The Pee-Chee Folder: The School Supply That Became a Work of Art

There was a time when a school folder was just a school folder.

You bought one at the beginning of the school year, stuffed your homework inside it, carried it from classroom to classroom, and eventually lost it somewhere under your bed.

Unless, of course, it was a Pee-Chee folder.

Then things got interesting.

For millions of American schoolchildren—particularly Baby Boomers and older generations—the familiar yellowish Pee-Chee folder wasn’t merely a place to put homework. It was a canvas, a bulletin board, a personal diary, a communication device and, occasionally, a crime scene.

And we didn’t need an app to do any of it.

It started as a simple folder

Pee-Chee folders date back to 1943. They were designed as practical school folders, with pockets for carrying papers and useful information printed inside.

Eventually, they became famous for something far more important to students:

The artwork.

The familiar illustrations showed athletic young people running, playing tennis, throwing footballs and participating in other wholesome activities.

The drawings were innocent.

The students were not.

Those pictures practically begged to be altered.

A kid with a pencil could transform a perfectly respectable athlete into a pirate, a rock star, a superhero or something that would probably get the student sent to the principal’s office today.

And that was the beauty of it.

The manufacturer provided the artwork.

We provided the personality.

 

Before Photoshop, there was a pencil

Today, if you don’t like someone’s appearance in a photograph, you can alter it in seconds.

Back then?

You needed a No. 2 pencil.

Maybe an eraser.

And imagination.

A mustache could appear.

A pair of sunglasses could materialize.

Someone suddenly needed a ridiculous hairstyle.

A football player could acquire a speech bubble saying something completely inappropriate.

A perfectly respectable athlete could be transformed into your favorite rock musician.

There was no undo button.

If you made a mistake, you either erased it or incorporated the mistake into the masterpiece.

That’s an important distinction.

We were learning graphic design without knowing it.

We were learning humor.

We were learning satire.

We were learning how to communicate with pictures.

And, perhaps most importantly, we were learning how to entertain ourselves.

The original social media

Think about what a Pee-Chee folder really was.

You carried it around school.

Your friends saw it.

They commented on it.

They added things to it.

They laughed at it.

They sometimes wrote their names on it.

Someone might draw something on your folder while you weren’t looking.

You might respond by drawing something on theirs.

Sound familiar?

It was social media.

It just had a much slower internet connection.

The connection was called walking down the hallway.

There were no followers.

There were friends.

There were no notifications.

There was somebody tapping you on the shoulder saying, “Look what I drew.”

There were no emojis.

There were doodles.

And there certainly wasn’t a delete button.

If somebody wrote something embarrassing on your Pee-Chee, that information could remain there for months.

Your folder had a memory.

Unfortunately, it sometimes had a better memory than you did.

Pee-Chee original social media

The great doodle tradition

There’s something fascinating about doodling.

Give a child a blank piece of paper and eventually there will be something on it.

Give a teenager a boring classroom and suddenly the desk becomes a drawing surface.

Give that same teenager a Pee-Chee folder covered with athletic illustrations and you’ve essentially created an artistic challenge:

How can I make this picture funnier?

The folder became a collaboration between the manufacturer and the student.

The manufacturer supplied the beginning.

The kid supplied the ending.

And every folder became different.

Two students could buy identical folders and end the school year with completely different creations.

One might look like a sports magazine.

Another might look like a comic book.

A third might look like evidence.

Then came the great school-supply arms race

Eventually, school supplies became more sophisticated.

Binders became bigger.

Folders became more colorful.

And then came products that practically required a small instruction manual.

But there was something charming about the simplicity of the Pee-Chee.

It didn’t have to protect your entire academic career.

It didn’t need zippers, calculator pockets, pen compartments or a charging station.

It was cardboard.

You put papers in it.

You carried it.

You drew on it.

That’s about it.

And somehow, that was enough.

Why do we remember it?

Here’s the strange thing about nostalgia.

We don’t necessarily remember the important things.

We remember the little things.

The smell of a classroom.

The sound of a school bell.

The particular pencil you used.

The lunch your mother packed.

The sneakers everybody wanted.

The song playing on the radio.

And a yellow folder covered in increasingly ridiculous drawings.

The Pee-Chee folder wasn’t important.

That’s precisely why it became important.

It was part of everyday life.

And everyday life is what nostalgia eventually turns into.

We didn’t know we were making memories

That’s probably the biggest lesson of the Pee-Chee folder.

When we were teenagers, we weren’t thinking:

“Someday I’m going to look back fondly on this inexpensive piece of cardboard.”

Of course not.

We were thinking about getting through algebra.

Or getting out of gym class.

Or talking to our friends.

Or getting home before dinner.

We didn’t know we were living in a period that would eventually become “the good old days.”

Nobody does.

That’s how the good old days work.

They sneak up behind you.

One day you’re carrying a Pee-Chee folder through a school hallway.

Decades later, you see one again and suddenly you’re fifteen.

You remember the hallway.

You remember your friends.

You remember the jokes.

You remember the drawings.

And you realize something:

You weren’t just carrying your homework.

You were carrying a little piece of your life.

Maybe that’s why Pee-Chee still matters

The Pee-Chee folder represents something we’ve gradually lost.

It was an object that invited you to participate.

You didn’t simply consume it.

You modified it.

You personalized it.

You made it yours.

In today’s world, we’re surrounded by sophisticated technology that does almost everything for us.

The Pee-Chee folder couldn’t do anything.

And that’s exactly what made it so much fun.

It gave you a blank space and said:

“Now you figure out what to do with it.”

So here’s to the Pee-Chee folder.

The yellow folder.

The homework carrier.

The accidental diary.

The teenage art studio.

The primitive social network.

The evidence of youthful creativity.

And perhaps one of the most underrated artifacts of growing up in America.

We thought we were just doodling on a school folder.

Turns out, we were leaving ourselves a message from the past.

And all these years later, some of us are still reading it.