I think there's a couple of things there.
One is yea there's a certain level of cultural idiocy and laziness. I live in front of a bus stop and see it. But I also see lots of parents walking to pick up their kids, so I'm not sure what the breakdown is (this is in the suburbs in Ohio with the bad weather and all of that).
The other is that we don't really have a lot (any at all?) of examples where you have a true walkable neighborhood with desirable schools. Most walkable neighborhoods that I've seen were built before automobile traffic became prevalent, which puts them close to cities which tend to have the worst schools. So I'm not actually sure what parents would do if they had the combo of schools and neighborhood that we'd be talking about here, but I bet they'd walk because in those neighborhoods it just wouldn't be possible for all or most parents to drive their kid to school at the same time.
It's really hard to break out of thinking about things in terms of the suburbs and convenience because most use that as their starting frame of reference. How will I go to Costco if XYZ, well you wouldn't. How will my kids get to school? They'd walk or ride their bikes. "But it's dangerous" ok then make it safe. Participate in your community and your government. That's half the reason we have the problems we have now. For better or worse though economic physics is going to win. We'll either all perish in war over resources or these activities will just become too expensive. EVs won't save us either, and this is particularly true given the underinvestment in nuclear energy that has occurred world wide.
