Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/03/why-this-japanese-chalk-is-bei.html
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Oh man, it’s the Palomino Blackwing all over again. I’m not falling for it again! Ticonderoga forever!
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What’s wrong with dry erase markers?
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What’s right with them?
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Four sticks a day? Is he smoking them, or what?
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Mathematicians and Rithmatists!
https://brandonsanderson.com/books/the-rithmatist/the-rithmatist/
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The Hagoromo is genuinely better. I have hoards of Prang Hygieia because it is better than our stock chalk, but if I could afford it I’d be using Hagoromo exclusively.
They don’t show up on the blackboard. (Also, their diameter is too wide for comfortable use, they stink, and students can’t see the writing from the back of the classroom.)
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For me, the odor is off-putting. Plus, when I’ve had to leave stuff up on a whiteboard for awhile, the dry erase becomes more difficult to erase, which then requires the use of appropriate cleaning fluid and some elbow grease.
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No, no, officer! I swear it’s just chalk dust!
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Or perhaps chucking them at unruly students (as one of my parochial school nuns used to do… and with impressive accuracy). 
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This is from June 2015 on why Hagoromo shuttered:
- Owner old and in poor health.
- Price being paid for chalk plummeted, Japanese government incentives to buy local went away.
- Demand for chalk cut in half from peak in 1990 presumably because whiteboards (I hate whiteboards so much…)
Outcome was that chalk is still being produced in South Korea on at least one of the original production machines with original formula. Close but probably not exactly the same.
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Good idea. They tend to get sticky when melted and have been gumming up my syringes.
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Chalk always works. If you see that your lecture hall has half a box of chalk, it is a known quantity. The failure mode of snapping in half still leaves you with largely functional writing implement.
If I’m teaching a class in a lecture hall with half a dozen markers left up at the board, who knows how many of those fuckers work. Always fun to have 200 students staring at you while you try to find a replacement for the marker that just crapped out on you, particularly since working ones tend to wander off leaving the ones that are crapping out behind.
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This is similar to my artist’s search for the perfect stick of compressed charcoal. Not too hard and slick like graphite, but not crumbly either.
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Whiteboard markers die very quickly and with little warning.
If you leave them on the whiteboard too long, they are hard to erase and will stain.
Eventually, they refuse to erase at all and your whiteboard is doomed.
Chalk goes away with a wet sponge.
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My Headmaster used to throw those little 1-unit 1cm wooden cubes (from Maths class). One day he hefted a 100-unit cube in his hand, the room went quiet, the troublemaking kid looked up, he put it down…
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No.
Unruly students get blackboard erasers thrown at them. Typically, the felt (or is it cotton?) ones with wooden handles have good heft for chucking. And they can be retrieved. Chalk is a valuable consumable, not to be wasted on merely chastising the unruly kids in class. And anyway, it bounces off them and does no damage.
Yes, I speak from experience, and yes, he had a remarkably good aim. Fortunately, I was alert and dodged it.
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Previously
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Where you in my class?
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I where not. It where only boyz. Were where you?
(Sorry. Open goal and all that)
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