The Timeless Surrealism of the Middle School Assembly

Old hippies, singin’.

One thing adult life cannot replicate is the totality of the school assembly. In an age of media polarization and constructed ideological silos, of self-selection of our information ecosystems, there is no longer any sort of public square, a place where we all gather and have the same collective experience at the same collective time. My MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour is your Whiskey Fridays With Tony Dokoupil; my Paul Harvey is your Clavicular. We’re all diffuse — all over the place. It is yet another thing tearing us all apart.

But at a school assembly, your entire world — which is to say, the entire world — is all in the same room, together, receiving the same message. There are people outside that room, but they don’t matter, not really: Your whole universe is right there. That room is the news, the weather, the totality of history, the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Those outside the assembly could never understand; those inside only understand it. It is the ultimate megaphone. If you can change the world inside that assembly, you can change the entire planet.