One of the favorite lines of Faux Reformers like Bill Gates, Lauren Powell Jobs, Michelle Rhee, etc. is that American schools haven’t changed in a century, maybe two centuries.
Larry Cuban posts a delightful remincence of Changing Classrooms by Henry Levin, a distinguished ecomist who taught for many years at Stanford and Teachers College.
As Levin shows, classroom technologies are continually changing. And continually becoming obsolescent.
He fondly recalls being the boy who changed the ink in the class pens. He remembers later technologies that were state-of-the-art but have disappeared.
I started school in 1943, and by the time we were in third grade we were introduced to writing cursive using an ink pen. Initially these were the pens with long tapered wooden handles with replaceable pen tips or nibs, but by sixth grade we were expected to use fountain pens because they were less messy. I remember filling carefully my pen by maneuvering a lever on its side that compressed a rubber bladder inside to draw ink from the inkwell on its release.
I was also given the responsibility of refilling the inkwells each day or every other day. We used huge bottles of Quink (perhaps a liter), and they had to be manipulated in just the right way to fill (three quarters), but not overfill the inkwell. My recollection is that this was a permanent ink that could not be removed from my clothing. Once I dropped the entire bottle on the floor, leading to a large spill. That required initially placing newsprint and paper tissues to soak up most of it, followed by a mopping and scrubbing with water and suds. Still, a shadow of the ink remained, and the teacher reminded me periodically that I needed to be careful not to further damage her floor. Towards the end of high school some very expensive ballpoint pens began to replace the ink pens, and we were no longer expected to use the ink paraphernalia.
But, the old desks last for a long time. Even in the late fifties (I was in college), I visited my old high school and found that all of the student desks still had inkwells. Students wondered what they were for.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well….I handed out a “funsheet” today that I had written in cursive and TWO of my 11th graders proceeded to tell me they couldn’t read cursive writing. It truly IS the end of the world!
Oh, it’s WAY higher for my students. Only about half of my 7-9th grade students can read cursive, or even fancier print.
In addition to cursive writing, apparently we no longer need capital letters at the beginning of sentences and correct punctuation. My husband, an English teacher, says his 10th and 11th graders are oblivious to correct capitalization and punctuation. Maybe we will all start talking in texts.
Interesting, fun post. Thanks!
Perhaps students are too busy learning their 21st century skills and higher order thinking. 🙂
I was personally relieved when I arrived in third grade and the ballpoint pen had replaced the inkwell. As a lefty, I was able to master cursive with only minor smudging. We did have the hole in the desk for the inkwell for a few years until the building was renovated.
I have also seen my share of “mastery learning” devices over the years. As a language teacher, there was the “language lab,” a torturous repetitive device. I have also lived through the audio-visual and audio-lingual phase of language instruction. These were all variations on tedious stimulus-response machines. It is unfortunate that computer companies are eager to take students back on this stimulus-response journey as real learning involves so much more. The best learning, engages both the mind and spirit of the learner and encourages interaction with others, IMHO.
I used to love the smell of mimeograph copies. Probably full of chemicals I should not have been enjoying. As to cursive, my high school students could not read cursive, but several of them wanted me to show them how to sign their names. I went out and bought the alphabet strips to post so they could practice.
“I used to love the smell of mimeograph copies.”
YUCK. I remember coming home from my first years of teaching with fingers that had been turned blue. I was SO happy when some schools started using photocopy machines. My dream at that time was to have all schools use this new technology.
Ah. Old memories.
I remember sitting in chairs and desks that were connected and there would be a circular hole in one corner of the desk. That was to hold the ink for pens. I only used pencils and crayons in grades 1-3. [I really liked Dick, Jane and Spot. “See Jane run. Run, run, run.”] Oh, gad. I’m admitting my age. For those of you who didn’t use this reader, Spot was the dog.
