380 education: Asia and the Pacific speaking Sumerian but Mesopotamian students kept learning it; they used it much as Latin was used in medieval Europe, as a dead but stable language that marked people of learning After about 2500 b.c.e students also learned Akkadian, the language of the Akkadian people The ancient Jews in the Levant also developed an elaborate system of education They believed that education was important for transmitting knowledge from generation to generation, for increasing the entire body of knowledge, and for defining culture and acceptable behavior The three branches of education were military training, occupational skills, and religious education; the latter was generally considered the most important Jewish people considered study to be a form of prayer Both boys and girls were educated, and most ancient Jews were literate Parents were supposed to teach their children the Torah at home Children at the age of five began learning about ritual purity and how to pray At age 10 children studied the oral law They completed their primary education around the age of 12 or 13 Boys in their early teens spent time at the Bet Midrash, or “House of Study,” where rabbis taught them Jewish law and history, including the scriptures in Old Testament and the Talmud, the Jewish book of law and scriptural commentary They progressed through several stages; at age 15 they were considered ready to study the works of wise Jewish scholars and at age 20 were prepared to pursue a vocation The Bet Midrash functioned as school, place of prayer, and communal library Teachers included scribes and Pharisees Scribes were literate men who worked as administrative officials and teachers The Pharisees came from the ranks of the scribes, but they were more specialized scholars, teachers, and professional writers in charge of transcribing and interpreting the Torah, the Jewish holy text Jewish people continued to pursue education throughout their adulthoods Thirty was considered the age at which one was mature enough to enter the ministry, and by age 50 a person was educated enough to advise others In ancient Persia priests called magi were trained to interpret dreams and other omens and to predict the future The rank of magi was hereditary, so only boys born into magi families could undergo the necessary training in scripture, ritual, and astrology One of the best-preserved accounts of education in Persia is Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus), the Greek historian Xenophon’s fictional account of the life and education of Cyrus the Great (585–529 b.c.e.) This book recounts Cyrus’s process of learning political philosophy and spreading his ideas among the Persian people Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fift h century b.c.e., described the education of Persian boys Noble boys spent the first five years of their lives with their mothers and then the next 15 years learning to hunt, ride, shoot arrows, and throw spears A few learned to read and write; some of them became scribes Although the Persians revered wise and educated men, most noble Persians restricted their philosophical education to the rudiments of ethical behavior ASIA AND THE PACIFIC BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL Most children living in Asia and the Pacific region in ancient times had no formal education They stayed at home with their parents and learned the skills they would need to function as adults Fathers taught their sons how to hunt, build houses, and perhaps fight with weapons Mothers taught their daughters how to make cloth, cook, sew, and tend children Both sexes helped their parents in the fields Children would have joined adults for storytelling sessions and religious rituals in which they learned the specifics of their culture and their own ethnic mythologies China developed a very complex education system during the ancient period Much of Chinese educational philosophy was based on the teachings of the ancient thinker Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) Confucius claimed that all people had the potential to act properly and that education was the best way to help people grow up to behave correctly Chinese students spent years learning to read and write the Chinese script Chinese writing consisted of ideograms, or characters—patterns of brushstrokes that represented images or concepts Each character was painted by brush or, for inscriptions, cast with molds or incised into materials like bone or bronze While the order of strokes was meant to be predetermined or regular, calligraphers often violated that protocol The characters were seen as graceful images as well as written words, and beautiful handwriting was considered a valuable skill The advantage of this system of writing was that it did not depend on spoken language for comprehensibility, so people who spoke different dialects could understand each other’s writing The disadvantage was that was difficult to learn to read and write; students had to memorize thousands of characters before they could be reasonably literate This took many years The Han Dynasty emperor Wu Ti (r 140–87 b.c.e.) founded a state educational system in 124 b.c.e His chief purpose in educating young boys was to train them to be civil servants who could work in the government bureaucracy, creating a highly selected and trained body of government officials loyal to the emperor (All students in China were boys Girls could not become civil servants, and their families preferred to keep them home to work Some girls in the nobility were instructed at home and learned to read, but they were the exception.) Wu Ti built provincial schools all across China and founded an academy for advanced students Admission was competitive; students had to pass a difficult examination to get in Once students were admitted, the government provided food and housing for them The Han Dynasty introduced a system of examinations as a way of identifying the best students on the basis of ability, rather than allowing professors to pick and choose their favorites Han emperors believed that the Confucian approach to education would produce a new class of educated aristocrats