Why Apples?
- In the 1700s, poor families in Denmark and Sweden gave teachers baskets of apples as payment for their children’s education
- American children were also know to do this on the frontier and later during the Great Depression.
- Here is a line from a song sung by Bing Crosby in 1939: “An apple for the teacher will always do the trick when you don’t know your lesson in arithmetic.”
Education in Early America.
- The first public school in America was established on April 23, 1635, in Boston, Massachusetts and was known as the Boston Latin School.
- Important people who attended were John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
- Benjamin Franklin also attended, but dropped out!
Maria Montessori
- Maria Montessori was born in Italy in 1870, Maria Montessori was exceptional from the beginning. She was the only female attendee of an all-boys school. Maria was one of Italy’s first female doctors, and became interested in education, and in 1907. She opened a child care center in in Rome where she put her her educational theories into practice.
- “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”
On the Frontier
- Laura Ingalls Wilder the author of Little House on the Prairie author (1867–1957) was a teacher. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse which was 12 miles away from the town she lived in in South Dakota.
- “The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.”
Take it from a genius…
So there you have it, a short look at a few teachers in history. Here is one final quote from a teacher, Albert Einstein. “Imagination is everything.” and as a writer and reader, I heartily agree.