Long ago, in some forgotten past, there was a person – probably a teacher – who looked at their bulletin board and said, “You know… if I put some borders around this bulletin board, it might look cute.”
So that’s what they did. They added borders to a bulletin board – probably cut from construction paper or wrapping paper – and the rest is history.
Or…
Long ago, in some forgotten past, a product development manager in a company that manufactures school supplies said, “I know! We’ll fool teachers into believing that bulletin boards require thematic borders to be complete!”
So the company began manufacturing and selling bulletin board borders to guileless teachers who blindly thought, “Yes, it’s true! I need a series of little pencils or balloons or images of the solar system framing the edges of this bulletin board, damn it!”
The result, sadly, is a bizarre and ubiquitous belief that bulletin boards require borders.
In school, of course.
In the real world, bulletin boards already have borders. These borders are called the edges of the bulletin board. No one in the real world is disturbed or upset over a bulletin board’s lack of thematic framing. No one is looking for the thing that displays information to be fetching or delightful. It’s the stuff on the bulletin board that’s supposed to matter.
Not the stuff around the stuff.
I recently added a world map to a perpetually empty bulletin board in my classroom. The map actually serves a purpose. We use it to track featured locations on a daily news show. We add push-pins to the various locations around the world and then discuss these locations in detail.
Quick, contextualized lessons on geography and geopolitical history.
More than one colleague has noticed my world map and suggested that I add some borders around the bulletin board to make it complete.
I pointed out each time that the bulletin board is already complete. It features relevant information that we use almost every day.
More than I could say for a lot of bulletin boards.
My colleagues disagree.
But more importantly, my students do not. I asked them if I needed to add borders to their bulletin board. As disagreeable as they like to be, not a single one of them thought that borders were needed. Many laughed at the notion.
So maybe there’s hope for the future.
And don’t even get me started on the inexplicable need to cover bulletin boards with colorful fabric or large sheets of colored paper. My students also agree that the exposed cork surrounding our world map is just fine, too.
