You Want to Get Rid of Your Desks?

When I first started this journey about changing school through classroom design the first thing I wanted to get rid of was the desk. 
To me, the desk symbolizes everything that is wrong with education:

• one size fits all.
• all the information comes from the teacher.
• you learn only by sitting down and reading or writing, etc.
• don't move.
• don't talk to other students.
• do the same thing that everyone else is doing. 

Here is a picture of what desks looked like when I went to school:

The only difference to my desk and the one shown here was, there was a small round cut out for my inkwell(!), and Mrs. Young had me tie my running shoes to that really handy bar that attached the chair to the desk.  The message is pretty clear: face forward, don't move, and God help you if you are a different size of shape than one that will fit in this desk (i.e. no big kids, no little kids, no hefty kids, and definitely no kids in wheelchairs).  Did I mention that I had these exact same desks when I taught middle school only twelve years ago?  They were updated though.  They were bigger and had no inkwell hole.  The desks did not fit the mode of education twelve years ago, let alone fitting education forty years ago when I was a little kid. 

The desks of my youth are not that different from the ones from a hundred years ago.

These "sled" desks probably come from a one room school house.  These are welded together by the cast iron rail at the bottom.  I guess if you have grades 1 to 7 you probably want kids to stay in one place because it was probably dangerous for the teacher (and job security) if students were actually to learn from each other.  I wonder if they ever took their sled desks down the hill during the winter time.  It's weird that we're not better at the bobsleigh.    

The desks that used to be dominant in my current classroom kind of look like this:

I guess these are a step up.  They are adjustable for height.  The chair is not attached to the desk so there is more potential for movement.  The lack of attached seat and sled track make it so that the desks can be configured in many, many ways.  They had no inkwell hole that worked great as a drink holder or garbage chute.  Kids of different shapes, sizes and mobilities can use these desks.   

So if these desks that I have are so much better (and they are readily available), then why do I still hate them so much?

Okay, how about these ones?

The acrylic one is cool, and would make a great sneeze guard at a salad bar, but it is definitely one size fits all. Besides, privacy and Windex costs would be definite issues.

Sure, it is a creative design, but how practical is this?  It is really not that different from the desk of my youth, except that it has less storage, but a bigger place to tie my running shoes.  My latte would tip over on this design.

Is this really that different from the sled desk?  I think you can put this desk on its end and use it as a lectern, but why would you? 

My wife, also a teacher, liked these desks at SFU.  Notice that both the chairs and the tables are on wheels, so that the learning spaces are very flexible.  The room is instantly convertible.  This is great for a seminar, workshop, or even a lecture format. 

I think the thing that bothers me about all of these formats (except the SFU one) is that you won't find these types of furniture in any place except an educational institution.  These types of furniture will not be found in homes or offices or in nature.  You might ask why that is a problem because don't we want kids to associate desks with learning?  I guess that is true to an extent, but I also want kids to know that learning happens EVERYWHERE, not just in a school, not just in a desk, and not in places where you can't detach the chair from the table.

In a future post, I will talk about some of the successes and challenges I've had working in a non-desk classroom.