CTL, if you google “Chinese ballpoint pen engineering” you will find numerous recent articles on reputable websites (Fortune, Bloomberg, the BBC) about how the Chinese have cracked the apparently difficult engineering problem of making the balls for ballpoint pens. Think about how high tech items are very expensive when first introduced but later become dirt cheap. Once you’ve mastered the process, it’s not expensive to mass produce them.
I was also in elementary school circa 1963. IIRC, at some point the teacher issued stick ball point pens to the students. We weren’t given a choice as to what pens to use. Nobody used fountain pens.