An apple for the teacher American schoolchildren occasionally present an apple to the teacher. Obviously the custom contains an element of bribery1 — you offer sweet fruit to authority figures to “sweeten”2 their disposition3. In schoolchildren’s case, the apple is offered to make their grades more favorable. Therefore, the apple has more or less acquired a corrosive4 reputation and maybe for this reason, in slang English “to apple polish”means“to flatter or fawn”and an apple polisher is a flatterer. But the custom might also be explained as a fair payment for the teacher’s instruction. In the early days of public education, school teachers were not always salaried. Often they would be paid in goods and services, offered by either the school, or the pupils or the parents. . Therefore, the occasional gift of an apple for the teacher in today’s classroom should be a welcome reminder of the era when education was one -to-one and when teaching meant enlightening the students rather than identifying their rankings. Caps and gowns For students, the most exciting moment may be the graduation ceremony5: parents, relatives and friends are invited to the ceremony; all the graduates are wearing black square flat caps and gowns. They all await the president to announce in the end,” now, please move your tassels from right to left. ” The caps and gowns worn by high school and college graduates today are survivors of the everyday dress worn by members of the academic community in medieval Europe. The majority of scholars in the middle ages6 were churchmen, or soon to become so, and their dress was often strictly regulated by the universities where they taught and studied. The standard clerical dress throughout Europe was the long black cope. The original preference for black was changed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as such colors as red, violet and purple came into fashion; but by the renaissance black was back, as the color black symbolized simple and plain, or austere way of life in the sixteenth century. With few exceptions, modern universities keep that ceremonial austerity. The origin of the square flat cap, or mortarboard7, is obscure, though it probably derives from the medieval biretta. Such a tufted square cap is considered the badge of the 024 mastership, and is later adopted by undergraduates and schoolboys. The term mortarboard does not appear in English until the 1850 s. the tassel that graduates transfer from one side to another as a signal of their elevation is an outgrowth of the medieval tuft. The tuft still appears on the modern biretta, worn by bishops throughout the Church of Rome.