Wealthy Sumerian fathers bribed schoolmasters to spare their sons the cane

Evidence

This — and I am being careful — this is what the Sumerian schoolmaster, for a price, would do. And the Sumerian father, who is not in the school, who is in some other profession, who has resources of some kind — clothing, oil, jewelry, ritual wine — could purchase a different attitude from his son’s teacher. The cane was not the only mechanism. There was a parallel mechanism. And the parallel mechanism was the oldest mechanism in any institutional human practice. Money. — , The Rod and the Child, 61

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the recurring rod-and-purchasing-power pattern the author flags in Egypt, Rome, Bible, Confucian China. — connects to: The rod in Sumerian schools functioned as a bargained commodity — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 63; Sumerian schoolboys copied satirical texts about their own beating — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 27

Related

• The rod in Sumerian schools functioned as a bargained commodity (similarity 0.90)
• The famous Egyptian beating proverb was propaganda to make boys accept the cane (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The rod in Sumerian schools functioned as a bargained commodity #corroborates (0.85) — , The Rod and the Child, 63
• Sumerian schoolboys copied satirical texts about their own beating #responds-to (0.50) — , The Rod and the Child, 27