100 Fun Facts About Education

Which free online learning site grew out of maths lessons one man gave a cousin over the internet from 2004?

Khan Academy took shape when more relatives wanted Salman Khan's lessons, so the hedge fund analyst began recording them as videos and posting them on YouTube.

Which Soviet launch of 1957 spurred the US National Defense Education Act's push for science teaching?

Sputnik's shock broke years of resistance to federal school aid: within a year Congress was lending money to promising students of science, maths and languages.

Who became the youngest Nobel laureate in history at 17 in 2014, after campaigning for girls' schooling in Pakistan?

Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on her way home from school in 2012, aged 15, and survived to win the Peace Prize two years later.

The English word 'school' descends from the Greek word scholē, which originally meant what?

Leisure was the original sense of scholē: free time that Greeks spent on discussion and lectures, which later gave the word its schoolroom meaning.

What does the 'Ph' in PhD stand for, even when the doctorate is in chemistry or economics?

Philosophy here keeps its original Greek sense of 'love of wisdom', once covering every field outside theology, law and medicine.

Which alphabet did King Sejong present in 1443 because Chinese characters left most Koreans unable to read?

Hangul was made for commoners, so Korea's scholar elite looked down on it and kept writing in Chinese characters for centuries; it became the main script only in the 20th century.

Which six-year-old did federal marshals escort into a whites-only New Orleans school in 1960?

Ruby Bridges spent that year as the only pupil in her class, taught alone by Barbara Henry; her walk to school inspired Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With.

Which Athenian thinker founded a school around 387 BC on a site named for the hero Akademos?

Plato's Academy gave the world the word 'academy', borrowed from the Athenian hero Akademos whose name was linked to the site.

Which 1972 US law bans sex discrimination in federally funded education, transforming women's college sport?

Title IX never mentions sport: its key sentence simply bars sex discrimination in any education programme receiving federal money, yet athletics is where it drew most attention.

In which month does Japan's school year begin, when schools hold their entrance ceremonies for new pupils?

April begins the Japanese academic year, so the long summer break falls mid-year rather than between grades as in most Western countries.

Which academic leave shares its name with the biblical year, one in every seven, when fields had to rest?

Sabbatical leave began at Harvard in 1880 as one year off in every seven for professors, matching the seventh-year rest that Mosaic law gave farmland.

Which academic term takes its name from the Latin for 'six-monthly', via German universities?

Semester joins the Latin sex, 'six', and mensis, 'month', and came through the German half-year university course, yet a semester today typically lasts only 15 to 18 weeks.

Which Arabic word, meaning any place of study, is used in English mainly for Islamic religious schools?

Madrasa simply means a place where learning takes place, so in Arabic it covers secular primary schools and universities alike.

Which US president signed the 1979 law that made the Department of Education a cabinet-level agency?

Jimmy Carter's law split the old Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in two; Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 on a platform of abolishing the new department but never managed it.

Which US president federalised the National Guard in 1957 to get nine Black students into Little Rock's high school?

Dwight Eisenhower used Executive Order 10730 to take the Guard away from Governor Orval Faubus, who had deployed it to keep the students out.

Which 1944 US law paid college tuition for returning Second World War veterans, packing campuses after the war?

The GI Bill was designed by the American Legion, which pushed it through Congress to reward nearly every wartime veteran; it put college within reach of millions.

Which silversmith completed a syllabary in 1821 that let the Cherokee read and write their own language?

Sequoyah never learned to read or write English, yet his symbols for each Cherokee syllable were so easy to learn that the nation was soon printing its own newspaper.

Which country's School of the Air began teaching remote children by radio from a Flying Doctor base in 1951?

Australia's outback homes already had two-way radios for calling the Flying Doctor, so educator Adelaide Miethke proposed using the same network to broadcast lessons.

Which medieval grouping of grammar, logic and rhetoric formed the lower division of the seven liberal arts?

The Trivium led on to the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy; when 'trivial' first appeared in English, in the 15th century, it meant belonging to the trivium.

Which 1957 Dr. Seuss book answered a US debate on early literacy by replacing dull 'Dick and Jane' readers?

The Cat in the Hat was commissioned as a livelier beginners' reader, and Geisel was famously frustrated by the short word list he was allowed to use.

