Philadelphia

“I held the pencil for a while. I didn’t want to use it; since

they aren’t making them anymore, you have to conserve

Thoreau’s pencils.” –From Robert Sullivan’s new book “The Thoreau You Don’t Know” ((New York Times Book Review)

“I miss paper and pencil. That was the best.”

Shamece Cross is 15. She is a ninth grader at Philadelphia School of High School of the Future, and she is giving us a tour.

The school, located in West Philadelphia, in one of the city’s poorest neighborhood, is a $61.4 million project initiated by former head of the Philadelphia school system Paul Vallas (who now runs the New Orleans Recovery School District) with help from technology giant Microsoft.

For many years now, the central debate in American education has been over just how much schools can do to improve the low rate of achievement among poor children. Many believe a school like The School of the Future can be a good start toward consistent and measurable progress. The school, which uses a lottery system (when a computer randomly allocate new children to sought-after schools like The School of the Future), has in fact an “open enrollment” policy, meaning it accepts every students selected in the lottery from anywhere in the city, regardless of academic performance.

And on top of that every student gets a laptop.

“I looove my school,” Shamece said outside the state-of-art auditorium. ” But I miss the feeling of having a bookbag and books. [Because] It actually makes me feel like I’m in high school. Now I’m carrying one laptop around. It’s boring…”

I was chocked and somehow troubled by Shamece’s declaration. It was innocent, it meant nothing. But to me it suddenly meant everything. Did you just say that you miss the books?

She nodded. “Yeah, I miss it a lot…”

Her voice trailed off as she lead us in a classroom.

I was lost.

How can could she say that she misses the pencils, the standardized paper, the spiral notebook, the lesson books, and the weighty feel of a bookbag when she went to a school like this! She was issued a laptop, a digital camera…I just couldn’t understand.

I followed her in that classroom and everything made sense…

The bare-bones classroom and its soothingly bright lighting had the feel of state-of-the-art corporate meeting rooms: no pencils, paper or printed textbooks (the library has four books total I think). Chalk and blackboards were no where to be found as well. Instead? plasma, flat-screen television and high-tech whiteboard video projectors. The school uses a Web-bases education software so that students, teachers and families can be linked through networks. But sweet Jesus, was this a high school or a college? Frankly, at one point I couldn’t tell anymore.

I was knocked down by the slap of luxury and the lucullan feast of technology. Knocked down.

But what Shamece said to us earlier [about missing paper and pencil] started to make more sense to me as we went along with our tour:

All that technology was great. But these students were still kids…

And I know the school is doing a terrific job preparing its students for a technology-driven world and closing the arguable digital divide between students who have computers at home and those who do not. I know that.

But at the same time I couldn’t help but feeling like Shamece that day: nostalgic.

Consider the pencil for example. Historically pencils have always stood for thinking and creativity; it is the tool of thinkers, planners, drafters, architects, and engineers or doodlers like me. But it is also the toy of kids…

And she is still a kid.

“I miss paper and pencil. That was the best.”