5 ms·

Pitched surfaces were definitely a thing in schools until the middle of the 20th century. Check out these images from a Bavarian school museum, showing classro

by arrrg 12y ago

Pitched surfaces were definitely a thing in schools until the middle of the 20th century. Check out these images from a Bavarian school museum, showing classrooms from 1875 and 1920: http://www.schulmuseum.org/raeume/ http://www.schulmuseum.org/raeume/ That’s not 45°, but still slightly pitched. Also note that bench and table are one massive combined piece of furniture, with two (or more) students sharing one bench. That makes the classroom layout completely inflexible. I think flat tables (and individual chairs) in schools can also be explained by an increased desire to reconfigure the classroom on the fly, moving tables around to make working in groups easier.

wyclif 12y ago
"Many of us have seen paintings of monks with quill pens diligently transcribing ancient texts. Their work was placed directly in front and they sat fairly erect, writing on slanted surfaces." http://ririanproject.com/2013/01/09/what-monks-can-teach-you-about-healthy-computing/ http://ririanproject.com/2013/01/09/what-monks-can-teach-you...
leoc 12y ago
> I think flat tables (and individual chairs) in schools can also be explained by an increased desire to reconfigure the classroom on the fly, moving tables around to make working in groups easier. Absolutely: it probably mirrors (and likely imitated) the thinking about modular, open-plan offices which came into fashion around the same time too. To an extent it probably also reflects the arrival of Stuff on Your Desk into schoolchildren's lives as well: crafting activities and educational toys in the classroom, but also just more books and more papers than before. (I'm not holding up C20 pitched school desks as a good example of pitched working surfaces: they were often cheap, sometimes even unstable, unadjustable and cramped, likely designed for someone a foot shorter than the poor eejit who was actually jammed into it. They were more like the sad fag-end http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/fag-end-18204918.jpg http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/fag-end-18204918.jpg of a long tradition; I think they may have helped sour many people on the idea of pitched working surfaces.)
- sethrin 12y ago
  The term 'fag end' predates the cigarette by a couple centuries, at least in Europe. In figurative use, I am surprised to see it associated with cigarette butts; it's a very unusual figure, and I would have expected anyone using it to be aware of the (original) meaning.
  - leoc 12y ago
    Interesting! I think nearly all contemporary British English speakers associate it with cigarette butts, though. See http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fag-end http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fag-end and the Collins entry at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fag+end http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fag+end .
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I would be greatly surprised if more than 1% of UK respondants had any idea of the use of "fag end" as anything other than cigarettes and the metaphor.
    - lmm 12y ago
      Before clicking the links I assumed it referred to the end of a faggot (the kind used for kindling).
      - sethrin 12y ago
        Sorry, I should have mentioned. For anyone else reading, "fag end" refers to the end of a length of material such as cloth or especially rope. The short end of a rope which is left over from tying a knot is the "fag end". Another similar term is "bitter end", the end of a rope abaft the bitts, that is, the part that remains inboard on a ship. A useful visual reference can be found here: http://books.google.com.pa/books?id=mrDgmObwGZcC&pg=PA387&lpg=PA387&dq=visual+dictionary+bitter+end&source=bl&ots=bb3BM4k-ME&sig=QPmBtRz2EjlhrPTD0yO3rUM_rFs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=beI6VIHCFpPPggSOkIGABA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=visual%20dictionary%20bitter%20end&f=false http://books.google.com.pa/books?id=mrDgmObwGZcC&pg=PA387&lp...
narag 12y ago
Until fourth grade I had these desks with pitched top that was also the "door": we kept the books and notebooks inside. I somewhat resent the association with a museum. It was in the seventies! And yes, the purpose of the flat tables that came afterwards was possibly what you say.
- arrrg 12y ago
  We went to this museum on a class trip in elementary school (late nineties)! That’s why I remembered it. I do know that these kinds of classrooms did exist in post-war Germany still (mostly because obviously no one was really investing a lot into schools), but most of those were probably gone after the economic upswing and modernisation in the 50s and 60s (though I do not know how long some held on in some small school in some corner of Germany). (Ha, but you just reminded me of my first proper work desk I got when I started going to elementary school. That thing was pretty fancy, height adjustable, and, of course, the desk could be pitched up effortlessly, set to any angle between 0° and maybe about 50°. I’m not sure how widespread those were and are, though. Plus, I don’t think I ever set it to anything other than flat when actually working. Since my dad is a civil engineer and he actually had a desk he could pitch up to draw – something mostly relevant when he studied in the early eighties, because in his job now he has assistants doing the drawing and they sit in front of a computer – so that’s how I primarily thought of that function, certainly not for reading or writing.)
  - gumby 12y ago
    > I do know that these kinds of classrooms did exist > in post-war Germany still (mostly because obviously > no one was really investing a lot into schools) Actually it's not only not obvious, but the opposite: there was a heavy investment in schools allied-occupied Germany as part of the denazification program. It is weird to look at some textbooks from that period that look like 1950s US books but are in German with typically German scenes (e.g. der Bäker) -- and copyright notices in English with the copyright belonging to the Allied Control Commission. This was a patchy process; my mother in law who started school shortly after the war, was in a very poor region and her handwriting was still the old Sütterlin style so I think some of her elementary school books were still from the 30s and 40s. But contemporaries of hers who grew up in Berlin have the same handwriting as my wife or our kid. (Sorry to have strayed from the also-interesting medieval topic.)

