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The search for the utterly innocuous
It was 1980, a year that we realize in retrospect formed the beginning of a seismic shift in the relationship of The People to their government. Before this, there reigned the notion that the function of government was to help people live better lives; after it, there crept in the idea (if indeed it can be dignified with that word) that the purpose of government was to do as little as possible and leave The People alone.
In short, the cold wind of the Reagan "Revolution" (really a counter-revolution) was blowing throughout the land; it would arrive with the November elections. But I was oblivious to that future peril when, on the very last day of July, I landed a plum teaching position at a very good regional high school west of Boston.
The philosophy of this high school seemed to have been formed back in the late 60s, with its laid-back atmosphere and amount of freedom afforded to the students. So there were no homerooms (every faculty member had nine advisees who signed in with him/her each morning), no bells, no hall passes, no vigilantes prowling the corridors (including the infamous "glass corridor") looking for miscreants; and a totally open campus. In fact, the very design of the building bespoke freedom: almost all of the school was on one story, with a multitude of corridors/tentacles reaching out in all directions (did it sprawl like a cheap motel? Yes.) Most rooms opened to the outside as well as to the corridors; out there a teacher might encounter a small amphitheater under shady trees -- the perfect place for a class in the late spring.
I interviewed with the enlightened and congenial superintendent/principal whom I shall call "Micah". He presided over a faculty which was essentially a collection of anarchists: each had his/her own ideas about how things should be run (one of them even taught a course on the History of the 60s.) And yet thanks to Micah, the school ran with a strangely effective, if erratic, synergism.
Then Reagan was elected and all bets were off. The chill wind of his election blew across Massachusetts, and so Proposition 2 1/2 (limiting property taxes) passed. One of my colleagues was so upset by all of this, that the next morning she inadvertently drove to Digital Equipment Corporation (her previous employer), thus making her late for her teaching. A few of Micah's anarchist faculty began to behave like revolutionaries and plott against him; and not too many more months passed after that before Micah was told by the school committee that they were not going to renew his contract for the following year.
(One of the anarchists in the English department concocted a satire about a palace coup called Shamlet, where Micah plays the part of Hamlet while Chad (his replacement) plays Claudius. [A friend of mine was amused as well as affronted because, as a failed mediator for Micah, he was cast as "that wretched rash intruding fool" Polonius.])
(Micah told me that the best time to extract concessions from one's terminators is at the moment they tell you that they have decided to fire you. "Then you can ask for almost anything; for, deep down underneath, they do feel a pang of guilt. So the first thing I asked for was the summer off -- something they readily granted me." He laughed. "I felt like one of those salesmen in the eyeglasses store when the customer asks how much they owe you. You reply, '$120'. If the customer doesn't object, you add, '... for the frames; the lenses are $50.' If the customer still doesn't flinch, you quickly add, '... each.')
He was replaced by the Assistant Principal (who had been angling for the job), a man who lacked his intelligence, good humor, imagination -- and spine. Let us call this man "Chad". This person's philosophy was so much like the army's, that his last name was the same as a military rank. Chad looked at all of the faculty anarchy fostered by his predecessor, and found it wanting. He only felt comfortable when, as he put it, "everyone was on the same page" -- that is, thinking alike. If Micah cherished not only whole milk but cream and butter and cheese as well, Chad wanted only skim milk -- and that had to be homogenized. And so in quick succession homerooms, passing bells, hall passes, and hall monitors reappeared; as well as that old standby of administrators who feel the need to schedule students for every period of the school day: study halls. The school was becoming like every other nondescript high school.
Chad hired a young woman for a newly-created position called "Activities Coordinator". She was given as her mission "the discovery of crucial issues which the school as a whole could rally around, that would bring the school together." I was a bit skeptical about her finding even one such issue: either it would be so watered down that it is utterly innocuous; or it is so terrifying (cf: Third Reich) that no one dares oppose it.
So what compelling issue did she choose? Brilliantly, of all the issues guaranteed to bring high schools together, she alighted on the hoariest old chestnut of them all: "School Spirit". The idea was simple: generate a hysteria around the major mens sports teams. Begin by completely refurbishing the football team: hire a real coach; get rid of the hippies and the dope (at least cut everyone's hair!); and for God's sake bring in a few really cute cheerleaders! And so she hung up signs throughout the school which read: "School Spirit!"
Needless to say, not everyone was smitten with that idea (or whatever you want to call it.) Some were bemused, shaking their heads and wondering what the hell this meant. But the vast majority were angry at the obvious simplemindedness of it all. A few did find it humorous, in a degraded sort of way: one of them -- I can't imagine who! -- pasted up a counter-slogan which read:
"EXORCISE THE SCHOOL SPIRIT!"
When the Activities Coordinator saw those and heard the other comments, she burst into tears (she had a low melting point.) "They're not getting into the spirit of 'School Spirit' at all!" she wailed to Chad. "Don't worry," the principal reassured her, "You shouldn't expect to homogenize the thinking of a school overnight."