Which educator opened the first Casa dei Bambini for children of a Rome slum district in 1907?

Maria Montessori, one of Italy's first women doctors, developed her methods with intellectually disabled children before trying them on the preschoolers of San Lorenzo.

Which American philosopher set up the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in 1896 to test his ideas?

John Dewey ran the school as a working experiment in his theories, then fell out with the university's administration and left Chicago for Columbia in 1904.

In Germany, which most advanced of the three secondary school types leads to the Abitur university exam?

Gymnasium comes from the Greek for training naked; German borrowed the word for its academic high schools, while English kept only the sports hall.

What are the for-profit private academies called where many South Korean pupils study after regular school?

Hagwon lessons ran so late into the night that Seoul imposed a 10 p.m. curfew on them, which some academies have tried to get around.

Which international body runs PISA, testing 15-year-olds in maths, science and reading in member and non-member nations?

The OECD's PISA rankings have become so politically potent that many governments set national targets by their position in the league table.

Which Chinese dynasty scrapped the 1,300-year-old imperial civil service examination in 1905 as part of late reforms?

The Qing scrapped the exams in a late bid to modernise, yet the dynasty itself fell to revolution only six years later; written tests for office dated back to the Sui.

Which city hosts the oldest continuously operating university in the Americas, founded by decree of Charles V in 1551?

Lima's San Marcos is not the oldest foundation in the Americas: Santo Domingo's university dates from 1538, but it closed twice in the 19th century, breaking its run.

Which English cathedral city's King's School traces its teaching to AD 597, a claim to be the world's oldest school?

Canterbury's school dates its teaching to St Augustine's arrival in 597, which is hard to verify; the 'King' is Henry VIII, whose 1541 charter refounded it.

Which Washington, DC university, chartered under Lincoln in 1864, designs every programme for deaf students?

Gallaudet students shut down the campus in 1988 when a hearing candidate was chosen as president; within a week the board gave way and appointed I. King Jordan, who is deaf.

Which French psychologist published, with Théodore Simon, a 1905 scale for measuring children's intelligence?

Alfred Binet's scale, the first practical intelligence test, grew out of a 1904 ministry commission on schoolchildren with learning difficulties.

Which Swiss psychologist argued that children pass through common stages of cognitive development tied to age?

Jean Piaget got the idea in Paris while testing schoolchildren: he noticed that younger children kept making kinds of mistakes that older ones did not.

Which Brazilian educator's 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed recast teaching as an act of political liberation?

Paulo Freire wrote it in exile: after Brazil's 1964 military coup he was jailed for his adult literacy work and then left the country, returning only in 1979.

Which medieval theologian's name, via his ridiculed followers, gave English the word 'dunce'?

John Duns Scotus's followers defended medieval theology against Renaissance humanists, who mocked the 'Duns men' as hair-splitters until the name came to mean a dullard.

Which Saharan trading city's Sankoré mosque became a centre of learning under the Mali and Songhai empires?

Timbuktu's scholars left a vast trove of manuscripts; when Islamist rebels took the city in 2012, a librarian's network smuggled most of them to safety in Bamako.

Which US senator founded the 1946 international exchange scholarship that still carries his name?

J. William Fulbright proposed paying for it by selling off surplus US war property abroad, turning leftover military stock into scholarships.

Whose birthday, 28 September, is observed as Teachers' Day in Taiwan in honour of a 'model master educator'?

Confucius is honoured on his birthday in Taiwan, while mainland China picked 10 September for its Teachers' Day in 1985 without ever explaining why.

Which Frankish ruler invited Alcuin of York to his court in the 780s to lead a palace school?

Charlemagne took lessons himself and kept writing tablets under his pillow to practise, yet, as his biographer Einhard admits, he began too late in life to succeed.

Which exam from 1944 decided whether English pupils went to a grammar, technical or secondary modern school?

The Eleven-plus was meant to sort pupils three ways, but so few technical schools were built that it became a fierce contest for grammar school places.

Which British university, granted its royal charter in 1969, was created to teach its courses through television and radio broadcasts?

The Open University was championed by Harold Wilson and his minister Jennie Lee as a 'University of the Air'; its first programmes were made in studios the BBC had vacated at Alexandra Palace.

