Creative Maladjustment Hits the Wall: the Soulless Bureaucracy Strikes Back

I'm afraid the Creative Maladjustment Manifesto has been a bit bogged down of late. Back in July, before the distractions of treehouse & travels overtook me, I had been planning an installment entitled "Tricksters in the Soulless Bureaucracy," based on a piece by Herbert Kohl about creative maladjustment in the public schools.

Kohl's piece starts with an incident from early in his teaching career, when he bought some pastels for his students to draw with during afternoon free time. The kids loved this, but when Kohl proudly showed some of their work to a district art coordinator, he was handed a copy of the district's approved art curriculum, which decreed that pastels were a sixth-grade medium. "Since my students were in the fifth grade, I was instructed to get rid of both the pastels and the students' work in that medium." (When he pointed out that the "gifted" fifth graders got to use pastels, he was told that his students, who read below grade level, were not qualified for this advanced activity.) "That," he says, "was my first encounter with the choice between conforming to the demands of the system or meeting the needs of my students."

Later the assistant principal took Kohl aside and suggested that he study the district's curriculum requirements carefully -- not because she wanted him to follow them, but because he needed to know when he was violating them so he could hide his disobedience better. "In effect she gave me a way to resist adjusting to unreasonable demands and initiated me into the subversion of the system that most good teachers practice all the time."

This reminded me of the many teachers and administrators I know who somehow find ways to soften the more brutal effects of the bureaucracy they work in, to undermine its authority when necessary, and to protect & nurture the good things that are going on in hidden corners of the public schools. At times they must be sorely tempted to stage a spectacular flame-out exit scene in which they get to tell some district art coordinator exactly where to shove her pastels, and why. But they know that if they succumb to that urge, they’ll be shut down, maybe even fired – certainly denied any further opportunity for unfettered subversion of the system. So for the good of the kids, if not their own mental health, they keep at it.

So I was going to write a little paean to such trickster teachers, and to the amazing pockets of creativity and passion they can create within the soulless bureaucracy – especially when two or three or eight of them find each other somehow. I was even thinking I might bring up Lenin again. I believe it was Lenin (I hope it wasn’t Mao; it would be a little rich to cite Chairman Mao as an enemy of the soulless bureaucracy, wouldn’t it?) who described how revolutions can happen really suddenly, seeming to come out of nowhere: one day the regime seems inexorable, invincible, and the next day the whole thing has fallen apart. This is because there are all these people out there who don’t support the regime, but are just going along keeping their heads down -- either because, as Vaclav Havel puts it, their obedience earns them “the right to be left in peace,” or because, as the Borg put it, “Resistance is Futile.” But when that first little crack opens up and a little ray of light finds its way through the darkness, they think “Hmm… Maybe I don’t have to knuckle under after all…” And the next thing you know the Berlin wall is a pile of rubble, and euphoric fifth graders are wielding pastels openly, in broad daylight, without fear of reprisal.

Anyway, I was thinking there might be a way to get all the tricksters in all the soulless bureaucracies in the world to stand up and look around over the tops of their cubicles and realize that they’re not alone -- they may even be the majority. That their cooperation is the only thing keeping the bureaucracy going. (Look what happened in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: the evil Headmistress Dolores Umbridge is utterly helpless once the Hogwarts teachers turn against her.)

This is the line I was thinking I might take. This is where I thought I was going. But then I wandered by my kids' school the other day and saw the six-foot high chain link fence the district just installed around the new garden.

This came on the heels of the construction of a series of concrete bunkers on the other side of the school – raised beds with massive overkill footings capable of supporting two-storey houses -- fronted with yet another chain link fence. This is our native plant garden, if you can believe it:

I went back the next day and they had put this in:

For some reason this last one drove me over the top. We can’t just tuck a gate discreetly between these two buildings? We’ve got to build a big square cage sticking its butt out onto the sidewalk? What gives?

Now don’t get me wrong: I know that what goes on inside the classrooms is way more important than what the building looks like on the outside. And I admit my obsession with the chain link fences has -- temporarily, I hope -- blinded me to the good work this construction crew may have done behind them; they did build a garden back there, after all.

But I also know that spaces affect people -- how they feel, how they behave, how they work -- even when they’re not aware of it. Our mission may say “We all belong,” but our building says “Go away.”

As a parent my contribution to the whole trickster public school conspiracy has been somewhat limited, but I have put in a fair amount of time and energy attempting to make this one particular elementary school look slightly less like a federal prison – murals on cinderblock walls, cheerful signage to guide visitors through the maze, efforts to create communal space where people can gather, and so on. The surfeit of chain link fence has been a pet peeve of mine from the beginning. I actually got permission to recruit a volunteer crew to yank out this 180-foot stretch of chain link in front of these trees on the north side (note the redundant stretch of chain link behind them):

I didn’t manage to pull this off over the summer, but I have been getting geared up to make it a fall project. To discover that while I wasn’t looking the soulless bureaucracy had put me 110 feet of chain link further behind was more than I could take.

So what are my options? What’s an aspiring creative maladjustant to do when the wind has been taken out of her sails?

I suppose I could keep plugging away, doggedly or defiantly: go ahead and get rid of that north side fence, maybe. (Anybody out there got a backhoe we could borrow?) Or put up some big colorful flower flags along the garden fence. I’m sure we can make it look a little better… and I’d feel less defeated, more empowered, if I could achieve a small victory like that. Yes, it’s awfully hard to keep asking busy volunteers to give up their weekends, to struggle along with our shoestring budgets and borrowed pressure washers and so on, when the district is outpacing us, plowing ahead with its hardhats and backhoes and payrolls, creating these irreversible monstrosities left and right. But tricksters never give up, right?

Option Two: Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel and quit banging my head against this particular cinderblock wall. So the building is surrounded by chain link fences -- it's still a great school once you find your way inside. It would take some mental discipline (more than I can muster at the moment, frankly) to walk past these chain link fences every day and not think "Holy Mary, Mother of God, get me a fracking bulldozer." But wise warriors choose their battles, right? Who knows what miracles might be possible if I could channel all this frustrated energy into some other project -- or into my job (now there's a thought!) -- or even the laundry, for that matter.

Is there a third choice? Can we think bigger, wackier? Can we woo the construction workers with chocolate chip cookies so they'll follow our instructions instead of the blueprints? Is there a way our skeleton volunteer crew can get its hands on some of the district's capital budget? Can we infiltrate the soulless bureaucracy (or awaken the tricksters in its facilities department) and make it a little more responsive, so it's easier to say "Wait! Stop! This is crazy!"? Can we find a way to channel its massive, lumbering power into the creation of beautiful, inviting spaces -- spaces that support our school's vision of collaboration and connection and community involvement? How incredible would it be if we could actually get them to see how important that is?

Maybe... but at this point I'm not holding my breath. On the contrary: I'm still clinging pretty firmly to my pipe bomb fantasies.

I'm also tired of stewing, weary of hearing myself rant about this. Maybe you could all help me out by steering all conversation firmly away from the topic of chain link fences. I'm sure Andrew would also be extremely grateful for your assistance in this matter.

P.S. In September I worked through the pipe bomb thing. Kind of.