How many children are now learning to read from Dick, Jane and Spot? Did expensive private schools use that book? I was in rural Meridian, Idaho.
I remember Dick, Jane and Spot from growing up in inner city Philly.
retired teacher: Looks like Dick, Jane and Spot got around.
‘Jump Spot jump.
Jump, jump, jump”
Wasn’t there also a Jip the dog? I seem to remember, “Run, Jip, Run!”
It is interesting that publishers are now warning people NOT to use the Dick, Jane readers to teach reading to children. How did we ever learn when this was NO good? I never went to kindergarten since it wasn’t offered. SO, I learned to read by using a reader that was no good and missed kindergarten. My parents were dirt poor. Put all of that together and I’m a mess. [I’m now working to catch up.]
I don’t remember Jip the dog. I remember Sally, Mother and Father.
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Wikipedia: Dick and Jane are the main characters in popular basal readers written by William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp[1] and published by Scott Foresman, that were used to teach children to read from the 1930s through to the 1990s in the United States.
The main characters, Dick and Jane, were a little boy and girl. Supporting characters included Baby (or Sally), Mother, Father, Spot (originally a cat in the 1930s, but a dog in later editions), Puff the cat, and Tim the teddy bear. They first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers used in the 1930s, which themselves were heavily revised and enlarged editions of the Elson Readers originally produced by William H. Elson in the 1920s. The simple but distinctive illustrations for the books were done by artists Eleanor Campbell and Keith Ward. Robert Childress did the illustrations during the 1950s. Richard Wiley took over the illustrations in the 1960s, and was the first to include African American characters in the book series.
First editions of the books now fetch as much as US$200. The books were reissued in 2003 by Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Group, and over 2.5 million copies were sold, but this time the publishers had warned against using them to teach reading to children.
The reason that Dick and Jane are forbidden is that they use the “whole word” teaching methods. Advocates of phonics hate whole word readers. I happen to like a mixture. I learned phonics and I also read Dick and Jane. There is something great for a child in being able to read simple words.
I can remember my mother complaining about the “whole word” approach. She thought I should have been learning phonics, but I never had any problems reading.
There was a huge bestseller in the 1950s called “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”
It was an attack on the Dick and Jane readers
I had phonics later in grade school in Boise. My cousin who went to school in Montana said that she never learned phonics and is a terrible speller. Do kids today get phonics?
Phonics is great for teaching decoding, but if you rely on it for spelling as an adult, you will be a terrible speller. There,their, they’re are too, to, two many ways (waze) to spell simple words (werds) phonetically or (ore) otherwise that do (dew) not (knot) follow the rules (rools). Controlled text and direct instruction in phonics are extremely valuable tools in beginning reading, but a grounding in phonics does not make someone a good reader or, for that matter, a good speller.
speduktr: “Phonics is great for teaching decoding, but if you rely on it for spelling as an adult, you will be a terrible speller.”
I disagree. I use phonetics to spell out words. I’m not the world’s greatest speller but I can tell the difference between simple words like ‘do’ and “dew’ or ‘to’ and ‘too’. There is a certain amount of memory work that goes into being a reader or writer. Beyond the simple, phonetics comes into play.
As a native English speaker simple words such as the ones you listed were learned in grade school.
Jip the dog was from the Alice and Jerry series. We had an A&J book at home; I suppose it was my mom’s from when she was a girl.
“Phonics is great for teaching decoding, but if you rely on it for spelling as an adult, you will be a terrible speller.”
I did pick rather simple words to try to make a point, carolmalaysia, but there are so many ways to write the same sound that spelling is not always easy. If it was, there would be very little reason for spelling bees. Just think of it– ay, a, eigh, ey, ai–all make the long a sound and that’s still pretty basic, but it does require that we remember when writing which pattern to use. The English language is full of unique spellings all(?) of which, I suppose, you could call phonetic, but the point I was trying to make was that it takes more than phonics to be a good speller. As you said, after awhile we just internalize the correct spelling. I still on occasion have to write out a word a couple of ways to figure out which is correct. My most frequent hangup seems to be words ending in -ize or -ise. Apparently the Brits favor -ize and we are more prone to -Ise. My high school special ed students did not always find the “to, too, two” type spellings easy. They knew how to write them but had difficulty attaching the correct meanings.
