The Future of the School Desk

History of the School Desk
On April 2, 1989 Anna Breadin patented the first school desk.   Her same basic design is still used today. Breadlin’s desk was designed of cast iron and wood. The desk was a chair with a desk attached to the back of it and it was designed to be put behind one another so you would write on the desk attached to the back of the chair in front of you. . Whether wood, metal or plastic, the desk has served its purpose in providing a space where the student can place their things on top of, to write and read. Today the school desk is often composed of a wooden or plastic chair with a flat writing area in front of the chair. In the future, I see the students’ desk transforming into something you would see in a futuristic movie. What might this be? The desk of the future is a large single person desk, with an interactive desktop.

Future Desk Technology


The future desk itself is made out of recycled plastics and it is attached to a rolling chair with a bin under the chair for your belongings. The chair is very easily movable because it has wheels on it and the teacher can move it around the classroom to configure the class however desired. The future desk is essentially a mix of a computer, tablet and school desk. The top of the desk is still a flat area, however instead of a wood or plastic area to write on, it is a touch screen computer made with a durable glass which covers the screen. Every desk is linked to the schools wireless internet and to begin using the desktop you must log in with your student id number and a password.  The entire top of the desk is an interactive station, where the user can browse the internet, pull out their wireless keyboard for word processing, watch video of helpful material that the teacher would usually post on the board or show to the class through the use of a projector. The desk would revolutionize how teachers teach, because it will slowly eliminate the pencil and paper and move into a greener way of education. The teacher in the class would have full control and review of what the student is looking at and a security device will scan all of the students internet use to make sure it is functional to learning.

In addition to eliminating the “pencil and paper” methods to move towards a greener way of education, teachers would be able to upload the textbooks used in class onto the desk for the students to follow along in class. This would eliminate the need for schools or students to purchase hardcopy textbooks, while still allowing students to be able to make notes in their electronic textbook. On this desk, every school subject will have its own application to keep notes of a different subject separate from one another. This will allow for teachers and students to stay organized. Each subject application consists of the subjects’ syllabus, a folder to turn in completed work, a forum for classmates to interact with one another or with the teacher, the textbooks, and an electronic notebook for the students to take notes of their own. On every teacher’s desk, they will have an extra feature which allows them to keep records of all their students’ work, test scores and final grade.

Who Will Have the Desk?
While this new desk sounds expensive, students at all public schools and select private schools across the United States will have access to the future desk. The government will buy desks for all the schools as well as install solar panels to generate power to charge the desks every night. The desk is an investment not only for the school, because it will not only lower the schools expenses on paper, but for the future of the country, as it will help give a more balanced educational opportunity to students from all economic backgrounds. The regulation of the desk would be administered local school districts. The school districts can evaluate how they would like teachers to use the desk to teach and set up specific programs on the computer.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The desk would not only be beneficial to teachers and their schools, but most importantly to the students. While in class, a student will no longer have to be busy making sure they are writing everything the teacher is saying, since the teachers will have the material uploaded in each desk’s network of files. Students will be able to better organize their notes into electronic folders, and eliminate the need for a locker or a backpack to store all their books. During group projects, students will have an easier way of communicating with each other whether in school or at home in their classroom forum. The future desk would enable students further improve their visual literacy, as it is becoming more important in today’s society. Their visual literacy would improve, because the teachers would use more visual aids to teach, and with the screens on everyone’s desk there is no need to worry about anyone not being able to follow what is going on in class.
According to the Educational Attainment in the United States from the United States Census Bureau, more working women have college degrees than working men. While this may be alarming to some persons, the increase in technology through the use of the interactive desk could help boost men to match or possibly surpass women in percentage of college degrees. This would be because men have a bias towards using technology more than women (Mitts 81). The use of the future desk would probably result in more male teachers, and that could balance out the bias that men have towards using technology more than women, because women with male role models are more likely to study technology and sciences, subjects currently dominated by men (McCarthy, Berger 71).

While there are great advantages to the new desk, one shortcoming is that teachers will need to be trained how to use the desk. The majority of the new generation of teachers is very technology savvy; however teachers from previous generations who are already struggling with new technology in school will be very handicapped by the desk. The way a classroom is run will also change because of the new desk technology. The new discourse in schools will be less writing and taking notes and more visual learning. There will be less time wasted in classrooms by getting your books out and opening them or even transitioning from topic to topic, and now with the desk the teacher can instantly put whatever material needed in front of the student.

How Will It Change Learning In Schools?
The school desk of the future will affect how many students will learn. Jean Anyon is a researcher who is most known for her study on several public schools in different parts of New Jersey, comparing two lower class public schools to a middle class school, a affluent professional school and an executive elite school. Anyon discovered that the social class of the average student’s parents determined how the schools taught the students. In the lower class schools, the students were told what to learn and to follow simple direction with no problem solving, where as in the Elite school the students were treated like intellectuals and guided to what to learn. The desk would remove the Executive Elite form of learning which Anyon observed, because the advancement in the desk will give more control to the teacher. In Anyon’s model the Elite schools teach the students skills to manage businesses and companies, and the use of the interactive desktop would limit the skills to manage, because everything would be managed for you. Likewise in lower class schools there is little creativity, and the use of interactive desktops would add creativity and a more fun learning environment, which would improve the education system in lower class schools. The change to a more equal learning style is needed, because the separation of wealth in the United States in growing wider, and that is not a good thing for the country (Noah). Children from lower and middle class neighborhoods are not getting the same opportunities as their peers from affluent professional and executive elite neighborhoods, because they do not have access to equal learning materials and teaching styles. The overall impact in schools across the country would be positive, because there are many more lower class schools in the United States than executive elite schools.

Beyond the Future Desk
In the distant future I see the workstation desk being a huge success. It would take many years to design the most cost effective, learning effective, durable, and easy to use desk station. Once schools start to add new technology, they will not be replaced by older technology, and the future desk will only be improved on. A desk will always be necessary as long as students physically go to, and schools are not turned into online schools of higher education. What once would be only seen in a science fiction movie can become the reality of tomorrow, and the desk will revolutionize the future of learning in school.