Paper cuts
As I explained my methods for keeping a (relatively) paperless office to an incredulous coworker yesterday, I started musing about the fate of paper. Paper is dying in many venues, thank goodness. I am not a rabid environmentalist, but I have always hated the space that paper requires. It weighs a lot, gets soggy, covers up workspace, and is often more trouble than it is worth. In my days as a gifted program specialist writing IEPs, I tried to calculate the number of trees it took to place a child in the gifted program but could never find precise data on sheets of 20 lb. paper per tree. It took over 100 sheets of paper — on average — before I even MET the child. In appropriate celebration, I planned a unit on Paper, including making our own recycled paper decorated with calligraphy of original student poems for parental holiday gifts one year.
Children born today are blessed that they may see the death of paper. They may never suffer the horrid aftertaste of envelope glue. They may not ever know what a postage stamp is. They may never have to carry reams of worksheets home in backpacks already laden with textbooks. Their e-book readers will allow them to scribble in the margins and ask questions back at the text. They will never receive report “cards.” We may lose the word “triplicate” from the dictionary. Words themselves will be freed from the tyrannical permanence of ink.
What paper do I want to keep?
- The first time a child writes his name
- Valuable doodles
- Framable and meaningful works of art
- Origami
- Scherenschnitte – or however you spell it
- paper patterns for quilt blocks
What will we lose?
- Paper valentines
- checkbooks
- paper football
- shredders
- Hallmark
- spitballs
… oh, and paper cuts.
What a tragedy.
