Dear Educator, we live in exciting times!

Pretty much right from the beginning, Apple marketed itself heavily to children and the educational market. Through a happy accident I wound up with what seems to be an untouched Apple Curriculum Materials Kit, from February 1979. From what’s inside, it seems to have been sent out to schools (on request) to persuade them both of the value of having microcomputers in the classroom (as opposed to larger timeshare machines in computer rooms), and promoting the Apple II as the computer that would fit the bill, with a future and plenty of established material already.

In this kit is a cover letter introducing the materials, an outline of why microcomputers and the Apple II in particular is a great step forward for education, some ideas for computer awareness and literacy units for various grade levels, a price list (effective February 15, 1979), a list of dealers, a list of users groups, and a reply card to get on the mailing list.

For grades K-3, it is suggested that the children might like nice friendly games like “Sink-the-ship” or “Shootout” or variations on “Hangman,” while in grades 4-6, it is suggested that children might enjoy destroying submarines.

Unfortunately, the original version of the reply card referred to the “educators mailing list” and it seems that somebody got nervous about sending this out to educators, and behind the scenes of this little card you can just feel the wheels turning.

Hmm. “Place me on your people mailing list” doesn’t sound right, so “educators mailing list” must not be quite right. “Mailing list for educators” would probably be best, except the cards are already printed. And this is 1979 for heaven’s sake, we’re aren’t anywhere close yet to being the most valuable company in the world. We can’t just print a whole new stack. Well, maybe we can salvage it by saying it’s the “educators’ mailing list.” That sounds nice, kind of personalizes it for them. Ok.

And so, somebody drew in apostrophes on the reply card so that it reads “educators’mailing list.” I don’t think these were hand drawn on each card, but it’s possible. It’s hard to say for sure. But it is clearly hand drawn after the fact.

Anyway, the shape that this kit was in was truly remarkable, given that it took nearly 34 years to wind up in my hands. So, here are the scans.