Aiming for Messy?

I follow an Instagram account called TeachersThings that often has funny or inspiring posts for those who serve as educators. This morning in my Instafeed, I saw this one:

A screenshot from TeachersThings on Instragram.

My immediate reaction was, "YES!"

But the more I thought about this, I'm not so sure that is the right response.

I know that when I was a middle school teacher, I had a reputation for having a "messy" classroom. I'm just owning it: the way I taught science and Bible classes, we almost always had some sort of project, some kind of contraption-building, some ongoing investigation that just made the room messy. I'd like to think that this messiness was indicative of engagement on the part of my students--and indicative that they were active participants in their own learning.

So I'm not pushing back on the idea of messiness, per se. I'm also not pushing back on the idea of engagement--I definitely want students to be engaged in learning!

I think what is bothering me in this Instapost is the idea that messiness is what we're striving for. The statement, "Go for chaos!" feels like it's missing the mark for me. I know there have been time in my career (even at the present) that my classroom feel chaotic. But I wouldn't say that I'm striving for chaos. And even when things are getting a little wild, I think it's generally a productive, dynamic, creative commotion, rather than a disorganized, haphazard, jumbled free-for-all. Because that's the connotation "chaos" has for me.'

Maybe the idea here is sound, but the phrasing is the issue?

Maybe what this post is really pointing toward is productive disruption as a gateway for captivating students?

Or maybe the real idea here is using what Charles West Churchman described as "wicked problems" (problems that are complex enough and don't have an obvious "correct" answer--or even a "correct" approach toward the answer) as a key part of our teaching--making things intellectually messy for our students, even if the classroom is not necessarily physically messy?

Or perhaps the takeaway here is that we should consider education as something done with students and for students, rather than something done to students?

What do you think? Should we be aiming for messy?