Blackboards

and chalk, dip pens, ink monitors, Friday tests, tonic solfa, box pleated tunics...
    "What was school like when you were little?" 
I was "interviewed" by a child yesterday. Apparently I am now old enough to be classed as "old" for the purposes of a school project. 
    "Find an adult older than your parents..."
Then the idea was to ask them some questions about what it was like when they went to school.
    S.... understood blackboards and chalk simply because they had these things to play with earlier.
    "But you can just rub it off. How did the teacher keep things?"
The idea of having to keep piles of paper in a filing system was too much for S.... 
Dip pens? This completely bewildered S.... "But why didn't you just use a biro?"
Trying to explain that, although these writing tools were around when I was a kitten, they were not actually in widespread use was almost too much for him. I told him that it was not legal to sign a cheque with a biro. He does know what a cheque is because his father is an accountant and still sees cheques in his work. I suppose that is something.
We went on from that. I explained about daily "mental", spelling lists, handwriting lessons, our "reader" (the one book used by the entire class for the year) and more.
Music lessons with "tonic solfa" and art lessons with "geometric drawing" were met with more disbelief.
As for the weekly tests we had on Friday? He thought that was a "really, really bad" thing to have. His school doesn't test apart from NAPLAN requirements.
Discipline? The idea that we got punished for talking in class was something he didn't really believe. That we all sat facing the blackboard was "weird".
His grandmother had been hunting around among some photograph albums while I was answering his questions.
    "And I can show you what Cat and I had to wear and what your mother did too."
There she was in her box pleated tunic, three pleats at the back and three pleats at the front, her long sleeved white blouse, her school tie, her hat, her gloves, her stockings, her clunky shoes and her school blazer with the prefect's badge.
   "That looks awful...Mum never did wear that!"
   "Yes, she did. Here."
The photographs are almost identical.
   "Can I take it to school?"
   "May I...no. I'll make a copy - well actually you can go and make a copy now. Do both of them and you can put them with your work sheet."
S...went off. In a modern household there is the capacity to do such things instantaneously.
When he came back with the copies he said,
    "I didn't think Mum was that old and you aren't really old either. Did you have a  computer at school?"
His grandfather had just arrived home. His grandmother and I left him to explain about computers.
It is nice to know I am not "really old".