Interesting find!!!

When contractors began work on four classrooms of old Emerson High School in Oklahoma City, they knew their work would lead to school betterment, but they never expected it would impact local history.

Looking to upgrade the rooms with new whiteboards and smartboards, the workers had to first remove the outdated chalkboards. But when they began to pull away those old boards, they made a startling discovery

Oklahoma City school officials aren’t just taken back by what’s written on the boards, but also by how beautifully it is written. Penmanship like this is clearly a lost art. One board reads, “I give my head, my heart, and my life to my God, and One nation indivisible with justice for all.”

Rd8wR0w

And math too!

XwvXzBn

And though the boards’ style and subject matter might be unfamiliar to today’s younger folks, they certainly resonate with older generations. Principal Kishore told The Oklahoman what it was like to show her 85-year-old mother the boards: “She just stood there and cried. She said it was exactly like her classroom was when she was going to school.”

Simply amazing! It seems they must have done this over the holidays in Dec 1917, and never took the old boards down, just put the new ones up right over the old ones!!!

h/t Jimmy D

Comments

Interesting find!!! — 14 Comments

  1. High school students who graduated knowing how to use math, write legibly in cursive, and use the English language.

    We have slipped backwards.

    • Rev. Paul. You are correct. The last few years have seen an acceleration in the deliberate destruction of the public school system.

  2. I love old finds like this, but I am lost on the circle with the #x’s in the middle. Way above my learning level.

  3. I suspect many of today’s college graduates would be unable to read (or write) the cursive, wouldn’t understand the math and would pooh-pooh the pledge to God and Country as primitive and backward.

    So very sad.

    gfa

  4. That is a cool find and would bring back many memories. I can’t imagine chalk boards being outdated, but yet here we are. Nice they took pics of that and shared.

  5. I think the math circle is a kind of blackboard flash card.

    Teacher would point to the centre of the circle, e.g. “3 X “.

    Then point to a number on the outside of the ring to tell students the number they were supposed to multiply, e.g. “3 X 8”.