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“Tackling the Crime of School Design”
Book Excerpt from Rena Upitis, former Dean of Education at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; currently Professor of Arts Education at Queen’s University.

Full biographical and contact information available on page 7.
Citations on page 8.

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The students did not trash the place. They reacted to the architecture with reverence and awe. As we walked through the doors of the theatre, there was a hushed silence. A few of the children sat on the plush indigo seats, carefully pulling down the chairs before gingerly taking their places. Others walked up to the stage, brushing their hands across the smooth and glistening wooden surface before lying down on their backs, staring up at the lights. Still others marvelled at the curtains, peering behind them, fold after fold, trying to figure out where the curtains ended. There was no question this was a real theatre. There was no question being in a real theatre meant they were involved in a real musical. A musical of value. And—at least for those few golden days—the work they did was therefore also of value.

I was acutely aware of the magical powers of the theatre. As we prepared for the performance, there was no issue of “controlling” the students. They operated as a self-organizing group of little ants in an anthill. One cluster of children took care of props, another cluster ran impromptu rehearsals of some of the less polished scenes, and another group worked out how to manage the curtains and lights. At one point, a technician from MIT walked in and, looking perplexed, asked, “Is there anyone in charge here?” not because of difficulties, but because this group of 150 youngsters seemed to be regulating itself.

The performance was incredible. The students performed at a level far beyond what I had taught them. The building inspired them. The building supported their work, and in that way, the building was one of their teachers too. And on the night of the performance, the building welcomed their families.

It took me a while longer to realize it was more than the theatre that attracted and supported the students. The grounds of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just beyond where the theatre was located, were also of key importance. There were vast playing fields with green grass—and not a smashed bottle in sight. Every afternoon we spent there, over one hundred children ran and played for a solid hour before we began the rehearsals. The outdoors spoke to them, too.

It has been over two decades since the year of the first musical. Much has changed. The state curriculum has been re-vamped at least ten times, teachers and principals have come and gone, and extraordinary technological advances have been made. But one tradition remains. There is still an annual school musical in a real theatre. The longevity of this tradition—kept up long after I left the school—owes something to the primacy of the arts and to the dedication of a handful of teachers. But equally important is the choice of performance venue. Hennigan School, like countless other schools in North America, has a “cafetorium”. A cafetorium is a cost-saving device, which has the cafeteria doubling as auditorium—though one with terrible acoustics, awful seating, and the lingering smell of greasy fries and bad pizza. Many teachers and students have made do with such facilities with surprisingly good results. But why spend all that energy making do? For despite the availability of the cafetorium, teachers have always chosen to produce the Hennigan musicals in venues designed specifically for theatre. For beautiful and important performances.

But as I said, not every student at Hennigan reaped the benefits of those performances, at least not in the long term. Far too many of my students later committed crimes—some petty, some serious. They became statistics in the big bank of numbers. For there are many ways to talk about crime and using numbers is certainly one of them. Here’s an example. If you lived in the United States in the year 2000, the chance of being murdered was slim. Expressed as a percentage—0.006%—the number is so small, it’s hard to contemplate. It’s less than 1 in 10,000: the overall rate of murder in the United States was 5.5 people per 100,000. ( 3 )

Expressed another way, though, the statistic seems much more sobering. A rate of 5.5 per 100,000 means that—in one year alone—15,517 people died at the hands of another human being. That number, too, is impossible to contemplate. As are these: in 2000 there were over 10 million reported incidents of property damage, over 7 million incidents of theft and larceny, and millions upon millions of assaults and other acts of violence. That’s just one year. That’s just the United States. That’s just the reported incidents. Even though crime rates fluctuate dramatically—in 1980, over 23,000 people were murdered in the United States, which has a way of making 15,517 look good in the media reports—we’re still talking about a lot of murdered people.

Crime in the United States accounts for more injuries, death, and loss of property than all other natural disasters combined. The State of California spends more money on the construction and maintenance of prisons than it does on all institutions of higher education. ( 4 ) If prisons teach anything at all, they teach their inmates the habits of the penitentiary environment, “and of such environment only… the very opposite of rehabilitation”. ( 5 )

After I left Boston, I returned to Canada to my home in a small village near Kingston, Ontario. I still play the piano. I still teach children and young adults. In the moments I call mine, I have become obsessed with the design and building of cabins in remote locations, far from the urban centers where I once taught. Because of the remoteness of the locations, I build almost exclusively with hand tools. I am an ardent fan of Japanese handsaws—where the cut happens on the pull instead of the push and where the rhythm and sounds of sawing seem to sing with the forests where the buildings grow. I love the smell of the chainsaw too, and once in a while I will fire one up. Two of our son’s early words were “chee-saw” (chainsaw) and “sacaroo-diver” (screwdriver). Our daughter knew the difference between a Robertson and a Phillips screwdriver long before her fourth birthday.

Then there’s the day job. I have shifted my energies to teacher education and research. I teach at Queen’s University, in a building across the road from what was, until quite recently, the Prison for Women. From the top floor of the library, you can see over the tall concrete walls, right into what was once the prison yard. The former Prison for Women—one of five or six prisons and other “correctional” facilities in the Kingston area—is a grim reminder of society’s underbelly.

In Canada, more than 84,000 young people were charged with criminal offences in 2003. And I do mean young people: in the report that I am quoting from, Statistics Canada lists the charges for youth between the ages of 12 and 17. ( 6 ) In Anacostia, one of the more depressed districts of Washington, fully half of the male residents between the ages of 16 and 35 are in prison, waiting for trial, or on probation. ( 7 ) In the United States, the total number of people in prison or awaiting sentencing exceeds the number of students in all institutes of higher education. ( 8 ) Unbelievable. Prisons—like schools—are enjoying a building boom. It is not just the sheer numbers of incarcerated individuals that are increasing; the proportion of the population in conflict with the law is also on the rise. ( 9 )

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