Why are apples associated with teachers? does it have something to do with the way they were once paid?
I’m sure it can’t be anything to do with them being paid apples; I’ve never heard of such a thing and who would do the job for wages like that?
Giving an apple to the teacher is a stereotypical way for a pupil to show kindness or appreciation toward them; I don’t know if the practice was ever really commonplace outside of comics, but an apple as a gift from a child to an adult sort of makes sense; it’s something most children would be able to obtain, perhaps selecting it especially from a tree in the garden, or perhaps just sacrificing an item of lunch from the brown bag.
Sure – might not be bad, pay overall. But it wasn’t only apples.
From the University of Wisconsin Consortium for Policy Research in Education: (http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/CPRE/tcomp/general/teacherpay.php)
So back when teachers were paid ‘room and board’, they could easily have received apples as part of their payment. Most farmers would have had apple trees, and the fruit tends to ripen all at once so there is often a surplus of it at that time. And if several farmers provided apples as their contribution to the teachers board, the over abundance of apples could have led to it becoming a cliche.
I always figured it was a holdover from the payment-in-kind teachers would have received in 18th and 19th C. rural America. BTW, there’s a national teachers award now (I forget its name), and the trophy is a cystal apple.
Yes, teacher, I do know how to spell “crystal.” :smack: