Today I go out for a drive with a teacher friend of mine. We go to check out the new school that is being built in our town, a replacement for a castle-like, once-modern, open-classroom, deteriorating monstrosity.
This is the part where readers say to themselves, "Oh, good. progress!" But readers would be wrong.
The new building is nothing like the old building and carries none of the neighborhood's ambiance. As a matter of fact, the new school doesn't look new at all. It looks like it predates the school it's replacing.
It has bricks and wide wooden panels ... all mashed together. The wooden panels go one way ... and then another way ... and they're red and brown and a few other colors. Giant blue-hued fake glass covers large open areas, windows that do not open and cannot possibly be anything but open hall space. The glass in the gym (yup, in the GYM) arcs up to an angle that makes it look like a giant Brady Bunch house.
Yes, the brand new school in our town looks remarkably like 1965.
This is either negative progress or really horrible architecture. Either way, it looks like shit. Thanks a lot, tax collectors. Way to make way for ... progress.
