CONCLUSION

We hope that this Quest has given you some idea of how different children's lives were a hundred years ago!  Certainly their education was no more than rote learning and the technology in the classroom was a slate and a slate pencil!

It might be interesting if you do a bit of extra research to find out exactly what a slate pencil was. It was nothing like what you think of as a pencil.

• What was it made of?
• What did it look like?
• How did it work?
• What extra bit of equipment did you need to clean your slate? (Two extras if we are very precise)
• Can you think of a saying associated with slates (that we still use) which means "to begin all over again"?
• Wood was used in the construction of a slate - what function did it serve?

When you think of what you have at your fingertips in a 20th century classroom, it is a whole different world.