Untouched, unerased school blackboards from 1917 discovered

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@dropzone

Becky2844, in the Palmer Method, as you and I and that teacher were taught, they are. To increase speed and fluidity, lower-case letters start and end on the baseline. That means that letters that start with a vertical down stroke need to get the pen up to the top first, causing the double up-down stroke. Taller letters, like h or k, turn that into a loop, but the first strokes of m and n don’t have room for it.

Scumpup, **my teachers banned ballpoint pens because no civilized person uses them for serious written communication. Some of our desks had holes in the top right corners for inkwells, but cartridge pens were allowed. **

Mr Shine, face it: You’re an uncivilized illiterate. Just ask my third-grade teacher, if she’s still alive. Or get a fountain pen and get ready for a bout of automatic writing. You just won’t be able to read it. (BIG )

Bolding mine.

Quite right. So they should. A fountain pen is the highest pinnacle of graphological technology. Your teachers were clearly serious men and women, and you were obviously “raised right”, as my Grandmother (who had impeccable handwriting) would say.

I still use one. And, as best I can, Palmer-style (the cursive in the pictures) handwriting. It’s not quite dead - I attended a seminar by a writing teacher at a pen show in the spring.

[carnivorousplant]

If I may digress on cursive writing, if it is no longer taught in schools, how are people to sign their names?
:dubious:

[Hershele_Ostropoler]

@carnivorousplant

If I may digress on cursive writing, if it is no longer taught in schools, how are people to sign their names?
:dubious:

Biometrics?

[Enter_the_Flagon]

@Ale

Now they only need to find the 98 year old rascal that shirked blackboard duty.

They taught multiplication to infants back then?

I hope our newborns are at least better computer programmers.

[Saint_Cad]

@lieu

The number association with the days of the week doesn’t actually work for December, 1917, but it does for November.

Plus the 4th Thursday is in red for Thanksgiving. Great reference to the term “red letter day”.

[Lord_Feldon]

@carnivorousplant

If I may digress on cursive writing, if it is no longer taught in schools, how are people to sign their names?
:dubious:

I guess they won’t be able to. The age of written contracts will grind to a halt as cursive-deprived children come of age and find themselves unable to interact with businesses or financial institutions. The entire modern economy, we will soon learn, was based on teachers buying ditto sheets from educational publishing companies to teach their students proprietary versions of handwriting. One of the last literate members of what’s now a nomadic hunter-gatherer society will find a cursive workbook and weep bitterly at the loss of the crucial unsung skill of putting loops and curlicues on letters.

:dubious:

[carnivorousplant]

@Lord_Feldon

I guess they won’t be able to. The age of written contracts will grind to a halt as cursive-deprived children come of age and find themselves unable to interact with businesses or financial institutions. The entire modern economy, we will soon learn, was based on teachers buying ditto sheets from educational publishing companies to teach their students proprietary versions of handwriting. One of the last literate members of what’s now a nomadic hunter-gatherer society will find a cursive workbook and weep bitterly at the loss of the crucial unsung skill of putting loops and curlicues on letters.

:dubious:

Well, there you go.
:rolleyes:

[Becky2844]

@John_Bredin

They may have been left-handers when they came into school, but by Jove they weren’t going to be left-handed when they left if the teachers had anything to say about it!

This is true. My mother’s home-ec teacher hit her across the back of her hand with a pair of scissors for sewing left-hand(edly?) My mother stood up and hit her on top of the head with a book, knocking her to the floor. She was expelled.

[lieu]

[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
I wonder what’s up with the Stars of David at the top of the board, above the multiplication wheel? Wondering if it was related to the time of year (Chanukah) or the year itself (1917, Israel formed) or if some kids just liked drawing stars that way with colored chalk.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
One ventures to guess that children who are learning to multiply aren’t going to be drawing along the top of the board.
[/QUOTE]

@carnivorousplant

The Balfour Declaration was 1917. Israel became a country in 1948.

Balfour was Nov. 2 so the timing works.
Nov-Dec, 1917 was also The Battle of Jerusalem between the British and Ottomans, so another reason to consider those stars (of David) as event oriented.

[carnivorousplant]

@lieu

Balfour was Nov. 2 so the timing works.
Nov-Dec, 1917 was also The Battle of Jerusalem between the British and Ottomans, so another reason to consider those stars (of David) as event oriented.

Cool.
Thanks, lieu.