Broken Nails

There are two types of chemical reactions: those that take place when chemicals are mixed, and those that take place when children are mixed. Every classroom is a crucible, every school an oven. Every child both a clearly defined set of numbers and an irreducible living organism impossible to pin down. Depending on how, when, and from where they are observed they are either dead, alive, or a mixture of both. 

The state makes the thermostat and defines the temperature settings. The school district controls the ovens. Big cities have big ovens, small communities have small ovens. The bigger the oven, the longer it takes to change its temperature. Unless the oven is broken and the wrong tool is used to repair it. Then change is rapid, things get burned, and the oven never gets fixed. 

Rapid change came at the end of my third year in such an oven. The state took direct control of the temperature settings by appointing a receiver as superintendent. No one was elected. A respected and learned educator, with twenty-plus years of classroom experience, was not promoted. The appointee, with only three years of experience in education, was directly hired by the state. Changes began in the district’s elementary and middle schools, then, after three years, worked their way up to the high school. 

Previous attempts at reform had divided the district’s high school into smaller, themed academies: Math and Science, Business, Health and Human Services, and so on. They were housed in an elephantine campus, with more than 3,200 students distributed among four floors of six identical buildings, a campus so large that a road cut the campus into North and South halves. A fully enclosed elevated walkway, spanning the length of all the academies, connected them to each other and to the gymnasium, lunch room, library, and administrative offices.

Mandatory school uniforms color coded students by academy. Shoes were the only indication of individuality. Students out of place were easy to identify. A panopticon of black dome security cameras hung from ceilings. Predominantly monolingual white teachers and white security officers supervised a 90% non-white, Spanish-English bilingual student population. Local police and school safety officers stood guard at building entrances. They roamed hallways and sat in marked - and unmarked - police vehicles on school grounds. When summoned, they removed students from classrooms. But all this was considered normal, when I first arrived, by the teachers already working there. 

Frogs will sit in a pot of water, when the temperature is right. They’ll notice the water temperature increase, even when the change happens slowly. They’ll even jump out when the temperature gets too hot, unless they have been lobotomized - which is the only way scientists could get the boiling frog experiment to work. 

Teachers notice the temperature changing when changing administrations play with the thermostat’s settings. Some jump out as the temperature rises. They see the coming changes and search for the same position in safer districts. Some don’t see better options than boiling alive. They have too many years in and don’t know how to restart or how to recreate themselves - few do. Many don’t notice the temperature change at all. Recent graduates, young and inexperienced, or teachers new to the profession, never see the changes because they are taught how to educate students by the administration that hires them. Then they remain motionless. 

So when the changes began on campus, teachers were retired or reviewed out, replaced with entry level teachers without teaching experience. Principals fled before being replaced by administrators without classroom experience. Students with long disciplinary files noticeably disappeared en masse. And everyone who remained held their tongues and their breath, afraid to speak or step out of line. All were determined to wait the new administration out (since experience had taught them that policies change as fast as administrations).

The receiver’s personally appointed, and minimally experienced, cabinet of outsiders further divided and restructured the campus. Two new academies were created, an honors academy and a freshman academy. The freshman academy displaced a previously existing academy from one of the six buildings. Students and teachers from the displaced academy were then redistributed to the floors and classrooms made vacant by the mass disappearance of both students and teachers in the academies that remained. 

School lockdown drills became routine. During lockdowns, police sniffer dogs were brought in, and students with drugs, not weapons, brought out. Police dogs entered classrooms while dog handlers ordered students to “Remain silent. Don’t move.” Dogs sniffed at scared students, who huddled on the floors and in the corners of every room. Eventually students with dog phobias habituated to the drills. 

A department of newly hired administrators, each titled “Director of School Culture,” roamed hallways in teams with iPads in hand. A list of punishable infractions and behaviors was created, numerically organized by section, code, and line number, electronically nested like Matryoshka dolls. The punishable infractions were so numerous, and so meticulously worded, that a key word searchable function was built into the system that students were supposed to intuitively know and follow. Punishable behaviors included “face-talking,” eye-rolling, “exhaling in an exasperated manner,” and “sass - perceived or otherwise.”

The list, unavailable to teachers outside the academy, became the student penal code and was strictly enforced through a new demerit system, and electronically linked to every student identification number and school identification photo. 

