Francisco Goya captured his critical vision of his education in his time in a small painting (20 x 38 centimeters) called The letter with blood enters or School Scene . An education that Goya, who felt great devotion to children, judges defective and that he illustrates in a school scene in which the teacher appears sitting on an armchair ready to whip a student who exposes his buttocks to receive punishment with a whip. . On the right, two other students mourn the punishment they have already received while others apply themselves to their tasks.
The letter with blood enters (Goya)
The maxim The letter with blood enters , which has been applied in the educational system for so long and which we only abandoned a few dozen years ago, is as old as the teaching of cuneiform writing in Sumer schools (edubba , "house of tablets") around 3,000 B.C.
At the head of these schools, which were not compulsory to attend and were not free, was the ummia who, accompanied by a group of assistants and even a specialist in corporal punishment, taught the secrets of this type of writing with the pencil and paper of the time (calamo and clay tablets). On one of these tablets, a school teacher describes, in the form of a diary, his own experiences and those of his students. Pupils who were late for school or whose handwriting was far from correct received corporal punishment in the form of whipping (the rule had not yet been invented). One of the boys, seeing that he had it raw to "pass the course" and knowing that the teachers' fees were scarce, proposed to his father to invite his teacher to eat and entertain him with some presents so that he would soften and life. of your child at school would be more bearable. The father, knowing the limitations of his son and that otherwise it would be impossible for him to become a good scribe, agreed. During the meal, in which the boy's family served the best beer - filtered without grounds and that could be drunk without a straw - and his best food, the student was diligent, polite and did not stop giving the guest ears with his virtues and give thanks for his luck in having him as a teacher. Whatever you think, and even knowing that everything had a purpose, we all like to be bullied and flattered... even if they are more false than an offside in a foosball table. After dinner, and in case things were still not clear, the teacher received several gifts, including a silver ring, the metal of metals between the two rivers.
Although we do not know if the student became a good scribe, I would dare to say that he did pass the course.
Sources:The story begins in Sumer – Samuel Noah Kramer