Time To Rethink the School Desk?

theodp writes "As part of its reimagine the 21st-century classroom project, Slate asks: Is the best way to fix the American classroom to improve the furniture? While adults park their butts in $700 Aeron chairs, kids still sprawl and slump and fidget and dangle their way through the day in school furniture designed to meet or beat a $40 price point. 'We've seen in adults that if you put them in the right chair, their performance increases,' says Harvard's Jack Dennerlein. 'Is the same true for children? I can't see why not.' For school districts with deep pockets, there are choices — a tricked-out Node chair from IDEO and Steelcase can be had for $599."

Re:Return on Investment

[Meshach]

Who knows how all us over twenties survived and still managed to get jobs, mortgages, cars, and RSPs sitting in those primitive uncomfortable chairs?

Luxury!

[spun]

You had furniture in your school? We had to make do with moldy cardboard boxes for desks and sharp piles of rusting scrap metal for chairs, and we had to collect the scrap metal ourselves from train yards and storm drains. But try telling that to kids these days, they won't believe you!

Re:Cheap -- to Replace!

[Sponge Bath]

Here [max-secure.com] is some durable, school appropriate furniture.

Re:Return on Investment

[argmanah]

The average /. user who works in IT probably has later hours on the average compared to corporate America across the board. If you're the exception to this and have to wake up super early, we have positions open here, feel free to submit a resume.

Re:Return on Investment

[pixelpusher220]

because we don't want our kids living in our basement until 30? this is slashdot after all....

Re:Return on Investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Australians do it that way, starting at 10 am, there was an article about half a year ago on mindhacks about the adolescent sleep behaviour, with a lot of useful details.

For the furniture problem ... well, we're talking amercan students, so you should use steel, lots of it.

Re:Cheap -- to Replace!

[danlip]

Fabulous. I love how a "feature" of each of their products is "attractive look". I have to disagree.

Re:Luxury!

[aquila.solo]

Feh.

We didn't even have a building. We held school out in the open; under a tree if we were lucky. And no writing materials either: we just scrawled our equations, diagrams and other lecture notes in the dirt. And that was good enough for us.

--Aristotle

Re:fat kids

[Convector]

"If you have legs and are flammable, you are never blocking a fire exit."

Re:Luxury!

[Anonymous Coward]

You had fingernails?!

Re:SURE! Why not??

[Wonko the Sane]

Because there's ample evidence that spending more money creates better results. That's why children are 3 times more educated than they were back in the 1950s.