Alexander’s mother taught him at home, but when he turned ten years old,
his parents sent him to school because they thought he needed a more formal
education. Although Aleck was a smart and bright student, he didn't like school.
He liked to read, but he didn't like being told what to learn. Graham and his two
brothers assisted Melville in public demonstrations in Visible Speech, beginning
in 1862. At the same time he enrolled as a student-teacher at Weston House, a
boys’ school near Edinburgh where he taught music and speech in exchange for
being a student of other subjects. Alexander Graham Bell only spent one year at a
Weston House, and two years at Edinburgh's Royal High School (from which he
graduated at 14), and attended a few lectures at University College in London, but
he was largely family-trained and self-taught. Never adept with his hands, Bell
had the good fortune to discover and inspire Thomas Watson, a young repair
mechanic and model maker, who assisted him enthusiastically in devising an
apparatus for transmitting sound by electricity.
When Alexander was fifteen, his grandfather, frustrated with Alexander's
lack of enjoyment in school, asked him to live with him in London. He wanted to
teach Aleck to think, and he stressed the importance of education. "Ignorance is a
crime because it isolates people," he told Aleck. “It separates them from their
own thoughts and stops them from sharing their thoughts with others."
The Telephone
