The Crayon-of-Color

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     In 1994 I was a candidate to lead the middle division of a venerable pre-K-through-12 independent school in Philadelphia, my hometown. I got the post and stayed five years but not before three days of pretty grueling interviews. One day’s set included a classroom tour led by the retiring division head. She was intelligent, an accomplished teacher and a many-times published writer in education theory and practice. She led a terrific division in a great school founded in the seventeenth-century, long regarded for academic excellence and progressive pedagogical and social commitments. 

     At the same time, even laudable missions can be expressed absurdly and to ends that escape understanding.

     The outgoing director took me to algebra and art classes, history, geography, science, and writing lessons. A fifth grade group was drawing pictures to illustrate stories the group had written based on literature they’d read and discussed. The children’s stories I read and the pictures I saw were all at least interesting and some were just terrific.          

     As we approached one desk, my host addressed a ten-year-old girl encouragingly. Each child had his or her own box of Crayolas and dozens of pages of blank paper. “Sara, I love how you’re using subtle tones and hues,” she said. The girl smiled. “And, Sara, I’m impressed with how you’ve used your lemon for plain yellow on these bumble bees.That’s creative! And you’ve made excellent use of,” she smiled as she then took up the black stick, “your Crayon of Color.“

     It took every facial muscle drawn taut, every bit of control to steady my eyes to keep them within a foot of my face. My jaw moved and she saw that and her own mouth tightened. She said in a new tone, somewhat harsh and condescending, a tone of voice I might more have expected from a Red Guard in a Maoist political re-education camp. “That. Is. What. We. Call. It. Here. It. Is. The. Crayon. Of. Color.”

     With some difficulty I refrained from asking what her brown, tan, and red crayons were called but I was bold: when I took hold of the Middle Division the following fall, we called them the brown and red (and black) crayons.

 

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