Reflection Paper 9

Teacher Effectiveness Today Compared to the First Schools and Ancient Egyptian Education

The First Schools was a Sumerian school that taught people how to write. That school was the direct growth of the invention and development of the cuneiform according to Samuel Noah Kramer (1956). They found more than a thousand small pictographic clay tablets. The Sumerian school was also similar to the schools now in the present for the fact they had a “junior” and “high” scribes. The royal and temple scribes were highly specialized in administrative activities, and those scribes would become leading officials in government. In Ancient Egypt most of the children would mimic the adult’s behavior. Children also would be learning their eventual trade or occupation. Young men usually didn’t choose what their trade would be, they would learn their trade from their family and they would become the next generation to occupy that trade. Kings did not personally tutor their children, Senenmut, the vizier, the royal architect Hatshepsut, and a man named Idu at Abusir, were such royal tutors (2005). Moreover, in Ancient Egypt the princes and princesses learned literature, mathematics, writing, and grammar. Just like in the Sumerian schools, they were also taught just about the same things. However, Sumerian schools ended up becoming a center of learning. Within those schools transformed these scholars that were scientist and studied biology, zoology, and continue to study about geography, mathematics. The Sumerians also had great knowledge of grammar and linguistics. Most of the scribes from The First School turned out to be very wealthy and powerful, working in palaces and temples. Also, a lot of them wanted to devote their time in educating. Comparatively, both in Ancient Egypt and in Sumer, a good education was not universal and the poor could not afford the kind of education that the wealthy could.

Present day education is different than the education in Sumer and Ancient Egypt because there are a wide variety of things that are being educated. There is a broader spectrum in the certain subjects being instructed and the way it is being instructed itself. Conversely, Sumerian schools were the center of what we would call now in present-day, creative writing. It was in Sumer where literary creations of the past were created and copied (1956). However, as I had mention before in Sumer they were people who devoted their time in educating and learning. Those people devoted their time in research and writing in their spare time. And similarly as college professors depend on their wages of teaching, so did the Sumerians who were teachers back then. The teacher effectiveness today compared how it was then seems to be that they take somewhat of the same approach. Teachers today learn to become educators from learning how it was in past. The Ancient Egyptians and Sumerians set the foundation of education and now in the present-day we have construed what we have learned from them and made it more effective and modern.

As can be seen, the Sumerians and Ancient Egyptians set the base for education today in modern world we live in today. They made a major contribution to education and in comparison the teacher effectiveness in the present-day has improved in the sense that people have improved the ways of instructing.