The Lost Legacy of the Pencil Sharpener
Look around next time you are in some of the classrooms on campus. Notice something missing?
No, it isn’t that one guy who asks ridiculous, unrelated questions during the lecture. No, it’s not the smelly kid that sits in the corner with a buffer of at least three or four seats between him and the next student. No, it’s not that student that’s always falls asleep, dead center, in the front row. Scan around the edges of the white boards, or around the doors to the classroom. Do you see it?
Outside of our Math and Science building, you’ll notice that there’s a crippling lack of pencil sharpeners on the Chadron State College Campus. I find that odd, especially given the circumstance. You can never forget that strange, grating mechanical device that’s been mounted on every wall since the first day of your formal education.
There’s many hardliners in the faculty that still continue their time-honored practice of handing out paper copies of syllabi, ruing the transition to the digital age’s “paperless classrooms.” But even if we see faculty cave-in to administrative pressures to cease and desist this noble gesture, (because, every student really does take the time to read it), you and I will never see the day of the pencil-less classroom.
I don’t know about you, but I have found myself without a pen numerous times after rushing in late to a class. I frantically dig through my bag, when finally I pull my fist out, gripping my cylindrical prize triumphantly. But doom sets in once I find that inside my hand is not an ink stick, but an unsharpened, wooden pencil.
The instructor has already begun spouting off his the first part of his lecture, and terror begins gripping my fragile, panicked brain. My pulse quickens as he lays down the ominous phrase; “Write this down, it will be on the next test.” I try to switch to a notepad application on my smartphone, struggling to fight off the autocorrect and predictive text, but I can feel the searing glare of the instructor on my person. He’s stopped talking, and now everyone in the class is staring at me. He stomps his foot and points to a sign by the board;
NO TEXTING OR FACEBOOKING DURING CLASS
As a last ditch effort, I clumsily attempt to crudely whittle the tip with my car key. And it’s then, in my hour of defeat when I reach the startling finality. That’s it, I’m done. I already missed too much of the lecture notes. I’ll fail this next exam and this whole class. My lofty dreams of becoming a Serpent Lubrication Marketing Specialist are forever dashed. My entire career—No, my entire life is now completely destroyed. All of this, for the want of a pencil sharpener.
But even though this is a bit of an exaggerated case, seriously: where are all the pencil sharpeners? Sure, we’re all in college now, off of the sweet, delicious teat that is free Public Education. And I know we are supposed to take responsibility for buying our own textbooks and the like, but realistically, who carry’s around a pencil sharpener?
And what options are there for portable personal pencil sharpeners? Sure, there are those little flimsy plastic molds cast with a riveted razor blade. But if anything, these sharpeners should be re-classified as concealed weapons. In the same frantic search that yields a pencil, you run the risk of meeting that exposed razor blade and sheering off your fingerprints. This is handy if you plan to go rob a bank, but awfully inconvenient when you’re bleeding all over your notebook.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might say, “Spike, just use a mechanical pencil, for Pete’s sake!” But my reasons for refusing mechanical pencils are simple. I have something personal against Société Bic., the French based company popular for their BIC brand pens, mechanical pencils, and butane cigarette lighters. What informs my opinion of BIC is not jingoism, and I am no Francophobe.
My dislike of BIC stems from their predatory practices globally. According to BIC’s corporate communications website, “BIC products are manufactured in factories on every single continent.”
While I don’t like to make assumptions, It’s likely that BIC has taken advantage of the lack of regulations on Antarctica. On the seventh continent, BIC open to exploit labor for substandard wages, and have no qualms with forcing Antarctican children to work in sweatshop like conditions, from sun up to sun up for six months out of the year.
We all share a stake in this ethical dilemma, and we need to petition our Student Government to pass a resolution to put pencil sharpeners back in the classroom. And for Professors, don’t be opposed to this resolution as a potential distraction, the noise from the sharpener might impede your lecture, but it will surely wake up that student that always falls asleep, dead center, in the front row.