Haunting chalkboard drawings, frozen in time for 100 years, discovered in Oklahoma school

[rug]

By Elahe Izadi
June 6

Teachers and students scribbled the lessons — multiplication tables, pilgrim history, how to be clean — nearly 100 years ago. And they haven’t been touched since.



This week, contractors removing old chalkboards at Emerson High School in Oklahoma City made a startling discovery: Underneath them rested another set of chalkboards, untouched since 1917.



“The penmanship blows me away, because you don’t see a lot of that anymore,” Emerson High School Principal Sherry Kishore told the Oklahoman. “Some of the handwriting in some of these rooms is beautiful.”



The chalkboards being removed to make way for new whiteboards are in four classrooms, according to the Oklahoma City Public School District.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/06/eerie-chalkboard-drawings-frozen-in-time-for-100-years-discovered-in-oklahoma-school/?tid=sm_fb

[eppur_se_muova]

1. To be replaced with whiteboards ...

Whiteboards SUCK. The supplies are absurdly more expensive and as un-ecofriendly as you can get.

[Oktober]

8. Worth every bit to avoid that awful sound...

[KittyWampus]

22. I'm still in mourning over the card catalog in the library going the way of digital...

so much fun going to look for something in the card catalog. I'd always find interesting stuff on the way. Now you just punch in a word for the subject/author etc and it comes straight up.

[BumRushDaShow]

38. And all that time learning the Dewey Decimal System

just.... gone....

Thank goodness for the internet! The kids today have no idea.

[NJCher]

36. If you think they're bad

try Smartboards.

You can show things on the internet, though, so maybe it offsets by saving photocopies/trees.

A custodian told me the bulbs cost $1000 each. A lot of teachers just leave them on throughout the class.

I don't know that this is true, though, about the bulbs.



Cher

[catrose]

43. And the smell of whiteboard markers has always made me ill

So glad I'm not in school

[shenmue]

2. Wow!

[JaneyVee]

3. Wow! They were really into the Pilgrims.

[rug]

4. From the December calendar, it looks like they covered them up in late November.

I wonder what lives these children led. What a century.

[petronius]

6. November 29 appears to be a 'red-letter' day - no school on Thanksgiving

I guess. Maybe they did the work over the holiday weekend (the first row of the calendar is already switched to a December week, in anticipation...)

Fascinating find, I'm glad they're preserving it!

[rug]

7. I never saw that version of the Pledge of Allegiance before.

[petronius]

9. Yes, that is interesting - I had always 'known' that the God reference was added

in the 50's; did not know there were other versions out there.

I'm also still trying to puzzle out their method of teaching arithmetic...

[Tess49]

29. Me, too. I've been staring at that for some time now!!

[TexasProgresive]

13. The Balch salute

http://historyofthepledge.com/history.html
June 14, 1889 Colonel Balch introduces an American Flag Salute at his NY kindergarten: “We give our heads and our hearts to God and or country; one country, one language, one Flag”

Maybe the one on the black board is a version of that.

[rug]

14. Geez.

[DrBulldog]

16. Sickening and offensive.

And I still remember the awful day in the 1950s when I was in elementary school, when I had to use the word "God" in the pledge of allegiance for the first time. It made me feel like an alien spouting about a concept I have never believed in.

[rug]

18. I take your point but the Fascist salute in Oklahoma six years before Mussolini is stunning.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

33. That was the Roman salute prior to the Nazis ...

That's how Americans recited the pledge like then.

Absolutely haunting now, but given the time, that's how it was done.

Also, it was a Christian Socialist, Francis Bellamy, who came up with the original pledge (in the 1890s, if I recall). The original version did not include the word "God."

Interesting stuff.

[TexasProgresive]

39. 1st Reich - the Roman Empire, 2nd Reich - the Holy Roman Empire - 3rd Reich-retch!

Here's an interesting link to read a bit on the history of the salute and pledge.
http://www.gemworld.com/US-PledgeSaluteSocialism.htm
I take issue that the NAZIs appropriated the Balch salute from the U.S. I really think the Germans wanted to be the reincarnation of the Roman Empire and that this is a bit older than NAZIsm. When I took Latin, many, many years ago (yes it was still a dead language) in my 3rd year we had to learn a new pronunciation. Years 1 and 2 were ecclesiastical Latin (soft like Italian), 3 and 4 were classical. It was explained to us that the Germans insisted they knew how Latin should be pronounced. It was hard with a lot of r rolling and I just thought it was unpleasant.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

42. Yes, I totally agree with that.

I didn't intend to imply that the Nazis appropriated the salute from the United States. It was, as you correctly state, an attempt to rebuild the Third Empire (Third Reich), and as such with the Nazis play on myth and history, adopted the Roman Salute to continue the tradition in a cynical play at national unity.

However, it is not unlike our play at national unity with the pledge, even though it was a socialist who came up with it.

[Hekate]

41. Thanks for knowing that. The Pledge went thru several iterations. Largely it was about assimilation

....of great waves of immigrant children a century-plus ago. They needed to learn English and learn how to be American, as it was understood then. This was part of Bellamy's contribution.

