Not Another Apple for the Teacher: Hundreds of Fascinating Facts from the World of Teaching - Brossura

Barrett, Erin; Mingo, Jack

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1573247235 ISBN 13: 9781573247238

Casa editrice: Conari Pr, 2002

Riassunto

From devastating remarks made by teachers ("Addled, backward dunce" said about young Thomas Edison) to the rich and famous on campus (William Randolph Hearst kept a pet alligator at Harvard), this is a spirited and humorous collection of facts about teachers and students.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo have authored 20 books, including How the Cadillac Got Its Fins, The Couch Potato Guide to Life and the bestselling Just Curious Jeeves. They have written articles for many major periodicals including The New York Times, Salon, Reader's Digest, and The Washington Post and have generated more than 30,000 questions for trivia games and game shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Their website, which lists their "This Day in History" nationallysyndicated column.

Along with Erin Barrett, Jack Mingo published over 20 books, including Random Kinds of Factness (Conari, 2005, over 20,000 copies). He is a fulltime writer specializing in somewhat offbeat trivia books. In his spare time, Jack keeps six hives and half a million bees in his Alameda (Bay Area) backyard and sells their honey at local farmers markets. His bees produce 650 pounds of honey per year (59 gallons, 472 pint jars).

Dalla quarta di copertina

From devastating remarks made by teachers ("Addled, backward dunce", said about young Thomas Edison) to the rich and famous on campus (William Randolph Hearst kept a pet alligator at Harvard), this is a spirited and humorous collection of facts about teachers and students.

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Not Another Apple for the Teacher!

Hundreds of Fascinating Facts from the World of Teaching

By ERIN BARRETT, JACK MINGO

Red Wheel/ Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2002 Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-723-8

Contents

A Word from the Authors
one Out of the Halls and into the Classroom
two Don't Know Much about History
three First in Its Class
four Where the Word Things Are
five Past Lives
six Before They Were Famous
seven Tools of the Trade
eight Teacher Appreciation
nine Fightin' Words
ten Teaching by the Numbers
eleven Educational Follies
twelve Life on Campus
thirteen Worldly Wise
fourteen The Wild World of School Sports
fifteen Truer Words Were Never Spoken
sixteen Teachers on Page, Stage, and Screen
seventeen An Alternative Education
eighteen Lunches, Libraries, and Bus Drivers
Acknowledgments
Selected References
About the Authors

CHAPTER 1

Out of the Halls and into the Classroom

"Life is like high school with money."

—Frank Zappa

During the days of the one-room schoolhouse, teachers were normally offered roomand board on a rotating basis at the homes of their students; male teachers wereoften threatened, beaten, and run out of town for sport by older boys who didn'twant to be in class. Classes could include as many as forty students of allages, with older students often recruited to teach the younger ones.

Teachers in the 1800s used to use tongue twisters to teach articulation. Readalong with some of these vintage lessons:

Some shun sunshine. Do you shun sunshine?

The big black bear bled blood.

The sixth sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

Three gray geese sat on the green grass grazing.

She's so selfish she should sell shellfish shells.

Sheep shouldn't sleep in a shack.

One old Oxford ox opening oysters.

The skunk thunk the stump stunk.

"I see the mind of a five-year-old as a volcano with two vents: destructivenessand creativeness."

—Sylvia Ashton-Warner

"The fellow in charge of Sumerian language studies said 'Why didn't you speakSumerian?' and caned me. My teacher said: 'Your handwriting is unsatisfactory'and caned me. I began to hate the scribal arts."

—Mesopotamian student, circa 1700 B.C.E., found on a clay tablet in Nippur, Iraq

The Hebrew word musar means both "education" and "corporal punishment."

The classic school desk, with a sloping top and a storage space below, is basedon the work desks used by monks during the Middle Ages for transcribing andilluminating manuscripts.

Not Another Apple!

"An apple is an excellent thing—until you have tried a peach."

—George du Maurier (1834–1896)

Giving an apple to the teacher as a symbolic gesture came from a time whenAmerican teachers were often paid in farm goods by cash-poor townspeople. Itwasn't easy to be a teacher—many had to take after-hours jobs as choir leaders,gravediggers, or bartenders in order to earn a decent living.

