This is an adaptation of an inscription on Mesopotamian clay tablets written almost 4000 years ago. It describes a conversation between a father and son.

"I did not go anywhere."

"If you did not go anywhere, why do you idle about? Go to school, stand before your 'school-father,' recite your assignment, open your schoolbag, and write your tablet. Be humble and show fear before your teacher. When you show terror, the teacher will like you."

"After you have finished your assignment, come straight home, and do not wander about in the street. Come now, do you know what I said? Come now, be a man. Don't stand about in the public square, or wander about the boulevard. If you waste time out in the public square, will you achieve success? Go to school, it will be of great benefit to you."

"Perverse one over whom I stand watch - I would not be a man did I not stand watch over my son - I spoke to my kin, compared its men, but found none like you among them. My heart is weary of you, I am angry with you, my heart was carried off as if by an evil wind. Your grumblings have put an end to me - you have brought me to the point of death!"

"I have never made you work for anything!!
Never in all my life did I make you carry reeds to the canebrake. The reeds which the young and the little carry, you never in your life had to carry them.
I never said to you 'Follow my caravans.' 
I never sent you to work, to plow a field. I never sent you to dig up a field. 
I never sent you to work as a laborer. 
'Go, work and support me,' I never in my life said to you. 
Others like you support their parents by working. If you spoke to your kin, and appreciated them, you would do the same as them. They take care of their father, providing him with barley, wool, and oil. 
But you, you're a man when it comes to perverseness, but compared to them, you are no man at all. Night and day am I tortured because of you. Night and day you waste in pleasures. You have accumulated much wealth, have expanded far and wide, have become fat, big, broad, powerful, and puffed. But your kin waits expectantly for your misfortune, and will rejoice at it because you looked not to your humanity."