But she bounced back. She persuaded the Drama Department to stage a play by Shakespeare. "After all, everyone agrees that Shakespeare was the greatest playwright of all time; and that he wrote so long ago that there is no longer anything in his plays to offend anyone living today. So this should bring everyone together!" The play's director asked me to write the incidental music; so I dutifully read the play (it was The Merchant of Venice) and I began to plan my music. And then, abruptly, the drama teacher told me that they wouldn't be doing that play after all. When I asked why not, she got a sheepish look on her face before replying, "The local rabbi told Chad not to do it because it was anti-Semitic [Micah was Jewish, and with his dismissal the rabbi no doubt felt a cold wind blowing there too]; and Chad agreed not to." When I heard this, I was both amused and angry: amused because, purely by chance, they had chosen the one Shakespeare play which still does offend people; and angry, because here was a clear violation of the separation of church and state: the Church (or Synagogue) telling the public schools what they could or couldn't do. Then too, Chad had missed the opportunity to make this a teachable moment on the subject of anti-Semitism -- a worthy subject for an all-school curriculum for a semester, culminating in a performance of the Shakespeare play.
But other than me, no other faculty member bothered to question Chad's decision (or dared to do so); so it just lay there and festered. Meanwhile we were treated to Shakespeare's "safe" play: A Midsummer Night's Dream - for which I concocted a fractured version of the famous Mendelssohn (irony: the Jew who became a Christian) "Wedding March."
The Activities Coordinator was not doing well so far. There were more tears as she asked around: what did I do wrong? And how might I improve my choice this time around? Here's the gist of what she was told: "The School Spirit business was so light and inessential that it insulted a lot of people; while the stuff with the Merchant was just plain depressing. We suggest that you find a topic that impacts the lives of the kids -- something they can sink their teeth into and have a good old-fashioned debate about." Someone (was it Mephistopheles?) suggested the topic be "birth control" and she seized upon it the way a drowning man grabs a hold of a life preserver.
She decided that there would be a debate between two "experts" on the subject of birth control: one in favor, the other opposed. I have forgotten the name of the woman she hired for the opposition; but I remember very well the name of the man in favor: it was Bill Baird, the (in)famous advocate who had been arrested a number of times just for attempting to distribute birth control devices in public (at the time, this was still against Massachusetts law) and a hero to many people.
So the Activities Coordinator had done her homework really well for once. But not quite well enough apparently: she had the rug pulled out from under her in the form of the Catholic church, which directed all of the Catholic students to boycott school the day of the debate assembly.
But the debate was held anyway -- or at least some semblance of a debate. Early that morning it had snowed; but school was held anyway. Unfortunately, only one of the two debaters showed up: it was Bill Baird. I encountered him after he was finished, out in the parking lot cleaning the snow off his car. He told me the gist of what had happened. Then he shrugged and said, "Well, I guess that I just cared more than she did." And that was the way the "debate" ended -- not with a bang, but a whimper.
The Activities Coordinator was devastated once again. She had tried to do all the right things; but in the end she had been derailed by a topic that was too controversial: such things tended to split the school apart, rather than bring it together in true homogenized bliss. She needed to find a topic which everyone agreed was good and desirable! She racked her poor little brain for several days. And then one night it came to her in a dream -- not only the topic itself, but the very slogan she could use to "sell" it to the school community:
"YA GOTTA HAVE ARTS!"
It was perfect! Every one who was human agreed that we need and want the Arts! (Oh yes, there were a couple of dissenters -- as there always are with any subject -- who claimed that true art is created out of a cauldron of dissent and defiance against the status quo; but she was able to ignore them as a bit of chaff in a good crop of wheat.) The Arts would bring everyone together in the school (except of course for those students who not only did not paint or play a musical instrument, and had no interest in the works or playing of others.)
So she mobilized the Art Department to mount exhibits in the school, and the Music Department to give chamber music concerts on Sunday afternoons. And then as the keynote event, she hired the famous Dizzy Gillespie to come with his jazz ensemble to play for an assembly.
Well! Everything went swimmingly in the school, as the kids seemed more than willing to showcase their talents. And so for the first time the Activities Coordinator felt that she had hit the jackpot with this subject of The Arts. Finally the only remaining event was the assembly with Dizzy Gillespie; and that was to be the dessert, the icing on the cake.
At the assembly, the ensemble played a few of its jazz numbers with Dizzy Gillespie featured as the trumpet soloist. Then Dizzy stepped to the front of the stage:
"You know, we do a lot of concerts both here and abroad. And the thing that I see a lot -- and it really disturbs me -- is the antagonism that racial and religious groups feel about one another: the blacks hate the Jews; the Jews hate the Palestinians; and so on.
"So I've begun to see myself as sort of a double ambassador: one for music, of course; but also one to help in the healing of those age-old antagonisms."
The Activities Coordinator couldn't believe her good fortune: she had hired this man Gillespie at random and purely as a jazz musician. Now he was giving her something she hadn't dared to hope for, something unbelievable...
"There's something I once saw my friend Buddy Hackett do out in Las Vegas which I thought was very moving and effective. So I was just wondering: are there any Jews in the audience? If there are, I wonder whether you would all stand up -- as a gesture in bringing people together?"
Yes, unbelievable! Finally she had done something right, something that would in future years rank this as perhaps the greatest assembly ever held at this high school -- something for which she would get the credit, the pat on the back which she so richly deserved.
The Jews had stood up (and were looking bewilderedly around.) And then Dizzy yelled out:
"OPEN FIRE!"
Hmm... maybe The Arts weren't as perfect a subject as she had thought they were...
(17 September 2009)
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