According to a recent national poll, students and their parents gave 26,367,513apple-related gifts to teachers last year. Of these gifts, nearly a third(8,076,028) were real apples—the rest (18,291,485) were apple-themed tchotchkes—coffeemugs, paperweights, picture frames, stationery, fridge magnets, andothers.

The average K–12 teacher gets 7.06 apple-related gifts per year: 2.16 actualapples and 4.9 apple-themed decorations. Elementary school teachers get nearlytwice as many apple gifts as middle school teachers and more than five times asmany as high school teachers.

The highest number of apples received by one teacher last year? That recordprobably goes to fifth-grade teacher Paul Kueffner of Cider Mill School inWilton, Connecticut. To teach his kids about the old cider mill that gave hisschool its name, Kueffner convinced his PTA to buy a small cider press. Hisstudents gave him 2,200 apples.

Kueffner was unusual in that he actually asked for apple gifts. Most teachersbecome ambivalent about them over time. One respondent amassed a collection ofmore than a thousand apple knickknacks over a long career. Most, however, saidthey'd prefer almost anything to another apple gift.

What did teachers in the poll say they'd like instead? Books, "a smile from astudent," teaching supplies, an appreciative note, student photos, candles, giftcertificates for movies, massages, and restaurants, "chew toys for my dog,"flowers, chocolate, coffee, "a good red wine (preferably Bordeaux)," money,whiskey, "plane tickets to exotic locations," and "a millionaire."

Of all the farm goods once given to teachers, why has it become "an apple forthe teacher" instead of an egg, a tomato, a sack of wheat, or a hamhock? Afterextensive research, we can say with relative certainty that nobody seems toknow. Here are some educated guesses:

• Apples are cheap and can be eaten without any preparation. They can also begiven in the morning without going bad by the end of the school day (as opposedto, say, "a quart of milk for the teacher").

• Students are wishing teachers good health, as in the apple a day that keepsdoctors away.

• Apples and education are linked in the public mind because of a Bible story. Anapple is what granted Adam and Eve knowledge to discern good from evil.Unfortunately, that knowledge also got them expelled from the Garden of Eden.The disturbing thing about this interpretation is that it implies a comparisonbetween a teacher and the snake that forever ruined humanity's innocenthappiness on Earth. Such a thought, of course, is completely preposterous.

"Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest foolmay ask more than the wisest man can answer."

—C. C. Colton

They don't name textbooks like they used to. If you were in a nineteenth-centuryclassroom, you might find yourself teaching from a book called The EnglishReader, Or Pieces in Prose and Poetry: Selected From the Best Writers: Designedto Assist Young Persons to Read With Propriety and Effect, to Improve TheirLanguage and Sentiments, and to Inculcate Some of the Most Important Principlesof Piety and Virtue: With a Few Preliminary Observations on the Principles ofGood Reading, by one Lindley Murray.

By the time you told your students to get out their textbooks, class would beover. How about: Osgood's Progressive Fifth Reader: Embracing a System ofInstruction in the Principles of Elocution, and Selections for Reading andSpeaking From the Best English and American Authors: Designed for the Use ofAcademies and the Highest Classes in Public and Private Schools, by LuciusOsgood?

"The secret to speed-reading is moving your lips faster."

—Charles Schultz

It's not just a popular stereotype: Most schoolhouses in the 1800s really werepainted red. Why was that? Probably for the same reason that barns were—red painthid dirt easily and was easy to make without having to resort to expensivestore-bought paint.

How do you make "Schoolhouse Red" paint? Start with skim milk and mix in somelinseed oil and lime for the base. Scrap off the rust from some old farm toolsand put it in for the red color. Perfect!

"Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated untilthey acquire some sense."

—William Lyon Phelps, renowned author and Yale professor (1856–1943)

In 1921, reflective of anti-Cajun prejudice, the state of Louisiana specificallypassed laws to prevent any teacher from speaking "Cajun French" in publicschools.

