education: The Middle East and students doing work in many major cities, including Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Shuruppak, and Abu Salabikh Between 2000 and 1500 b.c.e Mesopotamian students did enough school exercises to leave archaeologists hundreds of clay tablets containing their work with directions from and corrections by their teachers Mesopotamian schools had several purposes The most basic was to create scribes by teaching children how to read and write The government, the temples, and businesses all needed people who could read and write letters and inventories and arithmetic A more philosophical purpose was to create an educated, thoughtful citizenry Mesopotamian writers are the first in the world to mention the concept of “humanity” as a condition of people who have been elevated above the animals by learning to think Another reason to educate children was so that they could read of past events, interpret them in the present, and in their turn write down the events of their lifetimes and thus leave a record for future generations Sumerian schools were private, not public Only wealthy parents, such as government officials, businessmen, scribes, priests, and military officers, sent their children to school Almost all students were boys; the only female students were the daughters of royalty and girls being prepared to become priestesses Still, most Mesopotamian boys and girls never went to school at all, instead spending their childhoods helping their parents and learning the tasks they would perform as adults Schools met from sunrise until sunset, and students ate lunch at school Students attended for several years, finishing in their teens A school would typically contain students of many different ages and levels of academic achievement The older students helped instruct the younger ones; they were called “big brothers.” All the pupils called themselves their school’s “sons.” Teachers were scholars in various fields, including mathematics, language, and surveying They took their salaries from the fees parents paid as tuition Parents would sometimes try to persuade teachers to give their children favorable treatment; in one ancient Sumerian school story, a lazy boy’s parents invite their son’s teacher to dinner and give him a ring as a present, whereupon the teacher lavishes praise upon the lad Most schools had a disciplinary officer who beat unruly students with a stick Infractions were similar to those in modern schools; they included speaking without permission, standing up or leaving without permission, not speaking correct Sumerian, and dressing inappropriately The first thing Mesopotamian students learned was the cuneiform writing system This system was extremely complex and required readers to recognize subtle differences in patterns of tiny triangles made with a reed pen, or stylus, on clay tablets It took years to memorize all the characters and learn to read quickly Writing cuneiform presented its own difficulties Students had to learn how to make clay tablets by mixing and molding the clay and how to fire the clay tablets so they hardened 379 Teachers taught reading and writing by writing a sentence at the top of a tablet and requiring their students to copy it over and over The teacher or an older student would review the work and correct it, and all the students were expected to study their day’s work at home that night The next day they had to write the previous day’s lesson correctly, after which they would receive a new writing exercise Archaeologists have found numerous clay tablets containing these exercises, including teachers’ corrections; one tablet was apparently so disastrous that the teacher crossed out everything the student had written Older boys wrote out longer texts than younger ones Sometimes teachers gave lessons based on stories, some of them humorous As students grew more advanced, they began reading and reciting their lessons aloud Students might specialize in various fields, including architecture, engineering, astronomy, botany, geography, medicine, and zoology Mathematics was very important to Mesopotamians, who were expert architects and carefully collected and distributed their people’s grain Students practiced mathematical skills with word problems that presented situations a professional man might face, such as plotting the movements of the stars, calculating the supplies needed for a military campaign, collecting taxes, determining how many bricks were needed to build a palace, or measuring plots of land and estimating how much grain they would produce Sumerian schools also taught languages Students were expected to learn Sumerian As time went on, people stopped Cuneiform tablet with schoolwork, Old Babylonian, about 1900–1700 b.c.e., probably from southern Iraq (© The Trustees of the British Museum)