School desk
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The school desk occurs in two main types: the tiny chair and desk combinations made for pre-schoolers, and the larger institutional desks installed in a typical school room.
Home desks for tiny folk
The tiny chair and desk combinations usually are marketed for domestic use, as a crafts activity center for pre-literate children. This kind of desk gives them a play surface more suited for their height than most of the furniture in a normal home. The drawers and nooks partly mimic the conveniences of adult desks and are designed to hold crayons and other play materials. These school desks are often constructed of brightly colored parts of sturdy plastic, with rounded edges.
These tiny school desks are made in a huge variety of forms. Some copy the style of the pedestal desk that adults use while others look like a writing table, and still others offer strange shapes.
When children grow older and taller and when their schooling requires them to do homework, they graduate to a student desk, which is better suited for serious reading and writing.
Desks for schoolchildren
The institutional school desk is marketed directly to schools and sold in bulk orders.
This kind of school desk is expected to suffer extremely rough treatment over the years and is normally built accordingly. Many of the school desks which survive this treatment end up getting sold in lots at the end of a certain period, and can thus reach the antiques market. These antique school desks often end up in homes, for decorative or sentimental reasons.
Early school desks were built of wood. The transition to steel occurred during the early 20th century.
These institutional school desks are made in a huge variety of forms. Some are versions of the ergonomic desk or the computer desk, joined in rows and interconnected with wiring, while others are very simple individual writing tables.
See also the List of desk forms and types.