I miss school, now that it's out, mostly because I spent a lot of time this year thinking and writing about it for a Star series on public education. Luckily, there's the summer movie, Bad Teacher. People like me, who are on the left or, as Alexander Cockburn wickedly says, "pwogwessives," are supposed to hate it because it portrays teachers negatively at a time when they're under right-wing attack for being the chief cause of U.S. education failure. But I adored the film.

Journalism is a secretive trade. Journalists hoard and protect sources, keep exclusives under wraps, cherish and crow about scoops. Should the outside world do any nosing about in our laundry, we form tight protective balls that would put doctors, lawyers, sow bugs and politicians to shame.

And, we're a craft that thrives on control. We constrain the size, tone, timing and content of the news. In fact, we decide if it even is news. We are to news what the Spanish Inquisition was to sin.

In an age of scarcity of presses, of airways and of broadcast licenses, that model was serviceable and comfortable -- a conceptual famous blue raincoat.

We thrived on that scarcity, that control, that secrecy and that one-way pipeline to our audience.

Capitalism's last stand? Ontario's Education Ministry put up a website for parents this week comparing schools based on standardized test results, socio-economic status etc. It included a shopping cart. The ministry removed the cart in response to some fury but maintained the site.

The odd thing about this approach is it invokes the very articles of free-market economic faith that have now flamed out, without seeming to realize it. The idea is to pressure schools, led by CEO-types, to improve by competing for "consumers," who can compare test results. It also enhances inequality by channelling the education shoppers in terms of income brackets. Yet, a widening social gulf is probably the single most destructive component of the current crisis.