Legendary Teachers Through the Times Quiz

Answer: Textbook set

William McGuffey grew up in Ohio and became a teacher at the young age of 14, working with students in one-room schools. By 1826, he graduated with honors from Washington College and took a job as a professor at Miami University.

While teaching there, he earned a reputation as a lecturer on moral subjects and his friend Harriet Beecher Stowe recommended him to write a reader, or textbook, for young students. He completed four of these "McGuffey Readers" and his brother wrote two more. The set of textbooks were designed to become progressively more challenging with each volume and taught everything from phonics to sentence structure to advanced vocabulary. He wrote about moral and spiritual topics as well in the books. They were hugely popular and it is estimated 120 million copies were sold between 1836 and 1960, putting it the same category with the "Bible" and "Webster's Dictionary". The "McGuffey Readers" played a big role in American history and many people credited their success in learning to the books.

William McGuffey died in 1873 and the Miami University School of Education is named in his honor.

Answer: Calculus

Jaime Escalante was the oldest of five children and grew up in Bolivia. In 1950, he made a sudden decision to enter the Normal School of La Paz where students learned about the teaching profession. He focused on math and physics. After he received a postgraduate degree and got married, he and his new family moved to the United States. He had to work in janitorial jobs while he studied English in order to apply for a job in his new country. He succeeded in gaining another math degree in 1973 and applied for a job as a teacher in Los Angeles.

In 1974, he was assigned Garfield High School to the lowest level of math class with unruly students with attitude problems. He began to motivate them with the idea that passing an Advanced Placement test could help them get a scholarship and then a better life. He believed that even if ONE student passed it would be an improvement. In 1978, five students took the test and two passed. In 1981, fourteen out of fifteen children in his class passed. The Testing Service claimed they were cheating and the re-take and ensuing media attention was the subject of the movie "Stand and Deliver".

By 1987, only four schools in the whole country had more students passing the AP calculus test than Garfield. Escalante retired in 1998 and was awarded multiple honors for his work in teaching not just a subject to students, but getting them to embrace it and move forward to new opportunities and careers.

Answer: Booker T Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born a slave in Virginia in 1856. After his family was emancipated, they moved to West Virginia where he worked to support his family and, simultaneously, studied at a local university. After graduation, he taught for several years in schools and colleges.

In 1881, he was asked to head a new teaching school for Blacks at Tuskegee, in Alabama. When he arrived, he found there was no land or buildings, and not much money. Washington forged ahead and began recruiting support and money from local Whites. By 1888, it had grown from a one room church shanty to 540 acres with over 500 students learning educational foundations and life skills. Washington stressed that the best interest for Black people in the post-Reconstruction years could be realized through higher education and economic security.

When he died in 1915, he left behind a legacy of being a bridge between the races, an accomplished author (including his autobiography "Up From Slavery") and the founder of a university with over 1,500 enrolled students.

Answer: State of Palestine

Hanan Al Hroub grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, in the State of Palestine. When she got out of high school, she had hoped to go on to higher education but the universities all closed during an uprising that lasted several years. She, instead, got married and had five children. In 2000, she resumed her education part-time at a local university. That year, her husband was shot in the shoulder and two of her children were shot at and horrified. When Hanan realized the teachers were not dealing with the situation, she vowed to become a teacher herself.

She graduated in five years and went into the school system. Providing all the tools herself, she uses teaching methods and games to get children to work together, build trust, and yearn for positive awards for good behavior. Her slogan is "No To Violence" and she helps the children deal with the ongoing traumas around them. She won $1 million, along with the honor of being selected from 8,000 applicants, and plans to use it to help others in her country become teachers.

Answer: False

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, student of Plato, and teacher of Alexander the Great. He was born in 384 BC and at age 17, lived in Athens were he lived for twenty years in the Academy of Plato. In 348 BC he began to travel in the area and carried out extensive research in zoology. Five years later, he was summoned to Macedonia to be the tutor of Alexander the Great. When his pupil graduated, Aristotle founded his own school called the Lyceum of Aristotle.

It is during these years that he published his views that human nature, habit, and reason were all elements that needed to be cultivated in an educational process. He stressed a balance between practical and theoretical studies and promoted science, reading, writing, math, history, literature, and physical exercises. Aristotle's views led others to see that education is a foundation upon on which an entire stable society is based upon.

