By Maximilian Lormier
At a time when school teachers and the education system has never been so maligned and questioned, it is always interesting to watch this as "them before we" have to transmit their knowledge. Also, there is no better example than the Sumerians, "them" who had the brilliant invention of inventing writing. They invented a single education system, supported by professionals who taught the magic of words through exercises long and exhausting, but who aim to form a class of educated, socially high and would not be enough work. All this talk is in one question: how was the school at the time of Sumer?
Scripture and school :
The two go hand in hand. The great scholar of Mesopotamian texts SNKramer already stressed this point when he wrote in his book History begins at Sumer , "the school is straight out of writing . The earliest evidence of writing we are from the city of Uruk in southern Iraq today, which corresponded to the ancient land of Sumer, and date from about 3200 BC. AD. Sumerian scholars, scribes, then wrote on tablets made of clay with pictograms or ideograms, a simplistic script which was based in a distinctive sign which related to an object or a particular product. The writing was as a support shelf made of clay. Although humble in its beginnings, writing evolved to son for centuries, as did his apprenticeship system. Indeed, All batches of tablets of the oldest of humanity that we have found, some with corresponding lists of words "pictographic" learn by heart. These lists reveal that the scribes who participated in the development of writing, invented a way to simultaneously transmit their knowledge through training and exercises followed, ie school, an organization dedicated to teaching the writing, was born.
The organization of the school :
- Establishment
The school was named "home of the tablets" and it was only the second half of the third millennium, while writing in Mesopotamia was in the process of modernization - is the passage of the cuneiform symbol - we are able to truthfully discern buildings dedicated to education in most Sumerian cities. At Nippur, the religious capital, is an entire neighborhood where lived and worked scribes and students that has been excavated. The classrooms were composed of several rows of benches where bricks could sit for four people. The absence of tables is explained by the fact that students had to work on their knees. Inside this room should be where the shelves were asked virgin clay tablets ready for use, as well as texts to be studied.
- Teachers
teachers then had nothing to envy our university professors. Indeed, many lived their pension as a teacher and devoted their lives to passing on their knowledge and the study during their free time. At the head of the institution was the headteacher, the Ummi - "the father of the school - which was also a teacher. This was assisted in his task by a teacher assistant - "big brother" - surely an alumnus of the school, which role was to monitor the calligraphy of the signs and have them recite. Among teachers, there were also specialists as "the charge of drawing (calligraphy, fine arts?) And" loaded from the Sumerian "(grammar, conjugation?). Supervisors and a very austere "loaded whip" framed the upheavals of the students and ensured discipline in the school.
- Students
The students all seem to have been children from the highest social rank. They were the son of governors, diplomats, housekeepers or rich merchants. The lists of names of students found no mention of any woman, or neither among students in the faculty, which tends to prove that women lacked access to education. The life led students during their learning was rather harsh and restrictive. In classrooms, at dawn, they followed their progress throughout the day until bedtime.
