The little darlings are back in the classroom now, to the relief of parents and police alike. By this point in September almost all schools, colleges and universities are back in session.

But about now, one month or so into the teaching year, things get a little itchy. The fun of seeing old friends again has worn off, the novelty of new classes and new books is old, and the dear ones stare at the teacher with the knowledge that they will be staring at this person for either a whole semester or, worse still, a whole year.

Of course, every teacher on the planet can tell this phase because what do we do but watch the little darlings all day long. Yes, I can see you peeping at the pretty girl next to you and nudging her with your elbow. Yes, I can see you texting under the desktop. Yes, I saw you creep in late, and I can see when you are doodling when you should be taking notes.

The students, for some reason, perhaps because they are still uneducated, somehow live as if we cannot see the disrespectful roll of the eyes.

At this moment, I am teaching a section on ancient Egyptology and droning on about burial practices, pagan gods, pyramids and the development of hieroglyphic writing. But I also point out to them what it would have been like to be students in the old days. And I can assure you it was a lot harder back then in the good old days on the Nile than it is now.

A a scribe school was not easy to get into, not because of SAT scores but because one needed social connections. Sons of scribes could attend the schools and then others might be admitted if there was space. Noble-born children would learn privately and for the aristocracy it was possible for a girl to learn to read and write, but that was exceptional.

The little students sat in an open space on the ground outside the temple, while a teacher faced them. The little boys would be told to write down a hieroglyph, or a sound sign, which formed the basis of Egyptian writing. Unlike our alphabet, ancient Egyptian had thousands of sound signs. It took memorization of about 900 signs to get started and proficiency began at the complete memorization of more than 2,000 hieroglyphic signs.

The boys practiced their writing on clay tablets, which could be easily erased. The Egyptians had invented paper, or papyrus, but that was expensive and used only by graduate scribes. At the back of the cluster of boys stood a second teacher called Big Brother, who carried a cane and beat the backs of the boys for every mistake. "The ears of a boy are on his back; he learns only when he is beaten," the ancient schoolmasters used to say.

But the parents of the boys were very glad that junior was in school, because scribe school was the path to social mobility. The scribal class kept state records, handled correspondence, calculated supplies and taxes and managed the army. It was from the scribal class that the priests were selected to join the many ranks of temple priests who conducted the complicated rituals of the many gods.

Given that priests had to work for only one lunar month a year and they got taken care of the rest of the year, the priesthoods were a great vocation. That is, they were if one had done his lessons well enough.

Like many parents sending their children off to school, parents of children in the scribal school worried that the dear ones actually get some work done while on campus. Some time between 2000 and 1700 B.C., a concerned father named Dua-Khety sent his son Pepy off to the temple school, which was a boat ride up river to the temple. With his son he is sent the following instruction, which became a standard text the students had to copy out by hand. The text describes the complete misery of every possible job in Egypt, such as the baker, the fisherman, the laundry man, the plowman and so on, but compares them all to the easy life of a student who works hard in school, does well and
becomes a scribe. Similar talks are still given by parents to freshmen every year.

Here is what Dua-Khety says to his bored kid on his way to the scribal school 4,000 years ago.

"As for a scribe in any office in the Residence, he will not suffer want in it. When he fulfills the bidding of another, he does not come forth satisfied. I do not see an office to be compared with it, to which this maxim could relate. I shall make you love books more than your mother, and I shall place their excellence before you. It is greater than any office. There is nothing like it on earth. When he began to become sturdy but was still a child, he was greeted (respectfully). When he was sent to carry out a task, before he returned he was dressed in adult garments."

Clearly, education was the way forward in ancient Egypt. It still is.

The maxims the young had to copy and memorize were full of advice for aspiring young students. In the Fifth Dynasty, a high-ranking priest named Ptahhotep wrote the following advice to his students around 2500 B.C.

"Do not let your heart become proud because of what you know; learn from the ignorant as well as the learned man.

"There are no limits that have been decreed for art; there is no artist who attains entire excellence.

"A lovely thought is harder to come by than a jewel; one can find it in the hand of a maid at the grindstone.

"Do not let your heart become swollen with pride in case you may be humbled."

This is good advice for any age.

The wisdom of the Egyptian priests was quite practical as well as moral and was intended to show the young rascals the right way to live. In the eighth century B.C., a priest named Amenemope advised his young students on their life after graduation, saying:

"Do not say: 'I have found a powerful patron… now I can play a dirty trick on someone I dislike.'

"No, remember that you do not know what is in the mind of God, and that you cannot know what may happen tomorrow.

"Rest still in God's arms and your silence will confound your enemies.

"Man is the clay and straw, and God is the builder; daily he destroys and daily he recreates …"

It took a boy about 12 years to become a scribe, about the same amount of time it takes our children to get through modern schools. From these young scribes arose the junior administrators of the Egyptian state, and from these the military commanders and priests. The most powerful scribes might even become the advisers to the king himself.

The scribes built canals, fought battles, drained land for canals, built temples and tombs, raised more than 70 pyramids, calculated taxes and rationed the wheat harvests carefully. For the most part their names are forgotten, but their accomplishments live on.

As I stare at my little darlings, I wonder what works they might leave behind them.