We had oak desks with inkwells that were refinished now and then with varnish. They literally lasted decades. Though inkwells were a thing for my mother’s generation we still used the desks when I was in high school in the early ’70’s.
Frugal Yankee schoolboards weren’t going to discard useful, sturdy furniture.
When I began school in the mid-1940s, we used quill pens that were dipped in an inkwell.
I sat at a desk that had an extension on the right, where the student was supposed to rest her arm while writing. I am left handed so that was difficult. Once in a while, I saw a left handed desk, but I was so used to the other kind that I avoided the one made for lefties.
Before I left elementary school, we switched to ballpoint pens. That was a nightmare because my left hand always dragged across the ink, causing it to smudge, and my left hand fingers were always ink stained.
I was very pleased when we eventually junked the messy ball points and started using pens that had chambers for liquid ink. You dipped them in a well, pushed a lever to refill them. That ink didn’t smudge or stain like the ballpoint ink.
And yes, I learned to read with Dick and Jane.
My first classroom had desks with wooden tops and a hole for ink. I had these desks for 4 years. I then transferred to a different school in my district and was relieved when my principal, who was also new to the building, bought us new desks. The sad part is I started teaching in 2000. I actual saw the same desks on ebay listed as antiques.
Oh, they don’t really have any new ideas anyway.
There’s absolutely nothing new about government contractors, cut-rate instruction that replaces human interaction or education initiatives written by and for the benefit of big business. They replaced coal companies running public schools with tech companies running public schools, but other than that it’s identical to anything you would find in West Virginia in the 1930’s. Complete with union busting. That’s so old it’s a classic.
The whole ed reform agenda has been around since the 1930’s- it’s just marketed better and they added some soft-focus “progressive” language to sell it to the masses.
When I was in public school we had this canned reading program where we would read a short piece and then take a test, and then move to the next level. We all moved at our own pace and it allowed teachers to work with students who were struggling while those of us who weren’t struggling could plow through a whole box of reading cards in a week, alone.
There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between that and what ed reform sells as “blended learning” – read, test, read again, test again, over and over and over. Blended learning is just way more profitable to the vendors and it appeals to the same sort of people who believe Google is a philanthropic entity run by idealists- suckers, in other words.
When I first started working on the elementary level, the reading lab had the same type of color coded self-pacing system that was just as bad as the CCSS reading. We really made advances in later years when we moved to reading real literature rather than canned materials.
I sort of liked it in a show-offy way- I could go through it fast and we got a lot of recognition for speed 🙂
But even I knew it wasn’t especially innovative or new or creative, just like my son knows his “blended learning” science class isn’t new and creative.
I don’t know why they have to over-sell everything. It makes me not trust them. ALWAYS over-hyped.
Education has changed a great deal over the last few years, the last few decades, and certainly the last century. The inclusion of special ed students, racial integration (sort of), diminished lecturing and increased group work, and on and on… All the “reinventors” mean, though, is that they want everything to be done online with data — change for the sake of monetized data. They want to reinvent profitability, not education. It’s like saying walking hasn’t changed for a hundred years, that people need to have their steps measured by online wristwatches to reinvent walking. People don’t need step data. You know how to walk. Just put one foot in front of the other. …Just let me teach. I’ll put one concept in front of the other.
My 6th grade teacher in 1963 would be an innovator TODAY.
We brought in appliances – toasters, irons, fans, etc. Assignment? Take them apart and put them back together. Maker Space circa 1963.
