This is the story I wrote:
The Graffiti Project
For
most of my early growing years, I was a happily home-schooled child. When I was ten, my parents, in a rush
of self-doubt, fearing that I might be missing some academic essentials,
decided to enroll me in fifth grade in the private, highly respected, Oak
Country Day School. It was to be
an “experiment,” an opportunity to see how I fared in a real classroom after
years of study at the dining room table.
The Oak School had a reputation for academic excellence, and my parents
were anxious to see if I could handle the challenges.
As it happened, although my folks
didn’t realize it at the time, the Oak School was doing some experimenting of
its own that year. With a
progressive new Headmaster, the school had decided to deemphasize academics in
favor of what they called “equal outcome” learning; they had rearranged every
class curriculum to target the least knowledgeable learner. Less than a week into fifth grade, it
was apparent to me that, instead of providing new and greater learning
opportunities, my classes were so easy that the school would offer me no
academic challenges at all.
Still, attending a “real” school
was a novel experience for me, even if it wasn’t a particularly academic
one. We started most days with
something called “Project Charley.”
Though no one ever explained who Charley was or how he was related to
this program, it involved spending time almost daily writing “warm fuzzies,”
which were compliments to our “friend of the week.” We then discussed how much nicer it was to be kind than to
use “cold pricklies” on our classmates.
Groups and projects seemed to be
Oak’s primary means of teaching.
We were constantly encouraged to either join a group or create one and
then do a “presentation.” One
fifth grade group spent a month rummaging through waste containers after lunch
to collect and weigh the uneaten food; they then presented a lecture on how
many starving children could have been saved by all the food we wasted. In a protest against artistic
suppression around the world, a group of eighth graders presented an entire
talent show where all the acts were performed behind a curtain.
One of my favorite groups was the
“Mars Mission,” which was supposed to teach us cooperative, goal-oriented
problem solving. Without having
studied anything about astronomy or space, we were asked to design a livable
colony on Mars. Whenever someone
brought up a practical real-life problem that might make Martian living
difficult, like the lack of oxygen, water, or gravity, for example, the group
would simply vote on whether or not we chose to accept the facts. If facts were inconvenient, they became
irrelevant because we democratically agreed to eliminate them. In no time at all, by group fiat, we
had designed a Martian colony that looked suspiciously like downtown
Indianapolis. I found this a
fascinating approach to problem solving.
When I told my parents about these
experiences, they were not pleased.
As I came home day after day with no homework, no new ideas, no
interesting questions, the deficiencies of Oak School’s
experimental-experiential programs became increasingly clear to my
parents. Almost nightly they
lamented the fact that the contract they had signed committed me to stay at the
school for a full year; they could not simply remove me without losing the
considerable tuition payment.
So I stayed at the Oak School. Throughout the entire year, I don’t
remember being exposed to a single new academic area that I hadn’t already
covered in more detail at a more advanced level in home school. In effect, I was spending the day at
play with classmates and given tremendous freedom to control my own world as
well.
When the novelty of attending a
“real” school wore off, I began to find Oak a boring and fairly silly environment. Still, by the end of the year, I
realized that, though I had made no academic progress whatsoever, I had learned
a few important lessons.
Amazingly, our last project created, finally, an opportunity for some
real learning and real growth. I
call it the “graffiti project,” and it came like an impromptu grand finale to
the organized chaos at the school.
The featured player in this
project was Hannah Robbins. Hannah
was my best friend at Oak School.
A sweet person, the “warm fuzzies” she received during Project Charley
almost always labeled her as “friendly,” “gentle,” and “kind;” she never
gossiped, never mocked anyone, and she could keep secrets. Hannah seemed always surrounded by an
aura of quiet serenity, and I think I found that appealing. She once confided in me that she was
tired and frustrated by all those repetitive, stereotypical labels Project
Charley generated, and while almost everyone liked Hannah (except for the
regular bullies, for whom quiet Hannah was a very easy target), she didn’t have
many really close friends; she was a much better listener than she was a
talker, and that made it hard to really know her. Added to that was the fact that her voice was very soft and
she was incredibly quiet, probably the quietest person I have ever known.
Still, while her reserve didn’t seem to keep Hannah from
being friendly and well liked, it did seem to make her almost invisible inside
the “new” Oak School curriculum, where every child was expected to participate
with unbridled gusto in endless group projects. So Hannah didn’t quite fit into the school’s “progressive”
new curriculum. Where teachers
expected flamboyance, Hannah was quietly observant; where they expected
unhesitating enthusiasm, she was imperturbably calm; where they expected a loud
response, Hannah almost whispered.
Since Hannah did not seem to fit
into the mold of the model student in Oak’s experiment, teachers sometimes
seemed to simply ignore her. It
was fairly common to hear a teacher ask for volunteers and then overlook
Hannah, who was raising her hand politely, in favor of those who rambunctiously
screamed out, “Me! Me!” Hannah’s
name was often omitted from honor announcements; they missed her birthday in
the daily “read sheet;” she was left off of the band program notes; and when
she won the spelling bee by successfully mastering the final word, the
teacher-monitor decided to continue giving words to the other contestant until
he could “tie” Hannah’s achievement.
When I once asked her about this, Hannah told me she had grown used to
the “oversights,” but I knew it bothered her sometimes. It would have bothered me. I think it would have bothered
anyone. Still, she was
neither a whiner nor a complainer, and, as far as I knew, even classmates who
barely knew her thought well of her.
So, when we walked together into
the school bathroom one morning in late April and saw the graffiti splayed
across the side of the stall door, we were dumbfounded. “I HATE HANNAH. I WISH SHE WAS DEAD,” declared the
large block letters. Hannah simply
stood there, staring at the words, while the girls in the room surrounded her
with babble. She was the only
Hannah in school, after all, and there could be little doubt that she was the
subject of the graffiti. We crowded
and buzzed and whispered, to Hannah and to each other. Oak Country Day School considered its
environment to be clean and safe; children were closely monitored, halls were
normally immaculate, and classrooms were usually spotless. Graffiti was simply nonexistent, and
its appearance became a major event, particularly since it was a viciously
worded attack on a very inoffensive person.
Finally reacting, Hannah slowly
shook her head, apparently more curious and flummoxed than upset.
“Well, who could be so angry at
me?” she asked the room. “Look,”
she added, pointing at the “was” in the second sentence. “It’s not even grammatical.”
Still, while Hannah seemed fairly
unruffled, the group of fifth grade girls crowded into the bathroom seemed much
more emotional. Some of the girls
were suggesting unpleasant things be done to the graffiti writers.
“Hey,” Hannah said placatingly, “they’re
only words, and not even very creative words either. And besides,” she added, turning to leave the room, “somebody
will wash them off before next class period anyway.”
Hannah was wrong about that. After telling her homeroom teacher
about it, at first class break the graffiti was still there, still blaring out
its caustic message.
Unaccountably, uncharacteristically, surprising us all, the school had
done nothing to remove the words. Nor
had any teacher mentioned graffiti or hate speech to any of us, although it
seemed this would have been a perfect opportunity for “Project Charley” to kick
into gear. At second class break,
the words were still there, still untouched. Though the school was lax in some areas, it did have
rules. Normally, misbehavior at
the Oak School elicited an immediate response of SOME kind: an assembly; a
stern lecture; a modest but prompt punishment. For some reason, on this day, the school administration was
napping.
The following morning, Hannah and I
walked into the bathroom and were stunned to see the words still there,
glaring. Hannah’s mom came to the
school to speak first with Hannah’s homeroom teacher (who had apparently not
thought it relevant to report the graffiti to the administration) and then to
the principal -- who insisted she had not heard about it and would “take
action” immediately.… Unfortunately,
that “action” apparently did not involve actually removing the ugly message
that day… or the next.
As the week progressed with no
response from the faculty, the buzz among the fifth grade girls increased. Furtive looks Hannah’s way attempted to
assess her reaction to the graffiti.
Some students far outside our group of friends gossiped to each other
about what drama could possibly have transpired between Hannah and the graffiti’s
writer. There was speculation
about what Hannah might have done to elicit such venomous feelings from a
fellow student. Some girls
whispered about the handwriting, suggesting it might be possible to find a
match to it…. Though she kept
predictably stoic and quiet about it, none of the gossip escaped observant
Hannah’s attention. On one trip to
the bathroom, with the mounting stress on Hannah becoming visible, Hannah and I
took a stack of paper towels, soaked them in scalding hot water, and scrubbed
with all our might at the words, futilely attempting to erase the festering vitriol. STILL no steps had been
taken to remove the offending graffiti, much less address the issues of hate
that some of us saw bubbling and roiling behind those words.
On the fourth day, Hannah’s mom
walked into the school with a bottle of bleach and cleaning supplies and set to
work removing the graffiti herself, aided by the janitor, who appeared to be
the only adult in the building who actually cared about those imaginary “cold
pricklies” doing some real-world non-imaginary damage to the children in the
school.
So, since the school was doing
nothing to address the graffiti, what happened in our third period study group that
day was, I suppose, inevitable.
Given the school’s emphasis on personal initiative and child
empowerment, together with our year-long training in group problem-solving
strategies, we naturally, predictably, responded to the problem by trying to
solve it. With righteous
indignation, almost a dozen of us in the study group decided to take matters
into our own hands and address the unconscionable insult to innocent and
defenseless Hannah.
“She’s too quiet to stand up for
herself, so we’ll have to do it for her,” said Lissa Hill, as a group of us
huddled around her table. I knew
Hannah well enough to know she would have cringed and protested had she heard
Lissa’s limp characterization of her.
But Hannah was not in third period group, and I said nothing. In fact, I participated in the plans as
actively as anyone else.
As the group gained momentum, Natalie McCay, assertive, articulate, and goal-oriented, became our
self-appointed leader. She
insisted that “poor Hannah” didn’t know how to defend herself.
“Let’s face it,” she said, “Hannah’s
nice but she’d let a crop of cotton balls smother her without fighting
back. So it’s up to us to do
something. And the first thing is,
we have to decide who wrote the graffiti.”
That brought immediate silence. Finally one of the girls at the end of
the table hesitatingly suggested a name.
“Well, I heard Kelly Franker say
she hates Hannah because Kelly likes Bobby Otter and Bobby Otter has a crush on
Hannah. Kelly thinks Hannah’s
flirting.”
All of us enjoyed the very idea of
Hannah flirting, and we had a salacious good time discussing this bit of new
gossip. Finally, we returned to
the issue and took a vote. We
agreed unanimously that Kelly was a definite possibility.
“Ok,” said Natalie, “It COULD be Kelly. So do we think it’s Kelly,
or are there other people who could have written it? Any other suggestions?”
Again everyone was silent.
“Well,” I finally offered, “there’s
always Olivia Raymond. She goes to
Hannah’s dance studio, and I guess she’s kind of jealous…. She thinks the studio teachers like
Hannah better than her…. She says
Hannah gets all the big parts.”
We discussed Olivia for a while. I’d spent a lunch hour one day listening
to Olivia grumble and
complain because Hannah danced solos while Olivia danced only in the corps. I had been amazed by Olivia’s venomous
attitude toward Hannah. When I
shared this new information, everybody agreed that it certainly could be
Olivia. Or of course it could be Kelly.
Throughout this brainstorming
meeting, most of us had assumed that this “guess the culprit” exercise was an
intellectual game. After all,
deciding that there was water on Mars hadn’t actually changed reality. No matter if we came up with two names
or ten, we weren’t actually planning to DO anything with the information. We weren’t ready to mete out justice,
after all. But Natalie was.
