I’m in the thick of writing my new First Class book on the American classroom over the last 100 or more years. Every day brings a new revelation: from how India ink is made (and that colonial-era teachers had to mix their own for students to use…to the early African American schools and how lacking they were.
I’m enjoying interviewing various folks who were “there at the creation” of some school supplies. Unsurprisingly, teachers were the stars of the start-up show. Still, it’s fascinating to see how late to the party many items we consider basic school supplies appeared, such as construction paper or Elmer’s glue. 
Fads are fun to follow and my young research assistant remembers far more than I do, probably because he was in school in the decades that such fads as Trapper Keepers and gel pens came along. I was way back there in the glue and colored paper era.
I’m working closely with the folks at the National School Supply and Equipment Association. Their new director shocked me by expressing the very notion that has worried me since I began this project: Are we even going to have classrooms in the future
When I opened my Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I really had to wonder about this question. A main article featured an entirely different kind of school that looks a lot more like a futuristic, swank corporate campus. Nothing looks like an old-fashioned boxy classroom. Everything, indeed, seems so virtual that I had to ponder why they built the building at all.
Once, manipulatives were things kids held in their hands to, uh, manipulate, perhaps to help make abstract math concepts easier to understand, or a ball to toss with plot ideas for a story, so where you grabbed the ball…you got your idea.
Today, manipulatives are virtual; you can manipulate them, but only on the computer screen in 3D. That works, too, I’m sure.
Actually, more and more, this is like writing a mystery novel. I can ascertain where schools have been, and what the classroom looks like at this moment in time and what tools and supplies you will find there. But the future, meaning even in the next few years—many clues, but not so clear, not so clear at all.
Stay tuned, or as the Eight Ball says: All uncertain.—
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