Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Whip Off the Tablecloth, There is Nothing Beneath It
Of the many things I have noticed that irk me, one of the few that managed to remain in my head for more than a few seconds is the disappearance of desks as I have climbed the educational ladder.
In primary (1-8) school (forget gan, I don't think we wrote then) we had these nice, big square desks. They each had an open drawer under them where we could put our often solitary notebook, with room to spare for the purple box with the holographic sticker that Mrs. Dresser gave us to keep our pens, pencils and erasers together. There was also that little trough at the end of the drawer that you could temporarily stash a pencil in if you did not need it. Science classes usually entailed a black Formica-style two person table, sans drawer. Both provided plenty of space for each student to lay a notebook on and write comfortably in said notebook. Even our huge textbooks fit nicely onto the square so we could lean on them with our elbows without the fear of planting an arm only to follow through with an embarrassing slam of the face into the desk, or worse, toppling onto the floor.
High school saw a continuance of some of the Formica, but it also brought the first instances of class crowding and therefore, desk difficulty. I recall that Psychology was particularly crowded but with broad, strong desks that afforded plenty of support for note-taking if not space between each column of desks. The drawer disappeared, replaced by the overweight backpack that could never make it to my locker enough times during the day, and by a small steel basket that could store one or two books plus the toes of the person sitting behind you.
College (or University, if you prefer) brought about a radical change in "deskthink." My first ever college class was an introduction to HTML with a bit of internet history, jscheme and CSS sprinkled on top. The class was held in an auditorium and was the largest class I had ever been in. /* Please note that I am not counting Driver's Education, because that was not so much a class as it was the state making me sit for 30 precious hours of my summer. */ The auditorium had individual desks on hinges that flipped up and out. I don't recall finding them horrible but at the time I was still employing spiral notebooks so support was a less important issue. As my collegiate career progressed, I was informed by an over-knowledgeable senator that my school was making improvements in adding left-handed desks. Much to my pleasure he was right, or at least I began to notice left handed desks around my classrooms. The problem is that once I made the switch to three ring binders I found it very difficult to write on a right-handed flip-desk and only slightly less so on lefty desks. In some classes we have tables in either a rectangle or a u-shape probably to induce seminaresque discussions, but if the tables almost fill the whole room and the class can't fit around the table, this creates a scrum for elbow room and therefore the acreage that each person gets is reduced (and the average is dropped even further down by those poor souls who get to class late and can't squeeze in). Individual stand-alone desks do exist, but their area is similarly small to the auditorial desks'. Why are my desks shrinking? I get decreasing amounts of space in which to support my habit of increasingly important notes from classes which are only crucial to my graduating college. Please explain this to me before I go and give Capital Projects a thorough talking-to about how crummy desks lead to unhappy and stressed students and lower test scores.
In primary (1-8) school (forget gan, I don't think we wrote then) we had these nice, big square desks. They each had an open drawer under them where we could put our often solitary notebook, with room to spare for the purple box with the holographic sticker that Mrs. Dresser gave us to keep our pens, pencils and erasers together. There was also that little trough at the end of the drawer that you could temporarily stash a pencil in if you did not need it. Science classes usually entailed a black Formica-style two person table, sans drawer. Both provided plenty of space for each student to lay a notebook on and write comfortably in said notebook. Even our huge textbooks fit nicely onto the square so we could lean on them with our elbows without the fear of planting an arm only to follow through with an embarrassing slam of the face into the desk, or worse, toppling onto the floor.
High school saw a continuance of some of the Formica, but it also brought the first instances of class crowding and therefore, desk difficulty. I recall that Psychology was particularly crowded but with broad, strong desks that afforded plenty of support for note-taking if not space between each column of desks. The drawer disappeared, replaced by the overweight backpack that could never make it to my locker enough times during the day, and by a small steel basket that could store one or two books plus the toes of the person sitting behind you.
College (or University, if you prefer) brought about a radical change in "deskthink." My first ever college class was an introduction to HTML with a bit of internet history, jscheme and CSS sprinkled on top. The class was held in an auditorium and was the largest class I had ever been in. /* Please note that I am not counting Driver's Education, because that was not so much a class as it was the state making me sit for 30 precious hours of my summer. */ The auditorium had individual desks on hinges that flipped up and out. I don't recall finding them horrible but at the time I was still employing spiral notebooks so support was a less important issue. As my collegiate career progressed, I was informed by an over-knowledgeable senator that my school was making improvements in adding left-handed desks. Much to my pleasure he was right, or at least I began to notice left handed desks around my classrooms. The problem is that once I made the switch to three ring binders I found it very difficult to write on a right-handed flip-desk and only slightly less so on lefty desks. In some classes we have tables in either a rectangle or a u-shape probably to induce seminaresque discussions, but if the tables almost fill the whole room and the class can't fit around the table, this creates a scrum for elbow room and therefore the acreage that each person gets is reduced (and the average is dropped even further down by those poor souls who get to class late and can't squeeze in). Individual stand-alone desks do exist, but their area is similarly small to the auditorial desks'. Why are my desks shrinking? I get decreasing amounts of space in which to support my habit of increasingly important notes from classes which are only crucial to my graduating college. Please explain this to me before I go and give Capital Projects a thorough talking-to about how crummy desks lead to unhappy and stressed students and lower test scores.
# posted by Daniel @ 11:57 PM 
