Reflection Papaer #7

The different education approach in ancient civilizations was apprenticeship, home schooling and temple education.

The Apprenticeship can be tracked back to the Babylon, four thousand years ago and this position was so important that the apprentice was treated as an adopted son. Apprenticeship is training which is different from education. When you are an apprentice you are being trained to learn how to perform a specific task such as a plumber, electrician, an air conditioning technician or car mechanic.
As time evolved and humans created tools there was a need to teach others how to use them. The adults had the task to teach the children how to use these tools in order to prepare them for when they became adults.

The home schooling approach in ancient civilization was by imitation. The children of this time imitated adult behavior. They children learned and imitated their parents and as they grew into young adults they had to take on more responsibilities such as work in the farm, in workshops, the vineyards. They had to learn the basic skills and knowledge from the elders in order to perform the duties of these different jobs. Also in their young adulthood the parents had to instill in them the moral obligation to be of great character, how to be good individuals and their religious values.

The children that attended temple were from the elite families. These Temples were built on platforms that later became artificial mountains. They believe that they were built high above the City to raise they city’s god above the material life, as a way to reach closer to heaven. The temple approach of education was difficult to learn. They taught the Cuneiform and they also studied math and the standard measuring system. Since they had a very strong sense of private property after they had mastered the arithmetic and learned to write they started to keep records of all documents about everything they basically owned.