I Learned On A Blackboard

That's right. I learned on a blackboard. An actual blackboard at the front of the room with erasers that the teachers would throw at us if we weren't paying attention. And if you ducked fast enough you could get the kid behind you who was NOT in trouble, smacked in the face with a chalk eraser! I remember chalk, big black erasers that would need to be knocked together to knock the dust off of them.

I remember the three-line thing where the teachers would stick three pieces of white chalk in to draw a line across the board and then take the eraser and erase out small sections of the middle line to make their 'dotted lines' for writing courses. I remember classes where the teachers actually had the ability to teach the course, and were not being stifled down with computer courses that teach kids only to memorize and spit back by rote.

I remember overhead projectors coming into play in my later junior high years, but never, and I mean NEVER, did I see a computer inside of a classroom. When I got to high school, the library had a small (6 machines), "computer lab" and at that point we were expected to have our papers typed up. We had the option of typing our assignments up on either the computer or a typewriter at home. It was hard to get time on one of the computers in the library, so most of us did them on typewriters at home!

Anyone else remember this? LOL

I got thinking about this with my child's open-house at the beginning of this school year, and this teacher going on and on about how "great" this "new" teaching program is, and how the children all learn on the computer. And I remember thinking "NOT. IMPRESSED." while he was talking.

And then four weeks later, I am looking back at it knowing I was right, because ALL of the kids in this class are STRUGGLING with it. This instructor is insisting that these children have calculators. Uhm.. hello? My 8th grader needs to be learning her math problems by hand FIRST. A calculator is a TOOL that is brought into play AFTER the children have already learned how to do it! But no. Bring in the computers and calculators, don't teach the children to think.. no, no, must not have that, that would be a threat to the current status quo, if the children thought they were allowed to question things........... or THINK.

Anyway. Turning off the rant lol -- it just got me thinking back to when I was in school. And I am a blackboard baby. We learned on the blackboard, and later on an overhead projector, but never a computer. LOL...