•Mesopotamia was located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The country of Iraq is there today

The Sumerians created the first known formal education system (schools).

The ancient Sumerians believed in Education.

They wanted their children to learn how to read and write but ONLY boys went to school.

The purpose of the schools is to teach the upper class male students to write using Cuneiform Alphabet.

Later subjects of Mathematics, Law, Biology, Astronomy,

Divination, Poetry, Economics, Agriculture, and Language were added to the Curriculum.

Their Afternoons were focused on Critiquing and Refining their Writing.

A Head Teacher and Teacher Assistants worked together to help students maintain Focus.

These schools taught the skills of a scribe. A scribe was (and is) basically a professional writer.

Teachers were very strict. Students had to do a perfect job, or they were punished (usually whipped.)

Few people in Mesopotamia could read or write. Schooling was provided at temples or academies or at the homes of priests and bureaucrats. Students studied languages,

arithmetic, accounting and Sumerian literature. Textbooks were cuneiform tablets.

Development of a language and system of writing: Cuneiform on clay tablets. Scribes were people that could read and write the language.

Teaching Methods in Mesopotamian Schools involved Memorization, Oral Repetition, Copying Models, and Individual Instruction.

It is believed that the exact copying of scripts was strenuous and exacting and proficiency was highly emphasized as a goal of Mesopotamian education.

Many lessons consisted of teachers writing on one side of a tablet and students writing on the other side or students copying books.

Many tablets are left half completed. Other have mistakes that have been rubbed out or have disapproving tick marks added by teachers.

There are indications of unsteady hand, lack of patience, and trouble learning. Scribes that passed the examinations at the scribe academy were given the title "The one who knows the tablets.“Some tablets also featured aimless

doodling in what seems to be a manifestation of daydreaming.

Learning to be a scribe was a possible pathway to the most powerful profession in ancient Mesopotamia - a priest.

Scribes were some of the most powerful people in Mesopotamia because they controlled information and knowledge.

calendar ,cobblestone streets ,cultivation of grains ,day of 24 hours ,domestication of livestock ,irrigation, canals, dams ,legal system / laws, mathematics based on base 60 ,measuring and surveying instruments ,metal working ,plows ,pottery ,the sailboat, wheel / wheeled carts, and writing (cuneiform)

References:

http://factsanddetails.com/world.php?itemid=1515

http://project-history.blogspot.com/2006/06/scribes-and-education-in-ancient.html

http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/school.htmlhttp://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=31439http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/ancient_history/mesopotamia.html