Which school-leaving programme is run by a non-profit founded in Geneva in 1968 and taught in schools worldwide?

The IB Diploma was designed for the children of diplomats and other globally mobile families, who needed one qualification that universities in any country would accept.

Which Manila university, founded by a Spanish friar in 1611, holds the oldest surviving university charter in Asia?

Santo Tomas became a prison camp in the Second World War: Japanese forces interned more than 3,000 enemy civilians, mostly Americans, on its campus from 1942 to 1945.

Which Soviet psychologist coined the 'zone of proximal development', the gap a learner can cross only with help?

Lev Vygotsky died at 37 in 1934; his work was then suppressed under Stalin, and a first collection of his major texts appeared only in 1956.

Which American educator chaired the committee whose 1956 taxonomy ranks learning goals from simple recall upward?

Benjamin Bloom's ladder was revised in 2001, when its six levels were renamed as verbs and 'create' took the top rung above 'evaluate'.

Which Czech educator wrote Orbis Pictus, the 1658 schoolbook that circulated across Europe for a century?

John Amos Comenius is pictured on the 200 koruna banknote, and his Orbis Pictus ('The Visible World in Pictures') taught Latin through labelled images.

In which city did Wilhelm von Humboldt's 1810 university pioneer the research-plus-teaching model copied worldwide?

Berlin's university was established by Frederick William III in 1809 and opened the next year, and its structure was later copied by Johns Hopkins.

Which Italian city lends its name to the preschool approach Loris Malaguzzi developed with parents after 1945?

Reggio Emilia's approach became known abroad through a touring exhibition titled 'A Child has 100 Languages'.

In which Connecticut city did deaf Parisian teacher Laurent Clerc co-found America's first permanent school for the deaf in 1817?

Hartford's school is widely credited as the place where American Sign Language took shape, as the French signs Clerc brought from Paris mixed with the signs his pupils already used.

Which country named 1961 its 'Year of Education' and sent volunteer brigades to teach reading in the countryside?

Cuba's literacy brigades were trained by professional educators before heading out, and many city volunteers saw rural poverty for the first time.

Which American psychologist's 1983 book Frames of Mind argued that people have several independent intelligences?

Howard Gardner's theory holds that humans process information in several relatively independent ways, an idea schools have used to justify varied teaching styles.

Which English boarding school founded by A. S. Neill in 1921 lets pupils choose which lessons, if any, to attend?

Summerhill faced closure in 1999 over its optional lessons, but the government's case collapsed at a tribunal, and pupils held a school meeting in the courtroom to accept the settlement.

What is halted across South Korea during the English listening section of the Suneung university exam?

Aircraft take-offs and landings are suspended so that jet noise cannot spoil the listening section. Stock markets also open late on exam day.

Which US president's epitaph mentions founding the University of Virginia but not his presidency?

Thomas Jefferson chose just three achievements for his gravestone: the Declaration of Independence, Virginia's statute for religious freedom and the university. Being president did not make the list.

Which university was founded in 1209 by scholars who quit Oxford after a row with townspeople?

Cambridge owes its existence to a hanging: Oxford's town authorities executed scholars over a local woman's death, and their colleagues left the city.

Which California university did a railroad magnate and his wife found in memory of their only child?

Stanford is formally Leland Stanford Junior University, named for the couple's son, who died of typhoid at 15.

Which writer of Emile, a treatise on ideal education, put his own children in an orphanage?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw Emile banned and publicly burned in Paris and Geneva in the year it appeared, because of a chapter on religion.

Which composer's Pomp and Circumstance march did Yale turn into America's graduation tune?

Edward Elgar was at Yale in 1905 to collect an honorary degree. In Britain the same melody is sung as Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms.

Which future conqueror did Aristotle tutor from the age of 13 in a temple at Mieza?

Alexander the Great's lessons came at a price: his father Philip agreed to rebuild Aristotle's home town of Stageira, which Philip himself had razed.

Which subject was Tennessee teacher John Scopes tried for teaching in the 1925 Monkey Trial?

Evolution was banned from Tennessee classrooms by the Butler Act. Scopes was fined $100, but the verdict was later overturned on a technicality.

