One of America’s best innovations was compulsory public education. To be sure, public education is constantly embroiled in controversy today, but we should not forget the effect on culture and individual lives that a basic, free education had on the development of early America. But in what was once a mostly rural country, you couldn’t educate anyone unless you could get them to the school.
The innovation that brought education to America was the school bus. A short article in Smithsonian, A Brief History of the School Bus, relates the origins of this vehicle and how it has evolved over the decades to meet the changing needs of America’s students.
