Thomas Edison's Note
One day the young Thomas Edison came home and handed a paper to his mother from his school. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to give it only to you.”
His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her son. “ Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.”
After years, Edison’s mother died and he was renowned as one of the greatest inventors of the century. One day he was going through his old family things. Suddenly, he noticed a folded paper in the corner of a drawer. He took it and opened it up.
On the paper was written: “Your son is addled. We won’t let him come to school anymore.”
Thomas Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”
Historical Note:
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio; the seventh and last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. When Edison was seven his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan.
Edison lived here until he struck out on his own at the age of sixteen. Edison had very little formal education as a child, attending school only for a few months.
He was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, but was always a very curious child and taught himself much by reading on his own. This belief in self-improvement remained throughout his life.
Alan /|\