13 Field trips to learn about “Public Health” – went to the county health department and on the roof got to see the – wait for it – machine that measured air pollution. We inspected a department store restaurant (and then ate there and of course had to calculate a tip). Went to a sewage treatment plant (tertiary treatment). (Tomato seeds do not digest so, yes…) Went to water treatment plant.
Those 13 field trips – – – we took notes in “college” blue books and had to write up the notes into a reports and essays (I still have my notebook).
interdisciplinary science, math, social students and English in 1963.
We learned public speaking – extemperaneous speeches and science reports in a speech note cards and all (“The digestive system…)
Sex education. Yes – sex education.
Overnight camp – 5 nights. Ecology! Again – notes every day and written up in a notebook.
We watched the live coverage of the Kennedy assassination and read the newspapers the following week.
Project based learning before there was pbl.
Interdisciplinary team before there were middle schools
Contemporary issues before relevance was a thing.
Ecology before Silent Spring.
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“They” (you know, “they”) say we don’t teach like we were taught.
We do! and I was fortunate to have teachers like this every year in the ’60s.
I wonder what kind of teachers these charter school robot kids will be.
1947 San Francisco’s Jefferson Elementary had empty inkwells and solid wood desks bolted to the floor all in rows. I believe school furniture was made in State prisons that was purchased by the S.F. School District. It was only time before privatized furniture purchases replaced the long lasting heavy furniture of the day. Now we have privately managed charter schools replacing public school public managed and we can only hope that this evolutionary privatization can be turned around.
This is sickening. Indiana definitely is NOT a leader in education…vouchers, charters and no cursive. I am SO glad I am not a student in Indiana at this time.
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LAFAYETTE MOM TEACHES HER TEENS TO WRITE IN CURSIVE
State lawmakers are preparing to discuss whether to mandate cursive writing in schools. One Lafayette mom hopes they do.
Posted: Jun. 28, 2018 6:41 PM
Updated: Jun. 28, 2018 6:43 PM
Posted By: Kayla Sullivan
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) — When it came time for Lisa Gretencord’s children to get a driver’s license, years of public school education didn’t cut it.
“They were told to sign in cursive and they didn’t know how,” said Gretencord.
That’s because Indiana does not require schools to teach cursive handwriting. So, this mom took matters into her own hands.
“I sat down with the boys at the kitchen table and put out a piece of paper and told them they had to write their name in cursive,” said Gretencord. “I wrote it and then they had to copy it.”
Being taught to write your own name at 16?
“They were embarrassed!” said Gretencord. “Because they didn’t know how to write their name in cursive. And not only that, they don’t know how to read in cursive.”
Gretencord wants lawmakers to change that.
“They need to bring it back in schools,” said Gretencord. “These kids need to know how to do that. I mean there are still people out there that write in cursive and they need to know how to write their name in a professional way when it comes to a document.”
State Representative Sheila Klinker couldn’t agree more.
“We want our students to be able to read historical documents and know what they’re saying,” said Klinker. “And also maybe to read Grandma and Grandpa’s letters that are done in cursive writing instead of printing,”
Those who are opposed argue cursive writing is not on I-STEP or I-LEARN tests. Most teachers are too busy teaching technology to students.
“I do sympathize with that, the fact that they do, but this is something that is very important for these kids,” said Gretencord. “I mean, not everything is on computers.”
Lawmakers will consider the measure during a summer study. They plan to look at the results of a recent survey.
Nearly 4 thousand people responded to the Department of Education study. Most were teachers and principals. School board members and Superintendents were not as willing to participate.
2,716 people voted in favor of mandating cursive. 386 were opposed and 776 are undecided.
In Tippecanoe School Corporation, it’s up to the teachers whether to teach cursive.
Out of the nearly 4 thousand people who responded to the survey, 3 thousand are not currently teaching cursive in the state.
https://www.wlfi.com/content/news/Lafayette-mom-teaches-her-teens-to-write-in-cursive-486874201.html