I go on the news sites each morning to catch up on what’s happening in the world. And yesterday I tried a new site: Reuters. They have a bit of a reputation of being there with the scoops, pretty fair minded when it comes to reporting and they’re well regarded in the industry.

However, like all news services, they couldn’t give a damn about education.

Take a look at their front page. There are sections on politics, business, markets, tech, opinion, money, life, and so on. There are sections on entertainment, sports, arts, and faith. And it’s the same with most other news outlets.

Of course there’s one startling omission: where’s education in all this?

Which got me thinking. These news outlets are giving people what they want: a celebrity in a bikini and some photos of a disaster are all that are needed and hey presto, there’s the front page sorted for the day. In other words, they don’t really care that much about education (unless it’s a teacher who seduces a student or complaints about how exams are too easy now) because the general public don’t care that much about education.

I’ll repeat that accusation: the general public don’t care about education. Even parents don’t. Sure, they’ll look at the grades on their children’s report cards and they’ll go to an occasional parent/teacher day, but do they actually care about how education is being delivered to their students and trends and innovations in education?

Of course not. If they did then the news outlets would cater for them and we’d see on the news about amazing new apps to help students, or the latest research into student behavior, or front page spreads on how this or that school is helping/hindering the world of education. If they did care, parents and the general public would get involved and be interested in what happens in the wider world of education… but they don’t.

Which seems surprising when you consider that pretty well every single person in the developed world has been to school and been a part of the education system. Don’t they care about that? Don’t they worry about education? Don’t they understand that education is arguably the most important resource for the future of everything?

As long as there’s a picture of Kim Kardashian or a tsunami on the front page, obviously not.