People went back and forth about the wording and posture, and yes, the Roman salute had nothing whatsoever to do with Nazism or fascism, but we ended up with our hands over our hearts in the end.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

44. I have a moment about once a year.

I'm glad I could contribute something.

[mountain grammy]

19. It's December. Don't know why the 29th is in red.

My birthday is Nov 29th and it can never fall on Thanksgiving. If it falls on a Thursday, it's the fifth Thursday so not Thanksgiving.
This is December.. weird. Wonder what the 29th was.The teacher's birthday?

These are great. I hope they go to a museum.

[petronius]

21. Only the top week is December, the bottom four rows are still November

http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1917&country=1

I'm guessing the teacher only updated the first week, in anticipation of the upcoming school week...

On edit: according to Wiki, Thanksgiving was simply the last Thursday in November prior to 1941. Nice to learn a bit of trivia on a lazy Sunday!

On December 26, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress changing the national Thanksgiving Day from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday. Two years earlier, Roosevelt had used a presidential proclamation to try to achieve this change, reasoning that earlier celebration of the holiday would give the country an economic boost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving#Fixing_the_date_of_the_holiday

[mountain grammy]

25. So, my BD did fall on Thanksgiving

before I was born. At some point it was changed to the 4th Thurs of the month.

[petronius]

26. Yep - obviously FDR realized that you deserved your own holiday, without that

unfair overlap!

[mountain grammy]

28. Yeah, I know, he did that just for me!

6 years before I was born.. Thanks, FDR, and thanks for a whole lot more.

[marble falls]

5. I hope these find their way into a museum.

[treestar]

27. +1

So interesting. The drawings they took time to do are intriguing.

[awoke_in_2003]

10. Saved that multiplication wheel

I need to figure how it works later.

[rug]

12. Make sure you let me know when you do.

[salin]

15. That caught my attention as well. Doesn't seem to have rhyme or reason

per the pattern of the numbers on the wheel.

[Jackpine Radical]

34. I think it may be a recitation tool, deliberately set out of order

so that people actually memorized the number pairs instead of just the sequence. Kids might be asked to take turns as the teacher points at each number around the wheel, for example.

[awoke_in_2003]

48. That makes sense

I don't see a pattern

[awoke_in_2003]

47. If there is a pattern

I haven't figured it out. Pattern detection, especially with numbers, is usually one of my strong suits

[TexasProgresive]

40. One possible use

Maybe the teacher was using it as a drill on multiplication. She would point at say 6 X and then the 3 and say, "Wake up, Jimmy. What's the answer?"

I never saw one like that but I can imagine it. Teacher's imaginative ways of teaching were not hamstrung but extremely tight methods.

[awoke_in_2003]

49. I think you're right...

I was hoping it was a math tool I was unfamiliar with

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. so interesting.

[Jefferson23]

17. Amazing the chalk did not simply deteriorate. Very cool. n/t

[KittyWampus]

20. I'm amazed at the colors of the chalk.

[Jefferson23]

23. I know, right? They're so vibrant. n/t

[mountain grammy]

24. Somebody figure out that multiplication wheel please!

I think it'll keep me awake at night.

[ann---]

31. Somebody else wondered, too

http://www.quora.com/How-does-the-multiplication-wheel-that-was-discovered-on-old-chalkboards-at-Emerson-High-School-in-Oklahoma-work

They still sell multiplication wheel worksheets!

http://www.shoplet.com/Scholastic-Monster-Multiplication-Wheels/SHS0439609682/spdv?gclid=CKevzdXC_sUCFcmQHwodCS8ANw&rtop=1

[rug]

45. Impressive sleuthing!

[ann---]

50. Thanks!

I was very curious about it.

[Jackpine Radical]

35. I think I did.

Look for a post of mine somewhere on this thread.

[ann---]

30. Those stars look

like the Star of David.

[TexasProgresive]

46. The caught my eye

1st the yellow because that's what the German and Polish Jews had to wear.

[LeftishBrit]

32. Cool!

[frogmarch]

37. Fascinating!

Remarkable remnants of the real past. I hope they endure now that they’ve been discovered.

On exhibit in a museum in my hometown is an old toilet room door taken from a 1950s store that was torn down. When I was 12, my friends and I, silly creatures that we were, wrote our names and phone numbers on the door, along with the names of the local boys or the movie stars we wanted for our boyfriends. Pencil writing can last a long time. That is why the door is on exhibit. How embarrassing.

[Jamastiene]

51. I'm curious why they were left there.

Did something happen that caused them to just get forgotten and left there or what?

[petronius]

52. Maybe the teachers and the workers who hung the new set over

these old ones were hoping for this reaction - they thought it would be cool to leave a little time capsule...

Another thing that just struck me is that the chalkboards that were just removed may have been in use for almost a century; kind of boggling to think how many teachers and students used them, for so many lessons.

[Ghost in the Machine]

53. Great pieces of history there! I hope they go to a museum, or in a showcase at the school n/t