Apprenticeships. For most rural children formal education was a prize that had to be postponed or forgone altogether due to the demands of farm life. On farms, where more than 85 percent of all Americans lived as late as 1850, education started early but not in the classroom. Farm children received an apprenticeship education, which involved imitating adults in the skills needed to run a family farm. Youngsters learned by watching and doing. Boys tended the animals, cleared the land, repaired machinery, and helped their fathers with the harvests. Meanwhile girls worked alongside their mothers as they learned to cook, clean, sew, and garden. This education was not offered for the benefit of the children but because necessity required all members of the family to contribute their labor to putting food on the table and clothes on their backs. As a side effect, however...