Slate Blackboards

Slate Board Sales Pitch
You don't have to sell me on slate. For most of my 31 years in teaching both elementary and secondary students, I was fortunate to work in traditional inner-city brick schools with original slate blackboards. They were beautiful to write on and simple to keep clean. Hard or soft chalk would glide smoothly over their flawless surfaces and guide my cursive writing to perfection. A water wash would bring them back to gleaming black for the next day's lessons.

In retirement, I took a volunteer job in our local historic schoolhouse that had one slate blackboard stretched across the front of the room. After 184 years it is still in perfect condition serving 1,800 fourth graders each year. The board, small by today's standards was  germ of a teaching tool in 1842. Schools were proud to add them to their annual reports as innovative additions to their rural schools. They certainly beat the old horizontal pine boards butted one on top of the other and painted black. The price of our own blackboard was proudly listed on the expense sheet for the opening of the school in 1841....$1.25!

Today if we still have the original slate blackboard in our schoolhouses, they are priceless! In years past it appears slate companies had to sell the idea to schools of all sizes. Beyond my simplified praise of their utility and value, one slate company constructed a list of reasons why schools should install genuine slate blackboards. The advertisement appeared in a turn of the century School Board Journal.  Check out the numerous Pennsylvania companies that supplied these boards!

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