What's Nostalgia Got To Do With It? —
People Pay Good Money For This Sort Of Thing
Vol. I, Issue II - Oct. 2010

It's the late 1970s. He wears a royal blue polyester suit and stands in front of a dark green chalkboard. They seldom tire of his black pirate mustache. Nevertheless, his audience members pick their noses, squirm, doodle, and smirk. As he concludes his discussion on the last days of Napoleon's reign, he turns his back on his restless students and, with fastidious care, slides the eraser across the chalkboard, first Elba and then the Treaty of Fountainbleu disappear, followed by a rapid sweeping away of Louis XVIII. His hand, gripping the black felt pad, glides through Napoleon returns to Paris on March 20, 1815. With a flourish of the wrist, he wipes away Paris welcomed him with celebration, and Louis XVIII, the new king, fled to Belgium. Not even a particle of chalk dust remains. A boy with buckteeth and thick black rimmed glasses takes advantage of the teacher's momentary lapse in attention and turns in his seat. The teacher whips around, and, with athletic precision, hurls the eraser at the boy's head.

“Durrand! When was Napoleon exiled to Elba?” The boy yelps and reels in his seat, catching his breath. A white dust cloud hovers in the air.

Alex Durrand tells me this story many years later. He finishes the story by saying, “You have no idea how heavy an eraser full of chalk dust is. It's a weapon.”

“Knowledge is power—and a weapon,” comes to mind.

As a child, I remember standing at the chalkboard in an empty classroom, my claws drawn, threatening my companion with, what I imagine, was a wicked grin on my face. The power. I never had to follow through. The anticipation alone made my victim cringe and beg for mercy. The victim was usually my younger brother.

“Why do we respond with aversion to the sound of fingernails or some sharp tool scraped across a blackboard?” asked a scientist. “It turns out the sound waves associated with primate warning cries, particularly chimpanzee warning cries, are remarkably similar in appearance to the aversive, middle frequency sound waves produced by fingernails on a chalkboard,” scientist, Jack Blake responded. The Society for Improbable Research, IG. Nobel Prize gave him an award.

Warning cries.

Chimpanzees.

Even as I sit here, my nerve endings behind my ears melt into my throat, swell and tingle in pain at the memory of that excruciating sound, not once but many times, over and over again. I can't stop it. I respond instinctually.

The blackboard. Hard, dense, black or green heavy slate--foreboding. So much of my knowledge was imparted, written in thick white lines across a blackboard. With the sound of chalk against a slate surface, I learned algebra, trigonometry, Aphrodite and Dionysus, and tic-tac-toe.

While teaching English abroad last year, I found myself confronted with a flimsy whiteboard as an instructional tool. I hadn't made the mental transition and continued to call it a chalkboard through the first half of the year, and only through constant self-correction did I come to “whiteboard” as a part of my vocabulary. Although most of the time, the whiteboard was safely mounted to the wall, occasionally, I found myself working with a movable board. It stood on a tripod of sorts, and if I pressed too hard while writing, the whole contraption collapsed on the floor or teetered precariously as I attempted to balance it. I carried pens with me: blue, red, and orange--Smiley face colors. By the end of the day, my hands were usually stained with these colors. I was careful not to brush the tips of the pens against my blouse or skirt--chalk merely involves a good spanking to free the dust from a garment or some warm soapy water to wash away the soft layer powder.

The blackboard is being replaced by the whiteboard, and I can't tell whether I lament the loss of the blackboard. There are advantages to the whiteboard. It reminds me more of tabula rasa—Locke's blank slate always seemed white to me, pristine with fresh information. The white chalk dust settles into the crevices of keyboards on computers. Not good. The chalk dust can cause respiratory problems. Also, not good.

That white China-shiny, plasticky surface contrasts with the rough dark, heavy medieval swampy slate of my childhood. At the same time, with its plastic happy, blank white emptiness, the whiteboard seems, shall I say it, less intimidating.

The slate stone of the blackboard is made of metamorphic rock—volcanic ash and clay—something that springs forth from the deep interior of the earth, possibly from Hephaestus' dark regions. Plastic is something made in a labratory or factory by mixing chemicals. In five hundred years, the slate might return to the earth, but the plastic whiteboard will litter the landscape. Metamorphosis, from Greek, means to “transform,” while plastic, from the Greek, “plasticus,” means “capable of shaping or molding.” At its farthest reaches of argument, do we want to learn on a surface that molds us or one that transforms us?

* * *

I like the blackboard's earthiness. Its hardness. Its darkness and its history.

* * *

During the 18th century boys with buckteeth scribbled their lessons on small square slate boards. On one blisteringly cold day in Scotland, a geography teacher demanded that his students deliver their small slates to him immediately. The cold, underpaid, and annoyed geography teacher hung the small square slates on the wall to the bewilderment of his squirming boys. He proceeded to outline the geography of the world on these slates, the mountains, rivers, and oceans; the boundary lines of France and China, of Madagascar and the Philippines, so that his students could see the entire world at once. A revolution had begun. In 1801, West Point adopted the slate blackboard. There, the taller and stronger boys plotted control of the world.

I wonder what kind of history the whiteboard will have. It was introduced in the 1960s and became widespread in the United States during the 1980s and 90s. A whiteboard can also be referred to as a “wipeboard,” “markerboard,” “dry-erase board,” “dry-wipe board,” or a “pen-board.” The whiteboard will have a short life, a transitory life, an insect's life. Perhaps before a name has been settled on, it will have disappeared entirely. My students tell me, enthusiastically, that schools have already begun using the Interactive Whiteboard. A larger than life computer shot across a screen, where students use their fingers like magic wands. Poof: Google.

I can say that my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents learned about algebra, trigonometry, Dionysus, Aphrodite, and tic-tac-toe on the same hard, dark slate that I did. There is something solid about that. Something concrete.

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