Answer: Females

Emma Hart was born in 1787 in Connecticut and was the sixteenth of seventeen children who were all encouraged to read and learn. By age 17, Emma was teaching in a local school and at age 20 was a principal. When she became to married to Dr. Willard, she witnessed from his nephew how different the curriculum was from males to females. She took it upon herself to learn geometry, philosophy, and higher mathematics. In 1818, Willard further outlined her ideas for women's education and proposed a women's seminary be founded and treated like the men's facilities. Because, at this time, women were not seen as the same intellectual equal as men, she was ridiculed.

Finally, she received support from the New York governor and she opened the Troy Female Seminary in 1821. This was the first school in the United States to offer higher education to women. The Seminary was a success and by 1831 it had over 300 students. Besides running the school, Emma wrote many textbooks on history and geography. Until her death in 1845, Emma remained close to the school and talked about it on her lectures around the world.

Answer: The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch was born in 1960 in Maryland and graduated with a computer science degree in 1982. He then received a doctor in the same area from Carnegie Mellon. By 1997, he was back at Carnegie as a professor and deeply involved in the Design and Human Interaction curriculum. He taught classes and developed a software called "Alice" which helped children make movies while painlessly learning computer science. He had been asked by the university to do a speech about what he would do if he found out he had a limited amount of time to live. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to anyone but him and his family, he had just learned he had pancreatic cancer with a limited time span.

Randy went ahead and did the speech in September of 2007. In it, he spoke of the value of honest feedback, placing people before things, rising to the occasion, dealing with disappointments, and accepting all reality. The speech went viral and was watched by millions around the world. He was named one of the most influential people of 2008 by "TIME" magazine and the book about the lecture, in 2007, became a bestseller. Randy died of the cancer in July of 2008 at aged 47.

Answer: Helen Keller

Anne Sullivan was born in 1866 in Massachusetts. Anne was very sick when she was 5 and became almost totally blind. Then her mother died when Anne was 8 and her father soon left the family. That left Anne and her brother in an almshouse where her brother soon died. At 14, she begged to go to school and was allowed to attend Perkins School for the Blind. It was at Perkins that she learned finger spelling and also got a surgery to restore some sight.

In 1887, she went to Alabama to become a governess to a six year old blind and deaf girl named Helen Keller. Helen was undisciplined and moody and had no way to communicate with anyone. Anne patiently showed Helen the manual alphabet and opened a whole new world for the girl. Helen showed a very high intellect and the duo moved on through various schools, ending at Radcliffe College were Anne spelled out every lecture to Helen and studied with her for hours. After graduation, the two toured the world. Anne became friends with Charlie Chaplin, was called a "miracle worker" by Mark Twain, and proved to people that education applies to everybody.

Answer: True

Friedrich Froebel was born in 1782 in Germany. His mother died when he was a baby and he grew up in a very unhappy childhood. Because he often spent time outdoors and alone, he became a fan of reading and nature. In 1805, he was hired as a teacher in Frankfurt and was influenced by an educator there who promoted respect for children and a welcoming to children of all monetary backgrounds.

Froebel came to believe that play is a necessary element in developing a "whole" education for a child. This went against the current view that play was a form of laziness. In 1837, he opened the first kindergarten. He gave it the name "garden of children" because he felt that children are like flowers that need care and are glorious in groups. His unique school used play, games, songs, and stories. It also stressed "self-activity" and interaction with nature. Froebel died in 1852 with a legacy of over 31 of his kindergartens in German city states.

Answer: Montessori

Maria Montessori was born in 1870 in Chiaravelle, Italy. Beginning in early childhood, she lived in Rome, where she spent much time in museums and libraries. Breaking barriers, at age 13 she entered an all-boys school to prepare to learn engineering. She changed her mind, however, and went to medical school where she gradated in 1896 making her one of the few women Italian physicians. Maria dabbled in psychiatry and then turned her attention to education and educational theory. She began to question some of the prevailing attitudes of the time.

In 1900, she was appointed a co-director of a training school for special education teachers. Her methods she supported turned out to be a success and in 1907 she opened her own first school called Casa dei Bambini. She designed learning materials and a classroom that fostered a child's desire to learn and gave them more freedom than simply listening to a lecture. This "Montessori Method" began to catch on and soon her schools were being established around the world. She spent the rest of her life telling people about the methodology and campaigning for women's rights. She died peacefully in 1952.