Education's Most Revolutionary Tool: The Blackboard

 

The blackboard was such marvel that the dedicated parent would surely want one at home, too.

This will sound very familiar to school administrators: a new technology, the latest, best thing. It will revolutionize teaching. Everyone wants one! And it’s sitting unused in the classroom because the Neanderthal teacher is afraid to try it. 

     This will sound familiar to teachers: a new technology, the latest, best thing. It’s exciting but intimidating. The district spent a fortune on it, but no training is provided on how to use this shiny new thing. Administrators tell you to “play around with it” in your free time after you’ve worked all day. Or, you have to sit through a one-day workshop on how to use it – but it hasn’t been installed yet, so the presenter reads from a how-to manual. In some cases, you are told that you will have to buy the supplies necessary to use it. 

     What could this amazing innovation be? What about the blackboard?! Yes, if it's the 1850s, the blackboard. It’s hard to believe a blackboard could once have been an educational marvel. But it was. School leaders waxed rhapsodic.

• “The inventor or introducer of the black-board system deserves to be ranked as among the best contributors to learning and science, if not among the greatest benefactors of mankind…” (Josiah Burnstead, The Blackboard in the Primary School, 1841)

• “The use of the black-board is not yet half understood or its utility half appreciated but enough is known to enable us to see that it is destined to work a great change in the art of teaching.” (St. Johnsbury Caledonian 1847)

• “It revolutionizes teaching” - a lesson that took hours can be explained in minutes to all at once. (The Brattleboro Eagle 1848)

• “An invaluable instrument in schoolmastery, and one of the most powerful aids in promoting progress, in simplifying and lessening labor…is the black-board.” (1850 Courier and Argus)

• It should be standard equipment in every classroom, but should be in daily use. “We consider it in many ways almost equal to an assistant.” (1850 Courier and Argus)

     Why were they such a stunning invention? Prior to the blackboard there was no way of displaying something simultaneously to the class unless you had purchased maps and charts, which were expensive. Teachers would go to each child to write a problem on their slate, and were limited to what fit on a slate. The blackboard solved this problem. One could have an entire poem ready for recitation, demonstrate in real time how to form and connect cursive letters for everyone to see, quickly sketch out a map of New England or explain the meaning of a peninsula or mesa with a quick drawing. It was efficient, time-saving, cheaper than sets of textbooks - a marvel. Given enough board space, groups of children could be called to the board to work, with the teacher able to see at a glance who was struggling. 

     A Scottish educational reformer, James Pillans, is usually credited with being the inventor of the blackboard when he supposedly hung a piece of slate on the wall of his classroom in 1801. This is actually not correct but his contribution may have been as the inventor of colored chalk. Also in dispute is when blackboards were first used in the United States. Several sources say that blackboards were first used in the U.S. around 1801 in the academy that became West Point. But undisputed is that it took decades for them to be ubiquitous in classrooms across the country - not until after the Civil War.

     And decades after their existence, not everyone was convinced of their usefulness. The school superintendent in Lancaster, Pennsylvania wrote a report on blackboards in his county in 1858. He reported that, “We have some men who disbelieve in the utility of the black-board and call it a crochet of new-fangled humbuggery.” He suggested that at Teacher’s Institute, the professional development of the day, there should be a presentation on the practical uses of the blackboard. 

     In fact, demonstrations on how to use the blackboard were conducted in the U.S. as early as the 1830s. Lowell Mason, for example, who is credited with getting music into the public school curriculum, made a demonstration of his new teaching methods by use of the blackboard at the American Institute of Instruction in Boston in 1833. In 1836 Calvin Ellis Stowe, husband of  author Harriett Beecher Stowe, was given an appointment by the Ohio State Legislature to visit the public schools of Europe, especially Prussia. He published Report on Elementary Education in Europe, which was serialized in newspapers, and had frequent mentions of the uses for the blackboard. 

     In 1841 Josiah Burnstead published a manual entitled The Blackboard in the Primary School. One suggestion he had was drawing simple outlines of objects (he recommended the book Drawings For Young Children by J.H. Francis for this). Students would develop their capacity for thinking and spelling by writing down as many of the qualities, uses and so on of the object. Sample drawings included a bottle, a scale, an ax, a snake, and a bow and arrow. Another suggestion he had for “Gymnastics” was writing a series of words, such as stand, sit, stoop, right hand up, turn and so on. The teacher would silently point to the word or phrase and students would follow the direction. It’s easy to imagine how much fun this would be to a Victorian child, especially as they were expected to sit in silence for long periods.

      In 1847 another book on teaching with the blackboard was a hit.“For the purposes of common school instruction, the black-board is worth more than all the diagrams and other apparatus that were ever invented; for it can be made to supply the place of these,” author John Goldsbury enthused. The book was recommended by superintendents. Even teachers who were “on board” with blackboards thought of them as something to use exclusively in arithmetic lessons. The value of Goldsbury’s book was that it demonstrated ideas in every subject. He recommended that the blackboard be at least three and a half feet tall and run along all sides of the classroom so there was room for the entire class to work at the board at once. There was a concern with children developing bad penmanship habits because of use of the blackboard, but Goldsbury recommended purchasing a class set of brass chalk holders that forced students to hold chalk like a pen. Since buying a box of chalk seemed to be a not-uncommon issue, it’s doubtful if his advice was followed in most places.

     When the superintendent of the Franklin County schools in Vermont made an inspection of schools, he noted at one school that the teacher was only using the board for math, a common finding that shows the need for Goldsbury’s book. At School No. 48 the blackboard had still not been used weeks into the school year “as the question hasn’t been settled as to who should furnish the chalk,” the parents or the teacher. 

     Other superintendents and board members in the 1850s reported this problem with chalk. A teacher told the superintendent she’d be glad to use the blackboard as soon as the district provided her with chalk. He said he had to admire her economy. Other inspectors found that the teachers were given a single box of chalk, which was treated like a precious object, kept in the teacher’s desk, to be used sparingly.

     The early blackboards in this country were painted boards. A short 1856 item in Perrysburg, Ohio had directions for making one’s own. Boil one pound logwood in enough water to cover, then add half an ounce of  green vitriol. Were teachers expected to do this at their own expense, or was this something school board members would hire someone to do?

     By the 1870s the slate blackboard was the way to go. It was much more expensive, but durable. However, with the same slow sort of progress, in the 1890s and even into the new century districts were still just beginning to switch to slate. In Belleville, Kansas in 1899 the newspaper editor said, “A slate black-board well put up will never wear out, and has no future expense. No more painted walls or boards should be put into schoolhouses in Republic county.” In Wellington, Kansas in 1900, the newspaper editor reported that a new slate blackboard was ordered, and stated that every school in the county should have one. The Breckenridge School Board in Missouri decided to buy slate boards in 1901, with the newspaper editor noting, “These slate black boards are the very best there are and when once in place they last forever. Our school rooms have been more deficient in the quality of black boards than any other one thing and we hope that the time is not too far distant when all the old painted boards can be taken out and slating put in.”  

     As times were changing, there was even a short story, “The Luck of Blackboard Hannigan,” about an itinerant painter whose drinking problem left him reduced to painting black boards in schools. 

     “There was a time when around the walls of every district school in southern Ohio there was painted a dark dado on which the pupils worked out their arithmetic salvation,” the author wrote. “Mr. Hannigan, as he strode along the tracks, muttered to himself about the perversity of fortune…He had been to three schoolhouses, and in each of them he had been confronted with slabs of smoothly polished slate which covered the plastered wall.” A slate salesman had gotten to the schoolhouses not long before Hannigan, persuading the school boards to upgrade. 

The Chalkboard 

    In 1939, manufacturers began producing tempered glass chalkboards. Green was the most promoted color as it was believed to be more soothing to the eye, although it was also available in black and ivory. It was the era of the expert, with an emphasis on turning teaching into a science. The psychological importance of color in the classroom was stressed from the late 1930s on. Green boards were also made with composition boards, painted green. They were the cheapest, and also had a short “lifespan,” almost a throw-back to the black painted wooden boards the slate board replaced. 

     Officials invited the public to experience the novelty of writing on the green chalkboards at the dedication of brand-new Orchard Elementary School in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1949. Schools like Orchard Elementary were being furnished with all sorts of innovations such as “movable and adjustable desks,” refrigerated water fountains, linoleum floors and built-in storage cabinets. 

     But as always, change met with resistance. There have always been people who believed school should be just as it was in their youth. One example is from 1962 when the school board in Pittsfield, Massachusetts appointed a chalkboard committee at the behest of the committee chairman. An oculist and a lighting engineer were appointed to the committee. Board members had strong opinions, preferring the blackboard of their day, but the horse was already out of the barn. The superintendent reported that most classrooms in the district already had green chalkboards. The experts on the committee were neutral about black or green boards. There are always so many pressing budgetary items. Like it or not, the issue quietly died.

     That was not the case, however, in the Columbia, Missouri schools. In 1950 the district began buying green composite boards. Yet by 1958 the district began replacing them with slate since the composite was so short-lived. A small survey of high school students in 1961 showed they preferred the blackboard, as did the school district superintendent.

     The board of Woodcliff Lake Schools in New Jersey voted in 1964 to substitute black slate for the originally-planned green glass boards in the district’s new school, which was under construction. “Sometimes progress is not,” said the board president. “Educators want to get away from the green chalkboards, and besides, they’re hard to clean.” 

          In the 1950s, green porcelain enamel boards on a base of steel made people rethink any return to slate. They were as durable as slate, with the easy-on-the eye green. They were especially useful if they were magnetized. In 1955 the new North Annville Township Elementary in Lebanon, Pennsylvania featured map, hook and tack strips on their chalkboards - a teacher’s dream for displaying all sorts of materials. By the late 1960s, most students nationwide faced a green chalkboard.  

Overhead Projectors and Beyond

 

     In the early 1960s, a device that threatened to make chalkboards obsolete entered the classroom – the overhead projector. The federal government would pay for half the cost if they were used in foreign language classes. Of course this technology was news, and newspapers usually sent a photographer out to get a picture of a few teachers and students gathered ‘round the device. In 1960 the cost for one projector was between $375 to $600, equivalent to about a staggering $3,872 to $6,196 in 2023 purchasing power. The latter came with a “flashmeter attachment for tachiscopic training.” These were a fad used to build reading speed and supposedly comprehension.

      But even the plain projectors were regarded as,“One of the biggest developments in education in years,” according to the Cedar Rapids, Iowa newspaper in 1967. After a big investment that year, the Cedar Rapids schools were proud to have one projector for every five teachers. The board spent $24,300, including replacement bulbs, and spent another $12,800 on tape recorders. Younger teachers had seen overhead projectors in college, the article reported, but older teachers were going to be given instruction in how to use them. But with all the advantages of an overhead projector, teachers did not consider it a replacement for the board. They wanted both.

     Whiteboards with dry-erase markers made their way into corporate boardrooms in the 1980s, before they entered the classroom. The white boards and markers were regarded as expensive, and of course a perpetual supply of markers was needed. In 1999, a box of four markers was four dollars; a box of twelve pieces of chalk was 59 cents. Whiteboards became a standard classroom feature typically in the early 2000s. Just as teachers of the 1850s complained about having to buy their own chalk, teachers frequently reported getting one box of dry erase markers purchased for them per year. The burden of supplying dry-erase markers and cleaning fluid for the rest of the year was then theirs. 

     What came next were document cameras and interactive boards such as the popular brand SMART Boards. One could look back on the bulleted comments from education leaders in the 1840s at the beginning of this article and substitute the word “blackboard” for SMART Board. The effusive praise – the comments about a revolution in teaching – that were once used for the blackboard were now used for this technology. Around 2010, many Catholic schools around the country were advertising “A Smart board in every classroom.”

     The 2011 installation of Smart Boards in the Montgomery, Alabama schools meant nothing less than “students will be equipped with the skills they need to succeed in the workforce,” according to one of the two technology instructors in the district. They are “designed to get students out of their seats,” another technology teacher said. They would be “more engaging,” virtually every proponent of the boards said. 

     Those would be familiar goals to teachers of the 1850s who advocated having enough board space for the class to be up and working at the board at one time. It was more engaging.

The cost was considerable. Smart boards were regarded as expensive - with newspaper articles quoting costs of $3,500 to $6,000 per board, plus an installation fee of about $500. Replacement lightbulbs are about $200 to $300 even now.

     Also familiar to the administrators of the 1850s would be concerns administrators faced in the 2010s and beyond. “They’re fantastic with elementary [schools],” a Vancouver, British Columbia school technology director said in 2011. “But a lot of times the hardware comes before the training.” At one school in Vancouver there were nineteen Smart boards sitting largely unused because the teachers had not been trained to use them. 

     Sometimes, it does seem that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

     

Sources:

     “Black-Board,” Connecticut Common School Journal (1838-1853), Vol. 2 No. 3 (October 1839), pp. 48-49. 

     Burnstead, Josiah F. The Blackboard in the Primary School, Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1841. 

     Fildes, R.E. “Blackboards and Their Use,” The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 35 No 10 (June 1935), pp. 760-767. 

     Goldsbury, John. The Blackboard; Furnishing An Easy and Expeditious Method of Giving Instruction, Designed For the Use of Common Schools, Keene, New Hampshire: George Tilden Publisher, 1847. 

     Jillson, B.C. “Blackboards in Recitation,” The New England Journal of Education, Vol. 9, No. 13 (27 March 1879), p. 196. 

     Miller, Alyssa. “In Pursuit of the Quarry: Pennsylvania’s Slate Belt,” Pennsylvania Center For the Book, Spring 2010, https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/feature-articles/pursuit-quarry-pennsylvanias-slate-belt

     Phillips, Christopher J. “An Officer and a Scholar: Nineteenth Century West Point and the Invention of the Blackboard,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 1 (February 2015), pp. 82-108. 

Newspapers:

          “American Institute of Instruction,” Western Statesman (Lawrenceburg, Indiana), 30 Aug 1833, p. 1. 

     “The Deaf and Dumb,” State Indiana Sentinel (Indianapolis), 2 Jan 1845, p. 2.

     “Common Schools. No. V. The Furniture of the Schoolroom,” The St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, Vermont), 20 Feb 1847, p. 2. 

     Tufts, James. “The Blackboard,” The Brattleboro Eagle (Brattleboro, Vermont), 30 Nov 1848, p. 1. 

     “Occasional Notes on Teaching. Note VII - The Blackboard,” The Courier and Argus (Dundee, Tayside, Scotland), 23 Jan 1850, p. 2.

     Hayden, C.H. “Schools in Franklin Co. in 1850,” The St. Albans Weekly Messenger (St. Albans, Vermont), 14 Feb 1850, p. 2. 

     “School Houses,” The Spirit of Democracy (Woodsfield, Ohio), 2 April 1851, p. 2.

     “To Make Blackboards,” Perrysburg Journal (Perrysburg, Ohio), 24 May 1856, p. 2.

     “Progress Is Steady - Our School Directors Report Progress All Along the Line,” The Inquirer (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), 7 Nov 1891, p. 9. 

     New Slate Board: Monitor Press (Wellington, Kansas), 28 Nov 1900, p. 3.

     Breckenridge Schools: The Hamilton Farmer’s Advocate (Hamilton, Missouri), 3 July 1901, p. 1. 

     Harrington, John Walker. “The Luck of Blackboard Hannigan,” The La Belle Star (La Belle, Missouri), 6 March 1903, p. 3.

     “Thomas Wightman Expires At Home. Father of Window Glass Industry in United States Succumbs To Paralysis,” The Pittsburgh Post, 2 Sept. 1908, p. 1. 

     “Pupils To Use Colored Glass As Blackboard - Pittsburgh Firm Develops New Classroom Aid,” The Pittsburgh Press, 16 Jan 1940, p. 25.

     Green Chalkboards, Yellow Chalk at New School in District,” The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, Colorado), 18 Feb 1949, p. 11. 

    “Program of Dedication To Be Held Sunday At North Annville School,”  Lebanon Daily News (Lebanon, Pennsylvania), 26 Nov 1955, p. 17.

     “Could Spell the End of Blackboards - New Projector To Be Used Here” Scrantonian Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania), 14 Feb 1960, p. 9.

     “School Board Meeting - Green Or Black Chalkboards?” The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), 12 Jan 1962, p. 4.

     “Board Approves New Blackboard,” The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey), 23 Dec 1964, p. 20. 

     “Blackboards Disappearing From Tulsa Classrooms - Replaced By Chalkboards and Glass Boards…” Tulsa World, 19 Oct 1965, p. 17. 

     “New Schools Come Without Chalkboards,” Star-Gazette (Elmira, New York), 7 Nov 1999, p. 75.

     “Wiping Out Chalkboards,” The Wichita Eagle,  17 Dec 2000, p. 5.

     “SMART boards Brewbaker-bound,” The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama), 27 April 2011, p. 36.

     “Parents Fundraise To Buy Smart Boards For Their Neighborhood School,” The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 4 April 2011, p. 2.

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023