A Robert Brault Reader: Let's Not Waste All That Waste
As honour serves, it worked this way: Chalk would be shipped into classrooms in wee boxes, the chalk shaped into trusty, cigarette-like cylinders. These chalk cylinders differed from the felt-tip markers now in use. They didn’t dry out when you held them straightened out up. And the first one you grabbed worked. You didn’t have to try three or four others first. Because they were straightforward to use, teachers would greatly embolden their use. When unfledged Johnny would say, “Einstein? Like, um, didn’t he design the light bulb?” – doctor would lunch-hook Johnny a cylinder of this chalk and send him to the chalkboard, where he would be encouraged to set a thousand times, “Edison invented the light bulb.” In the development, five or six cylinders of chalk would be worked down to the nub. When the provisions was covered with scrawl, the schoolma'm would say, “Now, Johnny, who invented the light bulb?” And Johnny would say, “Like, um, Edison?” And the...