15 FORGOTTEN Things From School That No Longer Exist

The worksheet still warm off the ditto machine. The half-pint of milk gone warm on the windowsill by ten o'clock. The drawer of catalog cards your fingers once walked down. Fifteen everyday fixtures of the American classroom, roughly 1955 to 1985, that simply no longer exist. In the order they came and went: the half-pint and the milk crate; the metal lunchbox; chalk dust and the erasers; the filmstrip projector and its sync beep; mercury rolled across a desktop; the slide rule; the SRA reading box and its color levels; the Weekly Reader; movie day and the 16mm reel; the inkwell sunk into the desk; the dunce cap and the corner; the card catalog; penmanship and the Palmer Method; the mimeograph and its purple ink; the encyclopedia salesman at the door. Of all of them, the purple ditto smell is the one with no replacement.