Looking back it looks like a dream, to be seated cross-legged on the floor, clutching the dark-black coloured rectangular stone slate and putting the kuchi (writing pencil) to its surface, making weird shapes that are a trademark of a primary school kid. The slate was the glorious canvas as children developed their signatures on it. The handy multi-purpose tool was everything — from a rough note to the drawing sheet!
Slate has been an integral part of Indian primary school education. But somewhere, it has got lost too. In the present schooling, the increasing use of notebooks has drastically brought down the use of slates.
Gone are the days when kids chewed on chalk and honed their handwriting skills on slates. Now, paper has taken its place in every modern school of the day and with this continuing trend, the day is not far when slates will go extinct and find a place in museums.
“How can one forget the slate with the wooden frame and tin sheets binding its four corners,” says 40-year-old M. Kumaraswamy, a private enterprise employee. “In those days, slates came in different sizes and types. As kids we never carried so many notebooks. We did all our writing and home assignments on the slate,” he notes, and adds if anything worried us it was the writing getting smudged.
Stone slates, though much popular once, were brittle and damaged easily. Gradually, they lost the race to enamel, tin, plastic, cardboard slates. Cardboard slates are now in preference as they are durable, light weight and easy for children to handle. They are also suitable for rough use.
Slates are a boon for beginners, feels, K. Saravanan, Head Master, T. Thirugnanam Primary School. “Writing on slate helps children develop a good handwriting. It is a good exercise for the hand muscles. Earlier slates were so common that one could buy them even in grocery stores. Nowadays, it is hard to find them even in a stationery shop.”
Many teachers believe that slates come in handy for little children to learn alphabets through trial and error method. Government schools have low-level black boards in classrooms for kids till fifth standard.
“In our school we insist on using slates. Though my child doesn’t use slates in school, I teach him at home,” says Saravanan.
Arockia Selvi, Headmistress of St. Mary’s RC Primary School, says, “We start the writing practice with straight lines and later we teach them to draw curves. Slates have the advantage of erasing something easily and rewriting. Whereas, when children use paper, there is lot of wastage as they scribble a lot.”
The smooth chalk pieces have replaced the slender long paal kuchi (writing pencils). C. Subramanian, chalk piece manufacturer for the past 40 years in Avaniyapuram feels that only few companies continue with the business. “Chalk pieces are made with different materials. We make it from Plaster-of-Paris. We don’t use any chemicals as kids may sometimes chew the chalk,” he says.
Baasha, a stationery shop owner, feels that even parents are not interested in making their children write on slates. “Parents come to us only when the school makes it mandatory,” he adds.
On one hand we advocate paper-less work to save trees from being felled. On the other, we encourage use of paper for small children and end up wasting paper.
However, modern day parents allow their kids to use sophisticated gadgets like ipad. They encourage their children to use the drawing tool app in the ipad to shape their writing skills. But weren’t the good old slates serving the same purpose cost-effectively!
Tidbits:
Slates are manufactured in Markapur, Andhra Pradesh and distributed to other parts of the country while the writing pencils come from Madhya Pradesh.
Slates are in use in Government and aided primary schools.
Only handful number of stationery shops sells slates. Sales are dull even during the beginning of an academic year.
The price of cardboard slates with plastic frames starts from Rs.15 while tin slates cost Rs.50.
