“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” wrote the poet John Keats:

Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
from Endymion (1818)

Not to belabor the obvious, school is ugly. There is just no way of getting around it.

It’s not just the exteriors, though there is that, too. Steel gun-metal gray doors with little, wire-reinforced windows just a little too high for little people to peer out, but well-positioned for those looking in; concrete-slab sides with long rows of cheap aluminum-frame windows, (they’re frosted in Hawaii;) in some communities, like those in which I grew up, there are austere brick-sided windows with black iron grates over the openings, whether to prevent breaking-and-entering or breaking-and-leaving left entirely unclear.

To be sure, there are other possibilities. Yes, there is the upscale neighborhood school in northern San Diego covered in purple bougainvillea, or the suburban school in Scarsdale placed inside its park-like setting. But even here, the inherent ugliness becomes evident through the contrast between the starkness of the building and the hints at the riotousness of nature trimmed back to what are perceived to be permissible limits. (“Just cutting back the growth,” said the female maintenance worker who couldn’t afford to live within 40 miles of the place, with words teen-pregnant with meaning.)

In case you haven’t noticed, the innards are ugly, too. Oh, occasionally, the architect hired for the job was allowed to make his mark with an occasional skylight or a wood-paneled atrium (don’t look for these in East Los Angeles) or a curved hallway later deemed unsafe because the hall monitors can’t see from one end to the other. (There are now mirrors mounted that allow the monitors to see around the curves.) A teacher often attempts to dress up the place with children’s art (sometimes allowed to stay up too long, becoming a source of embarrassment rather than pride – I can recall that happening to me.) But the “interrogation” rooms are all laid out . . .

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