speaking Sumerian. but Mesopotamian students kept learn-
ing it; they used it much as Latin was used in medieval Europe,
as a dead but stable language that marked people of learning.
Aft er about 2500 b.c.e. students also learned Akkadian, the
language of the Akkadian people.
Th e ancient Jews in the Levant also developed an elabo-
rate system of education. Th ey believed that education was
important for transmitting knowledge from generation to
generation, for increasing the entire body of knowledge,
and for defi ning culture and acceptable behavior. Th e three
branches of education were military training, occupational
skills, and religious education; the latter was generally con-
sidered the most important. Jewish people considered study
to be a form of prayer. Both boys and girls were educated,
and most ancient Jews were literate. Parents were supposed
to teach their children the Torah at home. Children at the age
of fi ve began learning about ritual purity and how to pray.
At age 10 children studied the oral law. Th ey completed their
primary education around the age of 12 or 13.
Boys in their early teens spent time at the Bet Midrash,
or “House of Study,” where rabbis taught t hem Jewish law and
history, including the scriptures in Old Testament and the
Talmud, the Jewish book of law and scriptural commentary.
Th ey progressed through several stages; at age 15 they were
considered ready to study the works of wise Jewish scholars
and at age 20 were prepared to pursue a vocation. Th e Bet
Midrash functioned as school, place of prayer, and commu-
nal library. Teachers included scribes and Pharisees. Scribes
were literate men who worked as administrative offi cials and
teachers. Th e Pharisees came from the ranks of the scribes,
but they were more specialized scholars, teachers, and pro-
fessional writers in charge of transcribing and interpreting
the Torah, the Jewish holy text. Jewish people continued to
pursue education throughout their adulthoods. Th irty was
considered the age at which one was mature enough to enter
the ministry, and by age 50 a person was educated enough to
advise others.
In ancient Persia priests called magi were trained to in-
terpret dreams and other omens and to predict the future.
Th e rank of magi was hereditary, so only boys born into magi
families could undergo the necessary training in scripture,
ritual, and astrology. One of the best-preserved accounts of
education in Persia is Cyropaedia (Th e Education of Cyrus),
the Greek historian Xenophon’s fi ctional account of the life
and education of Cyrus the Great (585–529 b.c.e.). Th is book
recounts Cyrus’s process of learning political philosophy and
spreading his ideas among the Persian people. Herodotus, a
Greek historian of the fi ft h century b.c.e., described the edu-
cation of Persian boys. Noble boys spent the fi rst fi ve years
of their lives with their mothers and then the next 15 years
learning to hunt, ride, shoot arrows, and throw spears. A few
learned to read and write; some of them became scribes. Al-
though the Persians revered wise and educated men, most
noble Persians restricted their philosophical education to the
rudiments of ethical behavior.
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL
Most children living in Asia and the Pacifi c region in ancient
times had no formal education. Th ey stayed at home with
their parents and learned the skills they would need to func-
tion as adults. Fathers taught their sons how to hunt, build
houses, and perhaps fi ght with weapons. Mothers taught their
daughters how to make cloth, cook, sew, and tend children.
Both sexes helped their parents in the fi elds. Children would
have joined adults for storytelling sessions and religious ritu-
als in which they learned the specifi cs of their culture and
their own ethnic mythologies.
China developed a very complex education system dur-
ing the ancient period. Much of Chinese educational phi-
losophy was based on the teachings of the ancient thinker
Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.). Confucius claimed that all people
had the potential to act properly and that education was the
best way to help people grow up to behave correctly. Chinese
students spent years learning to read and write the Chinese
script. Chinese writing consisted of ideograms, or charac-
ters—patterns of brushstrokes that represented images or
concepts. Each character was painted by brush or, for inscrip-
tions, cast with molds or incised into materials like bone or
bronze. While the order of strokes was meant to be predeter-
mined or regular, calligraphers oft en violated that protocol.
Th e characters were seen as graceful images as well as written
words, and beautiful handwriting was considered a valuable
skill. Th e advantage of this system of writing was that it did
not depend on spoken language for comprehensibility, so
people who spoke diff erent dialects could understand each
other’s writing. Th e disadvantage was that was diffi cult to
learn to read and write; students had to memorize thousands
of characters before they could be reasonably literate. Th is
took many years.
Th e Han Dynasty emperor Wu Ti (r. 140–87 b.c.e.)
founded a state educational system in 124 b.c.e. His chief
purpose in educating young boys was to train them to be civil
servants who could work in the government bureaucracy,
creating a highly selected and trained body of government of-
fi cials loyal to the emperor. (All students in China were boys.
Girls could not become civil servants, and their families pre-
ferred to keep them home to work. Some girls in the nobility
were instructed at home and learned to read, but they were
the exception.)
Wu Ti built provincial schools all across China and
founded an academy for advanced students. Admission was
competitive; students had to pass a diffi cult examination to
get in. Once students were admitted, the government pro-
vided food and housing for them. Th e Han Dynasty intro-
duced a system of examinations as a way of identifying the
best students on the basis of ability, rather than allowing pro-
fessors to pick and choose their favorites.
Han emperors believed that the Confucian approach to
education would produce a new class of educated aristocrats380 education: Asia and the Pacific