Melamed and cheder מלמד וחדר

Once the father taught, and a child with no father did not learn at all. Then teachers were set up in Jerusalem, and boys of about sixteen were brought there, and little came of it. And then Rabbi Yehoshua ben Gamla ordained that teachers be appointed in every district and every town and that children of six or seven be brought. The Talmud marks it: "may that man be remembered for good."

How it worked. The cheder was a room in the melamed's house: children of different ages, a long table, learning aloud. First the letters, then the Chumash with Rashi, then Gemara. The parents paid, and for the children of the poor the community paid: this was called talmud torah, and in the statutes of every kahal it stood before much else.

And the truth about it. The melamed was among the poorest men in town; the post was held low, and men took it when nothing else worked out. Hence the scolding, the rod, and the complaints of nineteenth-century memoirists about tedium and dirt. All of that is true—and it is also true that under this arrangement there were no illiterates among the Jews in places where one man in ten could read. Both truths are worth holding together.