Cradles of Education - Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia, where 5,000 years ago the World’s first known system of writing was born and the first code of law developed 1,300 years later, is a region between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers strategically linking the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea. Modern educationalists everywhere owe the Akkad, Amorite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Chaldean, Hittite, Kassite and Sumerian Peoples who once lived there a debt of gratitude for their achievements in that cradle of civilization. After all, how could one teach today without textbooks, classroom rules and other education practices?

Mesopotamia was a cradle of education within the setting of its cultural values too. In those days life was simpler and peasants taught their children the practical things of life like growing food and nurturing livestock. Living was hard for these impoverished people, and without these elementary education practices they could not survive. Their aristocratic counterparts were Scribes and

Priests who received a far better preparation for life.

Priests dominated the Mesopotamian educational and intellectual spheres. Every temple had its own local cradle of education known as a library where acolytes studied under the watchful eyes of strict mentors. Learning was achieved through oral repetition, memorization and one-on-one instruction. The most difficult part of all was believed to be the meticulous duplication of ancient scripts in every tiniest detail. Training of priests took many years under stern disciplinarian conditions.

The children of upper-class citizens of Mesopotamia underwent more practical training in basic reading, writing,

religion, law, medicine and astrology. These education practices prepared them for careers as copyists, librarians and teachers who would lord it over the peasantry down the generations. In some ways, little has changed in the modern Middle East, and in much of the rest of the world either.

These days, things are thankfully improving steadily as modern Mesopotamians finally benefit from the advantages of living above huge reserves of crude oil. Although a two-tier education system will undoubtedly last for a long time yet, and neither Iran nor Syria are exactly cradles of education, at least the current generation of children living there stand in hope of a basic school career at the very least.