The Last Dramatic Instructional Innovation? The Chalkboard and Music Education in a Historical Prospective

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However inauspicious introduction of chalkboard into U.S. music classrooms may have been, teachers nonetheless came to appreciate its utility. Lowell Mason advocated use of a chalkboard in mid-1830s, and by 1840s many teachers throughout Northeast sang its praises. For example, in 1841, one teacher proclaimed that the inventor or introducer of blackboard system deserves to be ranked among best contributors to learning and science, if not among greatest benefactors of mankind. This same writer effusively credited chalkboard with potential to work miracles. (1) Another proponent of chalkboard instruction, a New England teacher, summarized influence of chalkboard in classrooms with this glowing assessment: The introduction of that simple instrument, blackboard, into our schools, and diffusion of a knowledge of almost numberless uses to which it can be applied, will in itself effect a revolution in modes of teaching some of most important branches. Perhaps ingenuity has seldom, if ever, rendered a greater service to mankind, than when it turned a few feet of board and a little black paint into one of most effective of all instruments for rapid and vivid communication of knowledge. (2) Still another accolade came from Binghamton, New York, school superintendent O. B. Bruce, who declared, I believe a blackboard to be as indispensable as clean water to children.... It is a silent but powerful auxiliary, ... a mild yet thorough disciplinarian, [and] an interesting and impressive teacher. (3) No wonder, then, that in 2006 Andrew Coulson made following provocative assertion: Though computers have been introduced to many classrooms, their addition has been at best facilitative rather than transformative.... The last dramatic instructional innovation occurred while Thomas Jefferson was president: introduction of chalkboard, around 1801. (4) If, as Coulson suggests, chalkboards proved transformative in classroom, how did music teaching and learning benefit from use of chalkboards? What should we remember as we continue to replace chalkboards, in our music instruction, with computers and Smart Boards? History of Chalkboard The exact origin of chalkboard remains rather unclear. (5) Nonetheless, idea of writing on a classroom wall may well have originated with James Pillans (1778-1864), a teacher in Edinburgh, Scotland, who documented his adoption of a chalkboard for use in geography classes. (6) Beginning in early nineteenth century, chalkboard steadily gained prominence in United States, especially in Northeast. In 1801, George Baron (1769-1812), a civilian math instructor at West Point Military Academy, most likely became first teacher to employ a chalkboard in a U.S. classroom. As West Point historian Robert Charlwood Richardson (1882-1954) recounted, perhaps no one method has so much influenced quality of instruction of cadets as blackboard recitations. (7) Chalkboards appeared in Boston schools during second decade of nineteenth century. Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871), an ardent abolitionist and education reformer, recalled his days as a math student of Rev. Francis Xavier Brosius at Harvard University in 1813-14. May expressed being struck at appearance of an ample Blackboard in Brosius's classroom suspended on wall, with lumps of chalk on a ledge below, and cloths [erasers] hanging at either side. He added that he had never heard of such a thing before. (8) May subsequently sponsored introduction of chalkboards in area schools. Among first teachers in Maine to use a chalkboard, Samuel Read Hall (1795-1877) introduced students in town of Rumford to a writing board in 1816, during an arithmetic lesson. His first chalkboard was actually a large sheet of dark paper which could be marked upon and erased easily. …