Counting Blessings

Way back in Ancient Egypt a father would often provide the formal education of his son though verse. Naturally, I presume, some dads were better at verse than other. So some of the dads had to turn to verses written by others. The verses were recorded on papyrus.

Now we have to remember that that this all took place many years ago before the advent of downloadable Eleven Plus papers. In those days a father would have had to have gone to a friend or a teacher or a librarian to collect the fresh verses of the day. Today we simply log on, call up a favourite site, and download some more work.

Think of some of the problems that would happen if our eleven plus children had to learn parts of the eleven plus in verse.



`You will go to a school where the education is better,
If you remember which words need a capital letter.’

You will consigned to a life of dreaming of fairies,
If you forget how to do lots of numbers in series.

When you move one letter to make two new words,
You must keep more focused and not think about birds.

To complete an analogy you need a matching pair,
But the odd mistake in neither here or there.

Sometimes some sentences just won’t make much sense,
Be brave my son, you are really not that dense.


When you see my feeble efforts above you will realise just how advanced those Ancient Egyptians had to be to be able to cope, in verse, with topics covering respect for others, bravery, trust and religion.

So we can count our blessings today:

Mothers can be just as much involved in the education of their children as fathers. Fathers too are allowed to contribute to the education of their daughters.

When a child is preparing for an examination we have access to books (not papyrus), teachers, tutors, the internet, telephone, texting and emails. In today’s consumer society if your child does like one particular set of Eleven Plus books then you simply go out and buy another. (This would have been a bit more difficult with papyrus.)