Even if a student knew all of their civil rights, laid down in the Constitution, by line number and verse, they were rebuffed with “you have no Constitutional rights in school; student safety supersedes student rights.” Students attempting to explain code violations received additional demerits for “back talk.” Students who persisted, or those who did not acknowledge or accept the demerit by verbally confirming and monotonically reciting “Yes, I understand that I have received a demerit for the punishable offence of line number and verse” - the exact text they were allowed to read from the Director of Student Culture’s iPad - received additional demerits. Every student was conditioned to give away their rights like everyone who clicks “I agree” when they accept the terms and conditions of every digital app or website cookie that they do not read, nor understand what they are giving away. 

Too many demerits and lunch privileges were revoked. Nothing is more sacred to a child, during the school day, than eating lunch with friends. Lunch is one of the few times when a child is allowed, in a restricted way, to be a child. For an adult, the closest thing to “lunch” is a lunch break, which is only a meal break when fully relieved from all work duty. Instead, students whose lunch privileges were revoked ate in supervised silence. Those not silent, or face-talking, were removed by security officers, when summoned by lunch detention supervisors. 

Classes were standardized and scripted. Every prepackaged lesson, or script, was written by a content writer. Teacher creativity was actively discouraged, teachable moments bureaucratically eliminated. Entry level teachers were required to memorize every script for each lesson they taught. Each performance was graded by compliance monitors. An accuracy of 85% was the minimum passing score, the permissible 15% deviation from a perfect performance defined as “personal flair”. Few teachers understood that it was a daily grading system for teachers. 

The receiver described this as “the Taco Bell model,” and based it on a business paper he gave to teachers he recognized with a teaching award that he created. In the paper, a Taco Bell CEO found that food served at Taco Bell franchises was not consistent from location to location when individual franchise owners were allowed to prepare the food themselves. So stoves were removed from stores, the food centrally prepared and distributed to the different franchises, creating a standardized product that was easy to quality check and suitable to the palates of those who consumed it.

The participating teachers thought that it was a great plan, even though no details on its application or implementation were provided. Only one teacher voiced concern by putting into words what nobody else dared say, “but Taco Bell is still low quality food, which is why it is cheap, and available everywhere.” This made the audience and the receiver laugh, though it was a serious critique.

To quality check instruction, each teacher’s every lesson was video recorded and archived. Like Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, it was impossible for compliance monitors to watch every teacher's every lesson. However, archived videos could be checked, and minutes off script could be quantified. Under this system, the evidence required to put teachers on an improvement plan, or to terminate their employment, had already been collected. Each teacher accepted these working conditions by giving their permission to be video monitored when hired by the district. 

Many district policies were held like Thoreau’s wooden gun, not to the heads of every teacher, but inside their minds. This wooden gun manifested itself most clearly in bathroom policy. All teachers, in all schools, lightly monitor student bathroom breaks. When abuse is obvious, teachers gently remind students, in a non-binding way, “not to abuse their privileges to use the bathroom.” Some teachers attempt to control this behavior by giving students two redeemable passes to use the bathroom per week, allowing students to imagine that they control something that should be an inherent right. However in this oven, administration limited toilet use to the five minute windows between 90 minute classes to “minimize the loss of instructional time.” 

With this “recommended” policy, teachers felt like they were forced to prohibit bathroom use during class. Teachers not complying would be questioned by administrators who monitored teachers from outside their classrooms with iPads in hand. Many teachers pleaded with students to wait to use the bathroom to the time “before or after class, unless it – their body’s discomfort - is an absolute emergency.” Watching 3,200 students, all trying to use the same toilets, at the same time, while getting to classes on time to avoid demerits, was a demonstration in the flawed reasoning of those who believe human management can be reduced to numbers. 

When questioned about allowing my students to use the toilet whenever necessary, I asked, “Adults wouldn’t tolerate an employer limiting their bathroom use to ‘absolute emergencies,’ as their teacher, how can I restrict them in similar ways?” The most common response, “Because they are children...” Then I asked for the recommended policy in writing, so I could show students that it was not my rule, it was a rule I was ordered to follow. The written decree was never furnished, and administration branded me noncompliant. 

Newly hired teachers lined hallways during class transitions, lunchroom rotations, school assemblies - every time students were required to move en masse. It became routine to hear roaring teachers, some pounding on lockers and walls, ordering students to “walk faster” or “move with purpose,” in a style military training, or immersive indoctrination, perfects. Even with newly decorated hallways, replete with motivational posters, smiles seemed rare and eyes seemed dimmer across the campus. Except for the eyes of the replacement teachers, who never saw the difference.

