I started elementary school in 1975. My kindergarten year, we didn’t do much work at our seats, as I recall. In grade one, in a school on a military base, we did. We started to get what were called “worksheets.”<\/p>\n
The teacher would walk into the classroom with a neat stack of papers under her arm which she would hand to the nearest student. “Take one, pass them on,” was the phrase she, then each student in turn, repeated: the worksheets worked their way through the columns of desks, passed along by each student who took one.<\/p>\n
The paper was thin and bright white. The ink was blue-purple. None of us knew, but those pages had just been run off by the teacher using the spirit duplicator. It’s the light, grainy, purple-blue writing on the page that’s the tell.<\/p>\n
Such pages never had any illustrations – just text, almost always hand-written. Typically you’d write the answers on the sheet.<\/p>\n
Spirit-duplicated worksheets ruled in the classrooms I inhabited until the mid-80s. By then, we got less worksheets, anyway. The last spirit-duplicated sheet I saw might have been in ’87. By then, I rarely saw them; they were a nostalgic surprise when I did.<\/p>\n
\nOne wonders what must have become of all those spirit duplicators. Are they in warehouses, or on surplus shelves? Does anyone yet use them? In their time, they seemed great:)<\/p>\n\n
Source:<\/p>\n
for.gov.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\nJack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor mentions the tradition of the spirit duplicator. I started elementary school in 1975. My kindergarten year, we didn’t do much work at our seats, as I recall. In grade one, …<\/p>\n