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> paraphrased from an essay of reminiscence known as ‘Schooldays’, dating from 1800 BC Mesopotamia: "After he gets his packed lunch from his mother and sets of

> paraphrased from an essay of reminiscence known as ‘Schooldays’, dating from 1800 BC Mesopotamia: "After he gets his packed lunch from his mother and sets off for school, everything seems to go wrong: the hall monitor beats him for being in the wrong place, another teacher beats him for tying his shirt up wrong, the Sumerian teacher beats him for speaking Akkadian and his cuneiform teacher beats him for just being terrible at cuneiform." Whoa - I missed that "paraphrased" bit on first read and mistook this for a translation, which seemed really odd. But even paraphrased it refers to some kind of formal education for young children. Was that present in 1800 BCE Mesopotamia?

jesushax 4y ago
It seems so. According to https://worldhistorycommons.org/sumerian-school-days https://worldhistorycommons.org/sumerian-school-days: >This tablet, from ancient Sumeria (as early as 2000 B.C.E.), details a day in the life of a school boy. Students learned by copying lessons on clay tablets, memorizing the lessons, and then reciting them for the school's headmaster (the "school father") or other teachers, monitors, and proctors of the school. This web page includes a full translation if you want to read it, and cites the paper "Schooldays: A Sumerian Composition Relating to the Education of a Scribe" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/596246 https://www.jstor.org/stable/596246) It makes sense that scribes would have formal education, like other highly-skilled professions imo, but I know nothing about history so who knows!
- macrolime 4y ago
  They also had formal education in ancient Egypt at the time. The math problems given to students at the time aren't trivial either. They need to do stuff like calculate the volume of various 3d shapes. Seems they used 256/81 (3.16) as an approximation of pi at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Mathematical_Papyrus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Mathematical_Papyrus
  - eru 4y ago
    That's an interesting approximation. The error is about 15 times larger than for the well-known 22/7 approximation.
    - macrolime 4y ago
      They supposedly got it by using an octagon to approximate a circle. Maybe that was a simpler approximation used in education, who knows.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      According to Bruno Jarrosson, the Egyptians had a marked preference for some classes of fractions, e.g. those with unitary numerator (so that, for example, representing a quantity as a composition (e.g. sum) of more fractions of the form 1/n was preferred to using single fractions of the form m/n). So, that fraction may have been privileged over others in this framework. (One immediately notes that 256 and 81 are simple powers. As just a possibility, it could have been found intriguing that (2^8)/(3^4) could "reveal some underlying structure".)
      - eru 4y ago
        Yes, I was thinking about the simple powers, too. And I don't know whether they had enough math (or cared enough to do all the hard work with the math they had available to them), to figure out what's the simplest good approximation for the real value of Pi.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Well spotted that they're simple powers; riffing on that idea, if that is the aesthetic behind it, I'd guess that they're supposed to be the same base or the same power, so either (4^4)/(3^4) or (16^2)/(9^2)? Edit: Or perhaps (((4^2)/(3^3))^2)^1 and then it feels like an ancient aesthetic-precursor to Euler's identity?
        ben_w 4y ago
        And now I spotted the mistake: > (((4^2)/(3^3))^2)^1 should be (((4^2)/(3^2))^2)^1
JudgePenitent 4y ago
Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there was a formal pattern for learning that developed from 3k bc - end (right around 1800bc) which typically included a combination of math (fractions, pemdas, etc, administrative math, enough so you could make a bill of sale) and writing (which meant learning Sumerian as well as cuneiform), among a few other "administrative" disciplines (like calculating the calendar- the Sumerian calendars often arbitrarily added a month or two whenever they felt like the calendar was too far off, so knowing when and how to add those months was critical to maintaining the cultic schedule. fun for archaeologists later to figure out what month it is..). The essential purpose was to prepare you for a life of administration of some kind, whether in a temple or household. No in the sense that this kind of education was not available to everyone, and I would imagine the vast majority never learned to write. Here's more Sumerian tablet jokes: "If a scribe knows only one line, but his handwriting is good, he is indeed a scribe!" "A scribe whose hand can follow dictation is indeed a scribe!" "What kind of a scribe is a scribe who does not know Sumerian?"

jesushax 4y ago

It seems so. According to https://worldhistorycommons.org/sumerian-school-days https://worldhistorycommons.org/sumerian-school-days: >This tablet, from ancient Sumeria (as early as 2000 B.C.E.), details a day in the life of a school boy. Students learned by copying lessons on clay tablets, memorizing the lessons, and then reciting them for the school's headmaster (the "school father") or other teachers, monitors, and proctors of the school. This web page includes a full translation if you want to read it, and cites the paper "Schooldays: A Sumerian Composition Relating to the Education of a Scribe" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/596246 https://www.jstor.org/stable/596246) It makes sense that scribes would have formal education, like other highly-skilled professions imo, but I know nothing about history so who knows!

macrolime 4y ago
They also had formal education in ancient Egypt at the time. The math problems given to students at the time aren't trivial either. They need to do stuff like calculate the volume of various 3d shapes. Seems they used 256/81 (3.16) as an approximation of pi at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Mathematical_Papyrus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Mathematical_Papyrus
- eru 4y ago
  That's an interesting approximation. The error is about 15 times larger than for the well-known 22/7 approximation.
  - macrolime 4y ago
    They supposedly got it by using an octagon to approximate a circle. Maybe that was a simpler approximation used in education, who knows.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    According to Bruno Jarrosson, the Egyptians had a marked preference for some classes of fractions, e.g. those with unitary numerator (so that, for example, representing a quantity as a composition (e.g. sum) of more fractions of the form 1/n was preferred to using single fractions of the form m/n). So, that fraction may have been privileged over others in this framework. (One immediately notes that 256 and 81 are simple powers. As just a possibility, it could have been found intriguing that (2^8)/(3^4) could "reveal some underlying structure".)
    - eru 4y ago
      Yes, I was thinking about the simple powers, too. And I don't know whether they had enough math (or cared enough to do all the hard work with the math they had available to them), to figure out what's the simplest good approximation for the real value of Pi.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Well spotted that they're simple powers; riffing on that idea, if that is the aesthetic behind it, I'd guess that they're supposed to be the same base or the same power, so either (4^4)/(3^4) or (16^2)/(9^2)? Edit: Or perhaps (((4^2)/(3^3))^2)^1 and then it feels like an ancient aesthetic-precursor to Euler's identity?
      - ben_w 4y ago
        And now I spotted the mistake: > (((4^2)/(3^3))^2)^1 should be (((4^2)/(3^2))^2)^1

JudgePenitent 4y ago

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there was a formal pattern for learning that developed from 3k bc - end (right around 1800bc) which typically included a combination of math (fractions, pemdas, etc, administrative math, enough so you could make a bill of sale) and writing (which meant learning Sumerian as well as cuneiform), among a few other "administrative" disciplines (like calculating the calendar- the Sumerian calendars often arbitrarily added a month or two whenever they felt like the calendar was too far off, so knowing when and how to add those months was critical to maintaining the cultic schedule. fun for archaeologists later to figure out what month it is..). The essential purpose was to prepare you for a life of administration of some kind, whether in a temple or household. No in the sense that this kind of education was not available to everyone, and I would imagine the vast majority never learned to write. Here's more Sumerian tablet jokes: "If a scribe knows only one line, but his handwriting is good, he is indeed a scribe!" "A scribe whose hand can follow dictation is indeed a scribe!" "What kind of a scribe is a scribe who does not know Sumerian?"