Which New Hampshire teacher beat 11,000 applicants for a seat on Space Shuttle Challenger?

Christa McAuliffe had planned to teach two lessons from orbit. Her backup, fellow teacher Barbara Morgan, finally reached space in 2007.

Which French ruler made the baccalauréat a school-leaving exam, still taken over two centuries later?

Napoleon Bonaparte launched the modern 'bac' in March 1808, though the name goes back to degrees awarded by France's medieval universities.

Which Italian city is home to Europe's oldest university, where teaching began around 1088?

Bologna's university was shaped by its students, who formed guilds and hired the scholars who taught them.

Which Moroccan city is home to al-Qarawiyyin, often called the world's oldest university?

Fez's al-Qarawiyyin began as a mosque in the 850s, founded by tradition by Fatima al-Fihri, a wealthy merchant's daughter. Guinness World Records has cited it as the oldest university still operating.

Which German educator coined the word kindergarten for his play institute at Bad Blankenburg?

Friedrich Fröbel also designed what his pupils played with: sets of geometric building blocks known as Froebel gifts.

Which thinker's first Waldorf school opened for children of Stuttgart cigarette-factory workers?

Rudolf Steiner started the school at the request of Emil Molt, owner of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette company, which is how the movement got its name.

Which Greek city-state took boys from their families at seven to train in the agoge?

Sparta housed its agoge boys in barracks or out in the open, with little contact with home, to raise soldiers loyal to the state.

Which kingdom pioneered compulsory primary schooling with a royal decree of 1763?

Prussia's decree came from Frederick the Great, more than a century before France and England made school compulsory in the 1880s.

Which Common School reformer was the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education?

Horace Mann's Massachusetts model, including normal schools to train professional teachers, was adopted in some form by most other states.

Which city's Latin School, teaching since 1635, counts Benjamin Franklin among its dropouts?

Boston Latin School taught five signers of the Declaration of Independence, among them John Hancock and Franklin, who left without finishing.

Which Victorian novelist backed ragged schools after an 1843 visit to one in London's Field Lane?

Charles Dickens drew on the visit for A Christmas Carol, where the ragged children Want and Ignorance shelter in a ghost's robes.

Which English boarding school did Henry VI found in 1440 to give 70 poor boys a free education?

Eton College still reserves one boarding house for 70 King's Scholars, who win their places by examination.

The square graduation cap is nicknamed the mortarboard after a flat tool used in which trade?

Bricklaying lent the name because the cap's flat square top resembles the board masons load with mortar. The cap itself may descend from the biretta worn by Catholic clergy.

Which Latin phrase for a graduate's old university was first a title of Roman goddesses such as Ceres?

Alma mater means 'nourishing mother'. The title passed from pagan goddesses to the Virgin Mary before universities adopted it in the 17th century.

Which title for an American class's top-ranked graduate comes from the Latin for 'to say farewell'?

Valedictorian reflects the top student's traditional job at graduation: giving the final speech of the ceremony, the class's goodbye.

Which subject completes the traditional 'three Rs' of basic schooling, alongside reading and writing?

Arithmetic rounds off a trio with a joke built in: of the three so-called Rs, only reading actually starts with the letter.

In STEM, the acronym America's National Science Foundation adopted in 2001, what does the E stand for?

Engineering sits third in STEM, an order the foundation chose in place of its clumsier earlier acronym, SMET.

Which Ivy League university was founded just after the Civil War, long after its seven colonial-era rivals?

Cornell is the youngest Ivy. The league's name only became official in 1954, when the eight schools formed an athletic conference.

Which US college admissions exam did a commission under psychologist Carl Brigham devise in 1926?

SAT once stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test, but in 1997 the College Board announced that the letters no longer stand for anything.

Which exams replaced the Higher School Certificate in 1951 and are still taken by English 18-year-olds?

A-levels are unusually narrow: students normally take three or four subjects in the first year of sixth form, and most finish with three.

Which Paris-based UN agency promotes education worldwide and also designates World Heritage Sites?

UNESCO was founded in 1945 as successor to a League of Nations committee whose members had included Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.

Which EU student exchange scheme, launched in 1987, shares its name with a Renaissance scholar?

Erasmus honours the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus and doubles as an acronym: European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students.

