A School for Boys and Girls (1670)

Introduction: Seeing Clearly in an Age of Measurement

Jan Steen’s A School for Boys and Girls (1670) offers neither an idealized vision of education nor a condemnation of its difficulties. Instead, the painting presents a classroom animated by the full range of human behavior: attention and distraction, discipline and resistance, order and improvisation. The proverb often associated with the image, What use are glasses or light if the owl does not want to see?, invites reflection on the limits of instruments designed to clarify understanding. Improved tools do not guarantee improved perception. Illumination does not compel insight.

I began teaching in 2007, the same year Missouri implemented the End of Course assessment program. Because of this historical coincidence, my professional life has unfolded within an educational environment shaped by the pursuit of clarity through measurement. Standardized testing, data dashboards, data walls, and accountability systems have formed part of the structural context in which my understanding of teaching has developed. Over time, I have come to recognize both the value and the limits of these instruments. Numbers offer visibility into certain aspects of learning, yet the deeper processes through which individuals construct meaning often resist full quantification.

Steen’s classroom provides a visual metaphor through which to consider the contemporary educational landscape. Each figure, object, and gesture reveals a dimension of learning that complicates simplistic interpretations of success or failure. The painting reminds us that education has always involved negotiation between structure and agency, between institutional expectation and human development. The present moment does not represent a departure from this tension but its continuation under new conditions shaped by technological change and expanded accountability.

The reflections that follow consider what standardized measurement reveals and what it necessarily obscures. Drawing upon constructivist philosophy, qualitative research traditions, and the work of scholars such as Alfie Kohn, John Dewey, and Gert Biesta, the essay explores the relationship between visibility and understanding within educational systems. Steen’s classroom serves as a visual companion throughout, reminding us that learning has always unfolded within imperfect environments populated by individuals striving to see clearly.

The question is not whether measurement has value but how measurement relates to the broader aims of education. If spectacles sharpen vision, wisdom determines what is worth seeing.

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Opening Cactus Bud (1990)

On the flight home from Phoenix, I found myself returning to a line spoken half in jest with my brother, “another desert-loving Englishman,” a nod to Lawrence of Arabia. The remark was playful, yet it captured something real about the experience of the week. Spring Training offered its rituals of baseball, but beneath that familiar rhythm I felt drawn repeatedly toward the quieter revelation of the museum. The desert, which at first glance appears austere, revealed itself as a landscape of hidden beauty, one that does not immediately disclose its richness but instead invites a slower, more attentive form of seeing.

In Opening Cactus Bud, Mell offers a vision of the desert that resists the common caricature of emptiness. The bloom emerges not as ornament but as culmination. The cactus does not waste energy on constant display; its beauty is episodic, conditioned by patience and adaptation. Mell’s angular planes of color transform the organic form into something simultaneously natural and architectural. Light does not merely fall upon the bud, it structures the very possibility of its perception. The flower becomes less a botanical specimen than a philosophical proposition: that what appears barren may in fact conceal extraordinary vitality.

The desert teaches a particular epistemology. One must learn how to see it. Unlike environments that overwhelm the senses with immediate abundance, the Sonoran landscape requires attunement. The eye must adjust to subtle gradations of color, delicate shifts of shadow, and the quiet persistence of life negotiating scarcity. Mell’s composition functions almost as visual pedagogy, enlarging the cactus bud until it becomes undeniable. In doing so, he reveals what was always already present but insufficiently noticed.

This notion of hidden beauty resonates psychologically. Much of human development occurs in forms that are not publicly visible. Growth frequently unfolds in conditions that feel dry, uncertain, or unproductive. Yet the cactus reminds us that dormancy is not equivalent to stagnation. Within a framework informed by depth psychology, the unopened bud may be read as a symbol of latent integration, a gathering of psychic resources awaiting expression. The bloom appears suddenly, but its possibility has been cultivated over time.

The desert has long served as a site of spiritual testing and revelation. From the ascetic traditions of late antiquity to the literary imagination of modernity, arid landscapes have functioned as metaphors for interior encounter. In Lawrence of Arabia, the desert becomes a place where identity is both lost and discovered. T. E. Lawrence does not simply traverse the desert; he is transformed by it. The environment strips away distraction, revealing both fragility and resolve. Mell’s cactus bud participates in this symbolic lineage. Its bloom is not exuberant excess but distilled intensity.

Mell’s approach echoes the reductive clarity found in the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, yet Mell’s vision is more angular, more crystalline. The desert is not softened but faceted, its geometry reflecting the structural forces that shape both landscape and perception. The bloom is monumentalized, inviting contemplation not merely of botanical beauty but of emergence itself.

I am struck by how easily hidden beauty escapes attention when one expects spectacle. Spring Training offers spectacle in abundance. It's baseball packed with all the asymmetry of the field, the anticipation of the season, the shared language of tradition. Yet the museum offers something quieter, perhaps more enduring: the opportunity to recognize value where none initially appears obvious. Mell’s cactus bud reminds me that beauty is not always performative. Sometimes it waits, conserved and protected, until conditions allow for its expression.

The line about being “another desert-loving Englishman” becomes less a joke and more a recognition of temperament. To love the desert is to accept that meaning is often understated. It is to understand that revelation frequently occurs through restraint rather than excess. The desert does not compel attention; it rewards it.

Hidden beauty requires participation. It asks the viewer to slow perception, to resist the demand for immediate gratification, and to trust that significance may reside beneath surfaces that appear severe. Mell’s painting suggests that what initially seems inhospitable may in fact contain the conditions necessary for transformation.

The bloom opens rarely, but when it does, it reveals that the desert was never empty. It was simply waiting to be seen.

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