Thank you, Blackboard!

“Go to the Blackboard.” That was the command from my teacher. I stood motionless. “Move fast.” He ordered. I took some timid steps towards the Black board. The very design of that large board was annoying to me. It looked lifeless. The black paint on that looked like the dry skin of an old beggar sitting in the street corner, hanging on the wall. “Is it a ghost?” I asked myself. The cracks on the board looked like the wrinkles of an old woman. I compared it to the picture of a witch standing under a streetlight in a deserted street.

“What are you doing? Go fast and solve that problem.” The orders of my mathematics teacher were so authoritative. He was convinced that I won’t solve that problem. As I walked towards the board, the white letters and numbers were threatening me. They were smiling at my fear. They had already declared me in their mind as incompetent.

I approached the blackboard with a vengeance. I wanted to kill them with the duster that was on the table. I looked at those letters and numbers from close quarters. All eyes in the classroom were at me.

“Will he able to solve that problem?’ The question haunted all their minds.

I closed my eyes and prayed to Ma Saraswathi. She appeared in the hindsight. “Thank you, oh, Goddess of Learning for your personal appearance. Please help me to solve this problem. It is a prestige issue for me.” I pleaded.

She smiled and asked me “Why are you afraid? What will happen even if you go wrong?. Failure to get the right answer is not as bad as a failure to attempt the problem.”

“No” I almost shouted at the Goddess. “You cannot let me down. I can’t prove myself stupid before my maths teacher.”

“Do you mean to say that you are willing to be defeated before other teachers?” she smiled.

I kept quiet. I looked at the problem again. I just wanted to try. Yes, I attempted and I did it. And oh God! I was right. I didn’t know that. Because the whole class clapped, I thought I was right.

The teacher was still looking at me furiously!

I moved my head down. I heard his voice “Solving one problem doesn’t make you a genius. You need to solve many problems like this. Then only I will accept that you know some mathematics.”

From that day, the blackboards have been haunting me. Writing on a blackboard has always been like riding on a road full of potholes. And the chalk dust making me sneeze often, created a psychological allergy towards them. But I never knew, God had his own plans. He desired that I spend my entire career of five decades near blackboards.

Blackboards had created a symbolism in the field of education. They have always portrayed themselves as the harbingers of knowledge and wisdom to a group of people sitting before them. They had exhibited their authority and arrogance to the seeking mind, though no one questioned their authenticity. They always took sides with the one who brought them those white candies called ‘chalks’ which they licked continuously whether they liked them are not. To a few others, who got them colourful chalks they were more kind and pleasant.

“Please, Please, don’t brand the blackboards so harshly” my conscience became their advocate.

“After all, they adopted themselves to anyone who wanted to be with them and use them. They glorified passionate people as teachers and brought them respect and status. They were only victims in the hands of those who used them. Even if they were not harbingers of wisdom, they were messiahs of information.”

The history of Black Boards is interesting. “Blackboard classroom history begins, in rudimentary form, in ancient times. Students in ancient Babylonia and Sumera inscribed their lessons on clay tablets with a stylus (predecessor to the pen and pencil) in cuneiform writing. These could be used wet and erased to be used again or baked to create a permanent document. In India in the 11th century, teachers used something similar to personal blackboards in their lessons”, says ‘Resilient Educator.

The history also records the following: “In 1801, the rather obvious solution to the problem made its debut. James Pillans, headmaster and geography teacher at the Old High School in Edinburgh, Scotland, is credited with. inventing the first modern blackboard when he hung a large piece of slate on the classroom wall. In America, the first use of a wall-mounted blackboard occurred at West Point in the classroom of instructor George Baron.” Blackboards were originally made of smooth, thin sheets of black or dark grey slate stone.

The next generation ‘Black Boards’ were not necessarily black. They were ‘Green Boards’ which were steel plates coated with porcelain-based enamel. However, they ceremoniously carried all the functions of the Black board.

All said and done, the black board has been responsible for nurturing, empowering many a genius. They have helped scientists to solve their problems, mathematicians to arrive at their logic, poets to scribble their poems, the artists to fire their imagination and the businesspeople to draw their growth curve.

They have been friends and foes to people of all ages from six to sixty and have played a fair game for intellectual debates and wars without any gender bias or racial discrimination.

Imagine a teacher of mine who used to fill that large black board with information to every inch till his hip bone started paining for the way he bent before it . To my NCC master who taught me English who had the fancy of writing only two sentences every time and then rub them off, the Blackboard was a gentle companion.

They established a flesh and nail relationship with dusters. From a torn piece of a unwashed cloth to the most sophisticated scented sponge, they have related with all of them with the same ease. They also pardoned some of my teachers who rubbed their surface harshly with their own hands leaving the dusters aside. They have several times littered their white chalk dust on the trousers of the teachers as a way of punishment for being used extensively.

Right from Einstein to Marie Curie, from C.V. Raman to the mathematical genius Ramanujam, everyone has accommodated them in their workstations without any hesitation. They had huge respect for these black boards and loved being by their side whenever they wanted an intellectual delight. These Boards served them loyally helping them to achieve their goals, but none of them acknowledged their contribution anywhere in their report or work profile.

They carried on their shoulders all kinds of information from the announcement of a Royal birth to that of a painful obituary, the wisdom of the saints to the warnings of executors, the first letter from the tumbling fingers of the toddlers to that of the communication of a saint who has.vowed for a lifetime silence.

The flowchart for several technologies has been born on their black surface, though all of them forsake their birthplace with ease and comfort.

Here is an interesting poem on ‘The Black Board’ I read on the internet by Jermon in “Hello Poetry” (June 2018)

Our Maths Sir erases the blackboard.

Our Maths Sir erases the blackboard.

But leaves a part unwiped.

He takes a pen off the hooked cord.

And now begins to write.

Our Maths Sir erases the blackboard.

And keeps a bit not right.

We look at it with our necks bent.

But it just doesn’t seem alright.

Writing on the now whiteboard

He flashes a cunning smile.

And tells us not to hoard.

What puzzled our minds awhile?

While erasing the frustrating blackboard

He repeated himself again.

“Keep the good things on board.

And throw the rest away.”

And that’s the golden life’s taste.

And all because no waste- no haste

Finally, thank you, Blackboard; I am today what I am, because of you!