The truth about why the apple stands for teacher

Most people in the United States associate teachers with apples. So, what exactly is it about the fruit that connects it to the nation’s educators? As it turns out, there are several speculations.

Most signs point to the American association of teachers and apples as coming to the country with Scandinavian settlers. Before education became a public institution, families had to pay for their child’s education. For wealthier families, that meant money or favor. For lower class families, it meant paying with goods, such as produce from the family farm. In what appears to be isolated to Denmark and Sweden, it was common practice for students to bring potatoes and apples to their teachers as payment for their education.

Both potatoes and apples were easily grown in surplus numbers and could store for long periods of time. The apple, for example, could stay fresh in a cellar for up to six months. This made them a good offering to a teacher that may want to store their “payments” until a season when fresh produce was less plentiful.

Back then, apples were not the same as those we find at the store today. They were much more bitter than the sweet treat we are accustomed to. Taking a bite out of the fruit was most likely not part of someone’s preferred palate. In fact, most people did not eat them but drank them in form of juice or hard cider. When gifted to teachers, potatoes were intended for eating.

In the early 1900s, as more schools began to receive government funding, many children no longer had to give payment to their teachers. Smaller frontier schools, however, were still left to fend for themselves. Teachers often lived in a schoolhouse that was maintained by the students. During that time, many frontier teachers still relied on community support in exchange for their teaching duties. Bringing food to them continued until it was replaced by way of a cash salary.

So why, then, did we stop giving teachers potatoes? As the story goes, the Bible may have been involved.

Aquila Ponticus, a translator for the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek, chose to translate the “tree of knowledge” in the story of  Adam and Eve to be called an apple tree. In the original text the tree was not named as to what fruit it bore. There is a high probability that Ponticus chose the apple tree to represent the “tree of knowledge” because he was translating in Greek for the Greeks. Greek mythology has long referred to apples as a symbol of desire and destruction, a similar correlation to the tree of knowledge considered good and evil. After his translation, people began to associate the apple with knowledge, which was associated with teachers.

But alcohol may have been involved in the reason why apple gifting won over the potato.

Shortly after colonizers arrived to Jamestown in the early 1600s apples made their debut in America. At the time, water was considered more dangerous than alcohol. While many people got sick from drinking tainted water, most people believed that alcohol could cure sickness. Because of this, apples were commonly used to make hard cider that flowed in large volumes, and several of our Forefathers are directly linked to its popularity.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, citizens began to raise concerns about the consumption of alcohol. Around the same time, most schools were becoming funded by the government and less families were gifting apples. The industry needed a facelift, and clever advertisers saw an opportunity to turn the fruit into a healthy snack. In 1913, Elizabeth Mary Wright wrote “Rustic Speech and Folk-lore,” a book of common kitchen cures. “Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An’ you’ll make the doctor beg his bread,” she wrote. The more popular version is “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Because the fruit was naturally bitter, the apple industry knew they had to modify it so people would eat it. Despite early efforts of the famed John Chapman, or Johnny Appleseed, who was against modifying the fruit by grafting, growers began to cultivate it for sweetness. As more people began to taste the sweeter versions, and as its claim to fame of “keeping the doctor away” became popular, the apple transitioned into a new role.

Now considered healthy, easily grown, cheap, and ripe in September – when kids start a new school year – the apple held onto its former association with teachers. It was considered a well-wish for health and longevity, and a token of appreciation for the livelihood of the teacher. The term “apple-polisher” was first recorded in the late 1920s, referring to a student who would shine their apple in an attempt to be favored by the teacher. The rest, as they say, is history.