William Penn

The school where I'm teaching this summer is called William Penn. There has been much talk amongst those of us working there about how poorly it is designed. There are huge open spaces, classrooms that are oddly shaped, with useless corners, dividers that don't block noise but do keep air-conditioning out, and hallways where the classrooms on one side are half a floor below the classrooms on the other side. We were speculating that since it as built in the early seventies, perhaps the designers had been under the influence of something. Last night, I found out there is a real reason.

On the bus on the way back from a night out, I pointed out my school to the corps member I was sitting with. "hey, that's my school! William Penn!" to which he responded, "Oh, you mean William Penn-etentiary?" "shhhh!" I hushed him, looking around to see if anyone else on the crowded bus might have heard him. "I can't believe you just said that!"
"Oh, wasn't that in a song you guys sang last week?"

Walking the block from the bus stop, we talked a little more, this time joined by someone else from my school. Turns out her advisor had told their group that when the school was designed, one strand of thinking (and of extra public funding) was that schools in low-income urban areas should be built as models for potential prisons. The idea was to test designs on populations that would likely be using the facilities. It floored me, but probably not as much as it would have if I hadn't already known this little tidbit: states look at 4th-8th grade literacy rates to decide how much new prison space they need to build before the kids reach 18. That one actually made me cry. The state gives up on kids when they're ten. Ten. Years. Old. Working against that kind of expectation is an absolutely monumental task, especially since that's not the only place that is making clear those expectations.

Last week someone told me that one of his students said she hated coming to school because it felt like being in prison. I don't blame her.