On the desk in our office at home sits a stack of magazines. While the titles, teases, and cover photos may grab my attention when I first pull them from the mailbox, I know that the majority of them will never be read. I’d love to have the time to sit down and actually read every single one of them, but as is the case with so many other things in this world, “life” often takes over and keeps me from looking at anything deeper than the cover. So there they sit, collecting dust and serving as coasters as the stack inches higher and higher each week, never to be enjoyed as the authors and editors intended.

Yet last week, something did strike me as unusually strange. Two of the covers, while covering entirely different topics, bore eerily similar headlines.

The December 8^th issue of Time ran a lead story entitled “How To Fix America’s Schools.” The cover shot was a photograph of Michelle Rhee, head of Washington, D.C. schools, standing staunchly in an empty classroom, clutching a broom as if to send the message of “cleaning house.”

Simultaneously, Newsweek’s cover headline exclaimed “How To Fix The World.” The corresponding photo was of President-elect Barack Obama. I assume there was no mistake in the fact that the picture showed Obama boarding an airplane, as if he were about to ‘take off’ with his global mission.

Regardless of their stark contrasts in overall aim and subject matter, the fact that both magazines ran cover stories during the same week that included a mantra of “How To Fix _____,” should reveal something to all of us. It sheds light upon the obvious, and brings to the forefront the fact that the world is looking for a “quick fix” to cure our ailments.

While I would like to (and still may) write an editorial on both articles (especially the one regarding America’s schools), the aim of today’s ‘Quill’ is to simply comment on the similarity of the message.

Indeed, both America and the global community (as a whole) are looking for a “fix.” Although our problems run deep, down to the very heart of our collective consciences and moral behaviors, we are under the assumption that there is a ‘cure all’ or ‘blueprint’ to bring us out of our current predicaments. And like the junkies we’ve become, we’re itching to wrap our hands around the next ‘feel good plan’ or ‘emotional high’ that presents itself.

While we might believe that “fixing schools” is on the low end of the spectrum when compared to “fixing the world,” I’d argue that problems in the former have compounded problems in the latter.

But it goes so much deeper than that. We’ve started to rot through the process of moral decay. Our world, just like our schools, won’t be fixed overnight…nor will they be fixed by one man (or one woman) who has ‘a plan.’ Until we begin to take personal responsibility as an American (and global) society, we’ll continue to slap band-aids on cuts that are in need of stitches…or even worse, a tourniquet. And no ‘quick fix’ from the newest pushers on the block will give us anything to break our addiction to the ‘old’…and all the while, we continue to bleed…