Watching students frantically fast-walking through corridors of barking teachers, along with the other changes I saw throughout the campus, reminded me of Abraham Maslow’s famous observation, encapsulated in a succinct line in every introductory psychology textbook: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

After observing the slouched body postures and flat affects worn on student faces, subjected to this treatment, I started referring to them as “broken nails.” They were no longer children. They were beaten like nails until they were broken. 

Having been awarded three prizes for excellence in science education by the receiver himself, I was reassigned to the newly created honors academy. It was a privileged position from where I watched my colleagues in the other ovens frantically attempt to adjust and adapt to the changing climate, and to their precarious working conditions within. Many took on the same postures and flat facial expressions of the students who had been broken by the demerit system. 

The honors academy began with 92 students. For space, the academy first co-opted, and then displaced, the high school campus’ library after planners deemed it unnecessary. The librarian did not resign in protest, though she was “retired out” after one year since the decision to dismantle the library had already been made before the plan was unveiled. The academy would then grow by adding 100 new freshmen each year.

The students in the inaugural class, mixed together from the district’s nine middle schools, were divided into four classrooms: Honors History, Honors Math, Honors English Language Arts, and Honors Physics. 

Classrooms were designed like Skinner boxes with one floor to ceiling glass facade separating classroom space from the library concourse. From the library side each classroom looked like an exhibit from a natural history museum or an operant conditioning chamber. Campus administrators called it the fishbowl because anyone could walk into the library at any time, while classes were in progress, and watch students and teachers with an unobstructed view. Students called it the zoo, and referred to themselves as “animals” because “...everyone comes to watch us.” 

 Every morning the school principal read the same message over the academy’s public announcement system: “You can be a lion or a gazelle, but if you choose to be a gazelle you better run fast so you don’t get eaten by the lions. Lions you better run fast or you won't eat.” By year’s end, every academy student recited this mantra in unison with the academy principal like it was their morning prayers. And like daily prayers, it gradually became cathartic for even the most stressed out students. 

The oven was a high stress environment for students. They were constantly watched. They were constantly posed by photographers and administrators during instruction for photos. They were constantly tested. They were constantly fighting each other for status. They were constantly told to be better than everyone else by the academy principal. 

Most crucibles solidify the ingredients they contain. The military unites soldiers, religions bring people together, but schools tend to divide people. And when people are isolated, or on the edges, they tend to burn. 

During the ten years that I was a public school teacher, I lost several students to suicide. Many more attempted it. Each death I felt in a visceral way, but I never felt it as deeply as I did, or was so intensely troubled by it, than during my time in the oven, when two of my students were institutionalized after attempting suicide.

In the months leading up to their suicide attempts, I saw many distress signs. I brought my observations to the attention of the administration during a faculty meeting, identifying each student by name. My concerns were noted in administration meeting minutes. The principal, a young and inexperienced administrator, a climber of ladders and not an educator of children, told me, “Your concerns are noted, and we will have guidance counselors talk with them.” 

Administration made it clear to all faculty members that “all students need to be pushed harder. Otherwise they will seek attention by feigning distress.” Gently, I warned the faculty "if you push them, you will break them." 

Break they did. Within a month of the meeting, both attempted suicide, and both were institutionalized. Neither were prepared to deal with the unnatural stress of an artificially rigorous environment, designed by artificial people to showcase educational reform and progress to newspapers and politicians. 

One of the problems inherent in reducing children to numbers is that people start to see children as numbers. Then, children begin to think of themselves as numbers. Their self-worth and status, driven and beaten into them, by those who think of them as numbers, test scores, and grade point averages, while sincerely telling them that they love them. And when the numbers one associates their value with approaches zero, so too does the value a child sees in their life.

After the second suicide attempt, school guidance counselors checked in with me weekly. Each asked, “How did you know...” All recent graduates completing school internships, each puzzled by my answer, “It’s just something I sensed.” 

Deviations in behavior are apparent, when you face a classroom of students all day, every day, week after week, for ten years. Beside every student, in every classroom, sit thirty-one other measuring sticks. As a physicist, it has always been easier for me to understand a student by comparison to their peers sitting beside them than as numbers on spreadsheets. Numbers and anecdotal records do not reveal everything there is to know about a person. 

When all we are is what is written about us then most of us are not very much at all. Test scores measure test taking ability, they don’t reveal the thoughts inside someone’s head. Numbers don’t say when someone is happy or sad, habitually nervous or chronically depressed, or when they are completely burnt out. They don’t reveal ambitions or dreams, only shortcomings and failures. They don’t disclose all there is to know about a person, nor when the recorded numbers and anecdotes were wrong or incomplete. Thermometers only measure temperature, they don’t reveal why something is hot.