Which Oxford postgraduate award was founded in 1902 to promote unity among English-speaking nations?

Rhodes Scholarship money comes from the estate of Cecil Rhodes, whose colonialist legacy has prompted calls to rethink the award.

Which Nordic country has served free hot lunches in all its elementary schools since 1948?

Finland's parliament ordered the free lunches in 1943, in the middle of the war, and gave every elementary school until 1948 to start serving them.

Which country opened the first folk high school in 1844, inspired by the pastor N. F. S. Grundtvig?

Denmark's folk high schools aimed at popular education instead of formal qualifications, though that first school at Rødding mostly drew civil servants and rich farmers.

Which country's school year opens on 1 September with Knowledge Day and a ceremonial First Bell?

Russia inherited Knowledge Day from the USSR, which created the holiday by decree in 1984, and many other former Soviet republics still mark it.

Which country's bar-model method for primary maths has been adopted by American and British schools?

Singapore's approach covers fewer topics in greater depth, moving each idea from concrete objects to pictures to abstract symbols.

Which country holds the ruins of Nalanda, a great Buddhist monastic university burned around 1200?

India's Nalanda had a renowned library whose Sanskrit texts were carried to East Asia by pilgrims such as Xuanzang.

Which exam, suspended for a decade during the Cultural Revolution, decides entry to universities in China?

Gaokao exams returned in late 1977 on Deng Xiaoping's order. In the years without them, some 17 million young people were sent to live and work alongside farmers.

Which capital is home to Al-Azhar, a university founded by the Fatimid Caliphate around 970?

Cairo's Al-Azhar began as a centre of Islamic learning where students studied law, logic, grammar and how to calculate the phases of the moon.

Which American writer's 'Blue-Back Speller' taught generations of children to spell and read?

Noah Webster's speller had sold some 60 million copies by 1890, yet his landmark dictionary of 1828 managed only 2,500.

Which paddle-shaped primer taught children their letters from a single sheet under a translucent cover?

Hornbook sheets were shielded by a thin layer of translucent animal horn, and the paddle often hung from a cord at the child's waist.

Which American schoolbook series sold about 120 million copies between 1836 and 1960?

McGuffey Readers sold on a scale usually reserved for the Bible. William McGuffey compiled the first four books and his brother Alexander added the fifth and sixth.

Which TV show with Jim Henson's Muppets was created to prepare low-income children for school?

Sesame Street was dreamed up by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, who wanted to put television's addictive pull to good use.

Which American patriotic text did Francis Bellamy compose for a children's magazine in 1892?

The Pledge of Allegiance appeared in The Youth's Companion for a nationwide Columbus Day celebration in schools. Its reference to God was added only in 1954.

Which educator, born into slavery, became the first leader of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute in 1881?

Booker T. Washington had his students build the place themselves, making bricks and putting up classrooms and barns as part of their training.

Which Kansas city's school board lost the 1954 Supreme Court case that outlawed segregated schools?

Topeka's board had refused to enrol Oliver Brown's daughter at the school nearest her home, sending her by bus to a Black school farther away.

In Tinker v. Des Moines, what had students worn to school to protest against the Vietnam War?

Black armbands won the students a landmark 1969 ruling: the Supreme Court held that a school could not punish the protest without evidence that it disrupted discipline.

Which 12th-century Paris lecturer's career was cut short by his love affair with his student Héloïse?

Peter Abelard and Héloïse had a son she named Astrolabe, after the astronomical instrument. Her furious uncle later had the teacher attacked and castrated.

Which subject did Jaime Escalante teach in East Los Angeles, a story told in the film Stand and Deliver?

Calculus made headlines in 1982 when 18 of his students passed the Advanced Placement exam and the testers suspected cheating. Twelve retook the test and had their scores reinstated.

Which tutoring chain did a maths teacher start in 1958 after being inspired by teaching his son?

Kumon carries the surname of its Japanese founder, Toru Kumon, who opened his first maths centre in Osaka Prefecture after working with his son Takeshi.

Which university, founded in 1636, is named for a Puritan clergyman who left it his library?

Harvard took its name in 1639, the year after John Harvard died leaving the young college £780, half his estate, and his scholar's library.