by arrrg 12y ago

wyclif 12y ago

"Many of us have seen paintings of monks with quill pens diligently transcribing ancient texts. Their work was placed directly in front and they sat fairly erect, writing on slanted surfaces." http://ririanproject.com/2013/01/09/what-monks-can-teach-you-about-healthy-computing/ http://ririanproject.com/2013/01/09/what-monks-can-teach-you...

leoc 12y ago

> I think flat tables (and individual chairs) in schools can also be explained by an increased desire to reconfigure the classroom on the fly, moving tables around to make working in groups easier. Absolutely: it probably mirrors (and likely imitated) the thinking about modular, open-plan offices which came into fashion around the same time too. To an extent it probably also reflects the arrival of Stuff on Your Desk into schoolchildren's lives as well: crafting activities and educational toys in the classroom, but also just more books and more papers than before. (I'm not holding up C20 pitched school desks as a good example of pitched working surfaces: they were often cheap, sometimes even unstable, unadjustable and cramped, likely designed for someone a foot shorter than the poor eejit who was actually jammed into it. They were more like the sad fag-end http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/fag-end-18204918.jpg http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/fag-end-18204918.jpg of a long tradition; I think they may have helped sour many people on the idea of pitched working surfaces.)

sethrin 12y ago
The term 'fag end' predates the cigarette by a couple centuries, at least in Europe. In figurative use, I am surprised to see it associated with cigarette butts; it's a very unusual figure, and I would have expected anyone using it to be aware of the (original) meaning.
- leoc 12y ago
  Interesting! I think nearly all contemporary British English speakers associate it with cigarette butts, though. See http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fag-end http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fag-end and the Collins entry at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fag+end http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fag+end .
- DanBC 12y ago
  I would be greatly surprised if more than 1% of UK respondants had any idea of the use of "fag end" as anything other than cigarettes and the metaphor.
  - lmm 12y ago
    Before clicking the links I assumed it referred to the end of a faggot (the kind used for kindling).
    - sethrin 12y ago
      Sorry, I should have mentioned. For anyone else reading, "fag end" refers to the end of a length of material such as cloth or especially rope. The short end of a rope which is left over from tying a knot is the "fag end". Another similar term is "bitter end", the end of a rope abaft the bitts, that is, the part that remains inboard on a ship. A useful visual reference can be found here: http://books.google.com.pa/books?id=mrDgmObwGZcC&pg=PA387&lpg=PA387&dq=visual+dictionary+bitter+end&source=bl&ots=bb3BM4k-ME&sig=QPmBtRz2EjlhrPTD0yO3rUM_rFs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=beI6VIHCFpPPggSOkIGABA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=visual%20dictionary%20bitter%20end&f=false http://books.google.com.pa/books?id=mrDgmObwGZcC&pg=PA387&lp...

narag 12y ago

Until fourth grade I had these desks with pitched top that was also the "door": we kept the books and notebooks inside. I somewhat resent the association with a museum. It was in the seventies! And yes, the purpose of the flat tables that came afterwards was possibly what you say.

arrrg 12y ago
We went to this museum on a class trip in elementary school (late nineties)! That’s why I remembered it. I do know that these kinds of classrooms did exist in post-war Germany still (mostly because obviously no one was really investing a lot into schools), but most of those were probably gone after the economic upswing and modernisation in the 50s and 60s (though I do not know how long some held on in some small school in some corner of Germany). (Ha, but you just reminded me of my first proper work desk I got when I started going to elementary school. That thing was pretty fancy, height adjustable, and, of course, the desk could be pitched up effortlessly, set to any angle between 0° and maybe about 50°. I’m not sure how widespread those were and are, though. Plus, I don’t think I ever set it to anything other than flat when actually working. Since my dad is a civil engineer and he actually had a desk he could pitch up to draw – something mostly relevant when he studied in the early eighties, because in his job now he has assistants doing the drawing and they sit in front of a computer – so that’s how I primarily thought of that function, certainly not for reading or writing.)
- gumby 12y ago
  > I do know that these kinds of classrooms did exist > in post-war Germany still (mostly because obviously > no one was really investing a lot into schools) Actually it's not only not obvious, but the opposite: there was a heavy investment in schools allied-occupied Germany as part of the denazification program. It is weird to look at some textbooks from that period that look like 1950s US books but are in German with typically German scenes (e.g. der Bäker) -- and copyright notices in English with the copyright belonging to the Allied Control Commission. This was a patchy process; my mother in law who started school shortly after the war, was in a very poor region and her handwriting was still the old Sütterlin style so I think some of her elementary school books were still from the 30s and 40s. But contemporaries of hers who grew up in Berlin have the same handwriting as my wife or our kid. (Sorry to have strayed from the also-interesting medieval topic.)