing is that, once it’s built, folks will try to burn it down.

Burning down seems to be in vogue these days. We are seeing, in real time, institutions that have imperfectly served – but served nonetheless – the public for decades being torn down on what seems like a daily basis. And the thing is, big institutions are always so easy to punch.

Perhaps schools, most of all.

And it is so easy to bash schools. They are big flawed institutions, filled with flawed people trying to do their best in an underfunded system that, these days, is asked to do more and more with less and less. Schools today are seeing serious funding cuts, greater challenges to student mental health, and a huge rise in the number of students with special needs. And all this is against the backdrop of rising college costs, and an ever-worsening job market which calls into question the value proposition that adults have been making to students about school for years.

But the thing is, it’s a lot easier to tear down than build. And like the old saying goes, “everyone’s a critic.” And no one ever lost money by hanging out their shingle and telling everyone exactly what’s wrong with schools. With the sheer size and scale of what public schools in this country try to do, there will never be a lack of anecdotal evidence to show where schools have not lived up to their best ideals. But the thing is, much like Winston Churchill said about democracy, public schools are the worst idea we’ve ever had about educating an entire nation, except for every other idea we have ever tried.

So, many of the challenges or arguments against school come are more about the conditions by which we try to educate the kids inside the schools, rather than the schools themselves. Schools really are a reflection of society, and in a moment in time when our society feels less and less healthy, we shouldn’t be surprised that schools struggle to feel like healthy places as well.

But in a fragmented society, schools remain one of the only institutions we have to bring people together. I think that the reason we have seen schools become more fragmented, why we’ve seen what we teach, and how we teach it become more and more controversial, is because too many parents and too many politicians don’t want kids exposed to any idea that may conflict with their own beliefs.

And it’s important to remember, that schools have to educate all of the children. Not just the kids who agree with us, and not just the children of the parents who agree with us. One of the challenges of schools has always been trying to figure out how to craft an education that can serve everyone in a community. And yes, we can agree that schools have never succeeded in educating every child but falling short of an ambitious goal shouldn’t get in the way of recognizing that public schools have succeeded in educating millions of kids and changing the trajectory of the lives of so many kids. For all its flaws, I’d argue that the public school system is one of the most successful governmental programs in our nation’s history.

And the system has spent too long getting attacked from too many sides. When the Secretary of Education doesn’t seem to like schools very much, we know we’re in trouble. And in a time in our country where facts themselves seem to be under attack, why are we surprised that teaching kids to critically think and reason is being defunded and decried?

That’s why it’s so frustrating to see smart people who know better arguing that new technologies like AI and not so new technologies like laptops and wi-fi mean schools are outmoded and unnecessary, as if these new technologies couldn’t lead students (and adults) down some very scary paths of thought. When the folks who are slashing funding are arguing that the new technologies are the things that can make education better, we need to question the real agenda.

And all of us who believe in the ideal of helping students to become ready to be more active and involved citizens, capable of critical thinking and problem solving have to understand that public schools remain the single best tool we have to achieve that goal.

And… we have to understand that schools have to get better. We have to keep working to make schools smarter healthier, better places for not just kids, but the adults who work in them too. We have to keep asking hard questions about how schools must evolve to prepare kids for a world that, quite honestly, is becoming harder and harder to predict.

But there’s a whole movement of folks engaged in doing just that, and yes, many of the ideas are not new. The fact that public schools as an institution are slow to adapt and evolve is frustrating at best and maddening at worst, and as someone who has spent the better part of my professional life trying to build and sustain just three schools that work to hold onto our best ideals every day, I get wanting the pace of change to be faster. But the work isn’t easy, and with all the pressure points on school systems, the work of large-scale change is anything but linear.

But we have to remember that the perfect can never be the enemy of the good, and by arguing that schools are part of the problem, not part of the solution, we align ourselves with folks who have never had the best interests of all of America’s children at heart.

And if we, as a nation, burn down the public school system, do we really think there’s the political will to build something that even has the chance to be better in its place?