BACKGROUND BOOKS
In 1776, a ship from Belfast docked in Baltimore and offered for sale "various Irish commodities, among which are schoolmasters, beef, pork, and potatoes." Such was the ignoble status of teachers in colonial America, notes Willard S. Elsbree, in The Amer- ican Teacher (American, 1939; Green- wood, 1970)) an account of the profes- sion's slow climb to respectability.
The Puritans, and later the Found- ing Fathers, held the idea of educa- tion in high regard. Nonetheless,...