“Alright then,” said Natalie,
finally. “We’re all pretty sure
that one of these two put up the graffiti, right?” In fact, none of us was absolutely sure of that at all, but Natalie kept talking. “So here’s
the plan. We’re going to have a
trial, today, at lunch hour. We’ll
pick a judge and a jury and we’ll set out the evidence, and then we’ll let Kelly and Olivia explain themselves, and then we’ll have a vote, just like TV.”
At the time, the idea did not seem
outlandish. In fact, it sounded
fair, final, certainly dramatic, and perhaps even fun. We all started buzzing again. The guilty would be charged and
embarrassed. A wrong would be
righted. Hannah would get a little
justice, maybe a little vengeance.
At least that’s what we told ourselves.
“After we decide who’s guilty,” Natalie continued, “we’ll make whoever it is apologize to Hannah. And the punishment sentence should be
to clean off the graffiti since nobody else is working on that.”
In the end, we convinced ourselves
that the plan was excellent. We
felt we’d used the group study hour very effectively; we would bring a just
resolution to a vile graffiti problem.
As the bell rang for the next period, we left the group room feeling a
sense of anticipation, excitement, and righteous determination. I think we believed we were about to
make some statement for the weak and humble of the world by standing up for
poor, quiet little Hannah. I know
we had accepted the idea that we had the right to parcel out justice as we saw
fit. We had become determined
vigilantes.
By lunch, word had spread, and
almost all the girls in the fifth grade had heard about the plan -- not
including Hannah, of course, who, we had agreed, should be surprised with the
good news as the trial began.
After finishing lunch, fifth
graders began straggling out to the playground, and a growing congregation
began assembling near the far end of the grassy field. As Hannah’s closest friend, I was to
maneuver her into the group, and then Natalie would explain all of our grand
plans for a trial, before someone was sent to grab Olivia and Kelly and make
them produce writing samples for our judgment. Then we’d hold Olivia and Kelly there to “stand trial” while Natalie presented our collected opinions of why one of them must be guilty. But for the first time ever, Natalie’s
assertive personality, her aggressive leadership, failed her, just as surely as
common sense and fairness had failed us, her willing band of followers. Almost as soon as Natalie began
explaining the plan to Hannah, Hannah began objecting.
“No. No. No,” Hannah repeated softly. “This is not right. Listen everybody… please. This is wrong.… You’ve already decided that one of these
two girls is guilty and you can’t possibly know that. It’s just not fair.
I know you’re just trying to help me, but I can’t let you do this.”
“It IS right,” interrupted Natalie
confidently. “Just because you’re too quiet and you don’t ever defend yourself
doesn’t mean your friends can’t stick up for you. What’s NOT right, Hannah Banana, is that graffiti!” she finished
as if to close the argument.
Some of us in the growing group had
nodded in agreement, but some of us were still thinking about what Hannah had
said.
Surprisingly, Hannah was just as
insistent as Natalie, though her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear
her.
“Having a vigilante witch-hunt ‘trial’ for people who
may have done nothing at all is atrocious,” she said. “And it’s
mob justice, guys… What you want
to do is much, much worse than graffiti…
Graffiti is just words, but what you’re doing is mean and hateful and
will hurt people in ways you won’t be able to undo.”
Only those of us standing nearest
could hear this exchange, but those of us who listened were impressed. Hannah was ceding not an
inch to Natalie’s position.
“Hannah, you just have to learn to
defend yourself,” insisted Natalie dismissively, and then raising her voice to
address the rest of us, she yelled, ”Now let’s get this thing going while we
still have time.”
“No,” Hannah said again. “You cannot DO this; I cannot let you
do this,” she said again, much louder.
Suddenly, Hannah was scrambling onto the top of the climbing dome.
Her face was flushed, and her voice
sounded at first like a flute in the wind, but there she stood, speaking to us
from her perch on the climbing dome.
“Guys. Guys. Listen to
me,” she shouted. Gradually we all
became quiet and stared at this stranger in our midst. This was a new Hannah, different from
the Hannah we thought we knew.
Reserved, shy little Hannah Robbins was gone and a clone was standing up
there yelling at us. As we
began to appreciate what we were seeing, I think the novelty alone, even
without Hannah’s insistent call for attention, would have captivated our
interest and attention.