O soft! What light on yonder student breaks? The Shakespeare play assigned mostoften in classrooms is Romeo and Juliet.

Both Socrates and Plato thought that reading was a poor way of learning. Theybelieved that a student learned more from a good speaker than from a goodwriter.

"One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get oldenough to give you presents they make at school."

—Robert Byrne

Jigsaw puzzles got their start not as an outlet for entertainment but as ateaching tool. Originally, eighteenth-century teachers used puzzles to teachgeography, and students had to put together states or countries that had beencut out of a map. Puzzles became so popular that they were broadened to teachsubjects like zoology and the alphabet as well.

The "Physical Sciences" technically consist of Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy,Chemistry, and Earth Sciences.

If you live in Missouri, you likely know that the state fossil is the crinoid,sometimes called the "sea lily." This odd, plant-like creature inhabited theregion millions of years ago, leaving a large quantity of fossils in the state.You may not know, however, that if it weren't for a group of schoolkids in 1989lobbying and pressuring the Missouri General Assembly, the crinoid might neverhave gained official status.

Do you remember William Figueroa? Probably not. He was the twelve-year-old whonationally embarrassed Dan Quayle during a spelling bee when he spelled outpotato without an e. "I knew he was wrong, but since he's the vice-president, Iwent and put an e on. Afterward I went to a dictionary and there was potato likeI spelled it." Figueroa went on to make money from the experience incommentating, sales, and appearances at places like the Democratic NationalConvention and the David Letterman show. Quayle never really lived down hisgaff.

"He who has imagination but no education has wings but no feet."

—Old French proverb

In the United States, gold is used to make class rings more often than any otherpiece of jewelry.

In 1990, when preschoolers were polled about who should run for president, Mr.Rogers, of the children's show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, was their first choice.Sometimes the greatest wisdom comes from the youngest among us.

"There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can't finda parent who will admit that it is his child."

—Thomas Bailey, Florida's Superintendent of Schools

A researcher asked kids which season is most boring, and 53 percent said,"Summer." Apparently kids prefer school to just hanging around the house.

CHAPTER 2

Don't Know Much about History

It was the written word that made school as we know it possible. Before that,young people had to repeat orally whatever they wanted to learn, and they couldlearn no more than their teacher had memorized.

In 1500 B.C.E., Semitic tribes developed alphabets that corresponded to vocalsounds, like ours, which made words easier to sound out. Certain Hebrew tribesbegan teaching reading and writing to everybody in the tribe, not just theaffluent—boys in the schools, girls at home—so that all could read the sacredbooks.

"Learning without thought is labor lost."

—Confucius

Confucius practiced what he preached. He wrote that he never refused any sincerestudent, "even if he came to me on foot, with nothing more to offer as tuitionthan a package of dried meat."

Unfortunately, there's no evidence that the rest of China followed the sage'sexample. It wasn't until centuries later that peasant boys were given aguaranteed chance at an education.

Socrates, who died in 399 B.C.E., believed that everybody already has trueknowledge within their brain somewhere. His teaching style, asking a series ofprobing questions, was designed to bring that preexisting knowledge toconsciousness.

Socrates' most famous student was Plato. Plato's most famous student wasAristotle. Aristotle's most famous student was Alexander the Great, who used allof that accumulated knowledge to go on a military rampage, conquering prettymuch all of the known world.

"The legislator should direct his attention to the education of youth. As acitizen the student should be molded to suit the form of government under whichhe lives."

—Aristotle

Aristotle started a school he called the Lyceum. Everyone else called it thePeripatetic ("Walking Around") School, however, because teachers led discussionswhile strolling absentmindedly around the grounds.

The Romans took public speaking seriously, more seriously than most other schoolsubjects. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, a Roman oratory teacher in the '70s and'80s C.E., wrote a famous twelve-volume textbook called Institutio Oratoria, fortraining public speakers from infancy to adulthood.

Compare the educational systems in ancient Athens and Sparta:

• In Athens, all sons of free citizens were given an education.

• However, this was less than universal education, because free citizens made uponly about a third of the city's population, and girls were not provided formaleducation (though many were tutored at home).

