life stages

I read the following somewhere (or maybe I saw it in a movie), and I really can't confirm this. John the Classics major is skeptical.

But apparently (or not so apparently), in ancient Athens, a boy was considered old enough to go to school when, being offered a coin and an apple, he'd choose the coin over the apple. The idea was that at this point in his life, he finally understood that the coin could buy multiple apples in the future; he was therefore mature enough to forgo immediate pleasure for greater future benefit (i.e. delayed gratification).

Presumably, girls never went to school because they never would choose the coin over the apple. Or maybe it was for some other reason, I forget :P

If only maturity at other stages in life were so easy to test.