Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher

I ride past a freshly plowed empty field and see a large corrugated fence that advertises the latest neophyte tagging crew in sloppy, choppy letters. I don’t know what is the worst of these aesthetic crimes – the graffiti on the walls or the fact that it is so cheaply done, with such dull black letters that they blend in with the drab concrete walls.  There are times when I can sympathize with taggers.  Maryvale is so quintessentially plane, with cookie-cutter houses and Kleenex-box-stores littering neighborhoods. 

I can almost appreciate the bright, 3-D letters of an experienced tagger replacing the Arial font of a large Big Mac billboard, whose advertisement plan has faded into vacancy.   There is a stretch by the canal where the area explodes in graffiti.  Everyone paints over the others.  It’s an ugly war, a car accident of art on a slump block wall. Step back for a second, though, and it becomes a piece of abstract art – constantly evolving, like Maryvale itself.  It’s beautiful.

The truth is that no one wants tagging.  The destruction goes beyond the cost of painting.  There’s a psychological cost of never knowing when it’s connected to a gang, always wondering what it will do to property values and knowing that more stores will move to the further reaches of the suburbs, leaving a trail of boxes, to be painted bright colors and turned into dollar stores and carnicerias or often larger canvases for taggers.

Why do kids tag?           

I’m not sure why people tag.  My guess, though, is that part of the blame lies in the hands of a standardized education.  A whole generation of students, raised on banal basal readers reached a breaking point where they snapped.  Perhaps it was the same government-subsidzed paltry cafeteria food or the piles of dittos or the standardized tests that told them that they were Falls Far Below.  Maybe it was the lack of authenticity and creativity and community. 

So, they found community in a tagging crew and a sense of identity outside of FFB or “trouble-maker” or “underprivaledged.”  They found an outlet for their creativity and a means of voicing their anger.  Maryvale has many of these mini-revolutionaries shouting their curses through “bumping” their music with heavy bass, “pimping” their cars and tagging the walls of the suburbs. It's an underground education, where they learn skills that, in a classroom, would be considered valuable: discipline, creativity, kinesthetic learning, problem solving, higher level thinking skills.  

When asked why kids tag, the number one response I hear is, "It's gang related."  Occassionally, a more experienced teacher will say, "Some of it is gang related and some of it is due to the tagging crews."  Their solution seems to be based upon logic and common sense: paint over the graffiti quickly and punish taggers with strict laws including jail time.  Indeed, this viewpoint seems to be the reflection of the overall community, from the residents to the police officers to the teaching staff. 

However, no one seems to ask the taggers why they tag.  For them, the answer is often, "I want to express myself," or "It's art."  An ugly, bare, drab, empty apartment complex seems fair game as an empty canvas.  Why do they tag?  They want respect.  They want their name out there, proudly displayed among a subculture that acts as a community in a part of Phoenix where community continues to erode. For others, it's an act of agression - a rebellion against a system that told them they didn't matter, that they were mere data in a gradebook. 

A Solution

When I think of the solution to tagging, I think the answers are more complex than simply a harsher law and quicker graffiti clean-up.  One answer is to provide more creative outlets.  We painted a mural last year and, once it cools down, we'll create another one this year.  So far, no one has tagged up our mural.  Could it be that the taggers really believe in art and wouldn't desecrate another creative expression?  Another solution might involve finding taggers to mentor others in desigining murals to canvas the blank walls with a more positive message. It could help give a definition to the shell of a suburb that still hasn't become a true community. Teachers need to pave the way for this to happen by creating ways for learning to incorporate creativity and community involvement. 

We need places where kids can express their ideas, recieve recognition and support them in a community of artists.  In other words, we need to become the tagging crew.