• In Sparta, in contrast, boys and girls were both given schooling ... but unlikeAthens' more rounded curriculum, Sparta's schools taught mostly warrior skillsto the boys, and physical education to the girls, to make them healthy mothersof future soldiers.

• Some of the character-building skills taught to Spartan youths included killing,stealing, and successfully deceiving others.

In 100 B.C.E., Rome built the most extensive school system seen up to that time.Their schools were modeled after Athens' liberal arts curriculum, and theschools taught both boys and girls.

Education was so distrusted as "pagan" by the early Christian church that at thebeginning of the third century, anyone wanting to teach school was forbidden inthe church. Schoolteachers were not even allowed to be baptized.

Julian, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 361 to 363 C.E., was the firstleader to mandate state examinations for teachers.

Theodosius II, who ruled from 408 to 450 C.E., made it a state offense for anyteacher to teach without a state license, and then made sure that the licenseswent to people who conformed to the orthodoxy he supported. Not that anythinglike this could ever happen today, mind you.

Knight school in the Middle Ages was informal and consisted of some reading,writing, and figuring, but also such valuable subjects as lute playing, chess,and chivalry.

In the Middle Ages, Western European education at its basic—or elementary—levelwas divided into three categories of study collectively called the Trivium,consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Higher grades of education weredivided into four categories. These were geometry, astronomy, basic math, andmusic, collectively called the Quadrivium.

In the 1100s, the first modern universities were developed in Europe. There weretwo models of university that developed about the same time. The University ofParis model, followed in most of Northern Europe, consisted of a guild ofteachers who ran the school and recruited students into it. The University ofBologna model, followed in most of Southern Europe, consisted of guilds ofstudents who ran the school, hired the professors, and set their workingconditions.

University professors in Europe during the Middle Ages taught their lessonsorally, so literacy was not a college prerequisite. In fact, many studentsdecided it was best to put off learning to read and write until after they hadgotten college out of the way.

The "dame schools" of England were often the only elementary schools availablefor village children in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were runby women who taught out of their homes for a small fee.

Early American colonists followed the "dame school" model. Only about one in tenchildren went to school—the rest became apprentices.

There probably wouldn't be a network of Catholic parochial schools in the UnitedStates if the Protestants in power had been a little more tolerant (or keptreligion out of the schools completely). From 1830 to 1850 a million Catholics,many from Ireland, immigrated to the eastern seaboard. They were the target ofsuspicion and prejudice from the Protestants already living there, who passedlaws to ensure that the public schools used the King James Bible, Protestantprayers, and Protestant interpretations of God and scriptures.

The Maine Supreme Court ruled that a school board had the constitutional rightto expel a Catholic or any other child for refusing to read from the assignedversion of the Bible. In Philadelphia, the school board agreed to let Catholicchildren read from the church-approved Douay Bible, but that was met bydenunciations from Protestant pulpits, riots, the burning of Catholic churches,and several deaths. Finally, the Catholic hierarchy decided that starting theirown schools was the only answer to keeping their children safe and in the faith.

New York had the first state board of education, established in 1794.

Kindergarten seems self-evident now, but it was a hard sell when FriedrichFroebel first suggested it. The idea of encouraging the growth of a childthrough action and play seemed like a radical idea at the time. In 1851 thePrussian government banned all kindergartens in Prussia—it didn't lift the banuntil nine years later.

The Reform Movement of the midnineteenth century in America didn't just work forthe abolition of slavery and better conditions for prisoners, laborers, and theinstitutionalized. Reformers also pushed for women's rights and for a freenational public education system.

Forty-three educators in Philadelphia founded the National Teachers Associationin 1857, which later became the National Education Association (NEA), "toelevate the character and advance the interests of the teaching profession, andto promote the cause of popular education in the United States." That's great,but the organization undercut its goals by refusing to grant memberships towomen until 1866. It also excluded teachers in private schools.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Not Another Apple for the Teacher! by ERIN BARRETT, JACK MINGO. Copyright © 2002 Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/ Weiser, LLC.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Conari Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2002
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1573247235
• ISBN 13: 9781573247238
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 224
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile