Wayside School is Falling Down

One of the elements that adds to the general chaos at Wayside School is the extreme individuality of the students and staff. Far from being portrayed as undesirable, this individuality is rewarded by plot events and celebrated by the characters themselves. By structuring the narrative as separate stories that focus on different members of the Wayside School community, Sachar emphasizes the importance of each individual character. As the stories unfold, many different children and adults have their moment in the spotlight, and this story structure implies that no single member of the school community is the most important, just as no particular way of approaching life is considered superior.

Even when the students display behavior that would be harshly punished in a real-life school setting, Sachar creates a world in which everyone’s eccentricities are accepted and even welcomed. For example, although some of the children in these stories enjoy school and welcome the company of their classmates, others such as Myron, Allison, and Kathy do not. Rather than being condemned, however, their negative attitudes are simply accepted as a natural part of their personalities. This pattern becomes clear when Myron’s nonconformity is rewarded after his brave journey into the school’s basement; because he chooses to go down when everyone else goes up, he is given the opportunity to sign the mysterious contract and is declared “free” and can henceforward choose which rules to follow and which to disregard. Kathy, by contrast, is consistently negative. Her constant pessimistic and dark comments—such as her repeated assurances that everyone is about to die in “Wayside School Is Falling Down”—are never criticized. Instead, she is simply allowed to be herself and is appreciated for who she is.

Mrs. Jewls consistently models acceptance of individuality, and her students take her guidance to heart and engage in expressions of individuality that would not be allowed at most schools. For example, Calvin debates potential tattoo ideas with his classmates, Sharie brings Bob for show-and-tell, Mac creates distractions from Mrs. Jewls’s lessons, and Dameon leaves a dead rat in Mrs. Jewls’s desk. In support of her students’ antics, Mrs. Jewls goes beyond tolerating their eccentric behavior and sometimes directly endorses it. Notable instances of this pattern occur when Mrs. Jewels reassures Dana that the girl’s powerful emotional response to stories is a positive trait, not a negative one. Even after Dameon leaves a dead rat in her desk, Mrs. Jewls goes out of her way to reassure him that his affection for her is entirely acceptable, and she gives him the courage to stand up for himself. Because Mrs. Jewls actively embraces her students’ individuality, her students accept themselves, and this dynamic is clear in Benjamin’s character development. Although he is initially full of self-doubt, his attitude shifts entirely by the end of the school year, and he has an appreciative affection for his classmates. He fondly considers them to be “a bunch of weirdos” and feels “proud to be in a class where nobody was strange because nobody was normal” (206-7). Benjamin has struggled to assert his individuality throughout the book, but he finally sees that he is not the only one who feels insecure because of his own eccentricities. In the end, he no longer has to masquerade as Mark Miller because his classmates’ confessions have helped him to understand that everyone is “weird” in their own individual way—and that this is something to be celebrated rather than hidden.