“I know you’re trying to be nice to
me and solve a problem for me,” Hannah began as everyone became quiet, “and I
really appreciate that. But this
is not the right way to do it. It
is not FAIR for us to do this to people.”
Her speech was impassioned.
She begged us to stop, pleaded with us to let the issue rest, promised
us she would find a better way to solve the problem. She actually thanked us for caring, but then told us in
several ways that mob justice is no justice at all. Even Natalie was uncharacteristically speechless.
When the bell rang and the crowd
gradually dispersed, some of my classmates were muttering justifications about
how we were only trying to help.
Most of us were still whispering about Hannah’s incredible
performance. Hannah herself had
scuttled off the metal structure and headed toward the school. She was still flushed and shiny-eyed,
but she held her shoulders back and head high.
I stood on the playground thinking
so long that I was late for class.
I’d discovered some things about myself that I didn’t like at all, and I
was angry and embarrassed. I had
never thought of myself as a follower, but I’d allowed myself to be caught up
in a group mentality and convinced myself that wrong was right. I had never thought of myself as
mean-spirited, but the truth was exactly what Hannah saw right away: we were
acting on rumors and behaving like vigilantes toward Kelly and Olivia. I had never considered myself to be
thoughtless or insensitive, but, though I was supposed to be Hannah’s friend, I
had cooperated in making a bad situation worse for her. And I had never thought of myself as
cruel, but we had been heartless not only in forcing Hannah to take on a
confrontation she chose to avoid, but in naming those supposed “suspects.” I’d learned a great many lessons that
day, and all of them made me ashamed of myself.
The next day I found a quiet corner
and dragged Hannah over for a talk.
I couldn’t get out the words to say everything I wanted to, so I fumbled
a lot.
“On top of everything else,” I
finished, “we underestimated you, Hannah, but we sure needed SOMEBODY to stop
us. We just didn’t know you were
so strong.”
“I didn’t either, Lily” she
replied. “It was a really hard thing for me to do.”
The graffiti project turned out to
be the most thought-provoking lesson of my fifth grade “experiment.” The administration never did address the
graffiti, hate speech, or the destruction of school property, though some of us
on the playground that day, including Hannah, were pulled out of class later
and sent to the guidance counselor’s office, where the principal (finally
taking that promised “action”) chastised and lectured us -- especially (and
unfairly) Hannah -- for reacting to
the graffiti.
Most of the students in my class
spent the last few weeks of school in a fairly subdued mood, because most of us
had heard lectures from our parents about peer pressures and right and wrong. Most of us felt a little ashamed, and we
had all apologized, more than once, to Kelly and Olivia and Hannah. But we were testy. Small cliques formed and relationships
were tentative. It was good that
the school year was ending; I don’t really think we could have attacked another
“project.”
Still, despite the gloomy mood that
pervaded the class, it seemed to me that finally we had begun to learn some
good and useful lessons. We had
learned that groups are fine, but they cannot solve problems without rational
thought; that facts matter; that actions have consequences; and that right and
wrong are not defined by majority rule.
And watching Hannah had taught us something too. All of us had stereotyped her,
underestimated her strength and character. Though she was still Hannah, still quiet as ever, we had
begun to perceive her as quietly confident instead of quietly meek. And I think Hannah herself had finally
discovered that, when it really mattered, even in a painful situation, she
could stand up and speak out with compelling moral conviction and clarity. She would never be invisible again.
When summer finally came, I was
frankly happy that I would not be returning to Oak School (and neither would
Hannah). But in the end, I valued
my experience there. As it turned
out, I gained knowledge and maturity there, learning things I could not have
garnered in even the most thoroughly integrated home schooling
environment. Experience cannot be
relayed in books or in a classroom or even shared by the most dedicated
teachers. Almost by accident, the
Oak School gave me time to learn lessons about people, morality, honesty,
courage, forgiveness, and trust. I
think those are lessons for life.
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