Write the Class Charter

Overview

Ptahhotep was a vizier writing around 2300 BCE, and his 37 maxims are advice on leadership, listening, temper, greed, honesty, and how to behave when someone more powerful than you is wrong. Students sort all 37 into what still holds, what needs updating, and what belongs to a world that no longer exists — then write seven rules of their own in the same compressed style.

No Egypt unit is required. This lesson works as a standalone in advisory, homeroom, PSHE, or an ELA period on argument and audience, and the class ends with a document it wrote and signed.

Learning objectives

Students will be able to:

• Categorize ancient ethical advice by modern relevance and justify each placement with reasoning.
• Identify how Ptahhotep handles power differentials — speaking to a superior, an equal, and an inferior.
• Draft concise, imperative rules for a real community, modeled on the maxim form.
• Explain why listening and controlling one's temper are treated as strategic skills rather than virtues.

Standards alignment

Materials and links

• 37 Rules for Life — all 37 maxims with category filters, detailed explanations, and a one-click printable sheetsilentgatemedia.com/p/egfirsts/go/edu-cha-maxims

Also needed

• One printed copy of the "Print all 37 rules" handout (silentgatemedia.com/p/egfirsts/go/edu-cha-maxims-print) per pair of students (or one device per pair).
• Large paper or poster board for the final charter, plus markers.

Teacher preparation

• Open the maxims page, click Print all 37 rules in the top box, and print one copy per pair. The sheet is formatted to fit on Letter paper with no extra clicks.
• Optional: choose one maxim in advance to read aloud as your hook — Maxim #01 (listening to the uneducated) or Maxim #02 (how to argue with someone more powerful than you) work best.

Procedure

1. 0–5 min
   The hook

   Read Maxim #01 aloud: "Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge. Take counsel with the ignorant as well as the wise, for the limits of skill are not reached, and no artist achieves complete mastery."

   Tell the class this was written around 2300 BCE by the second-most powerful man in Egypt, an eighty-year-old vizier handing down advice to his son. Ask: does that sound like it was written 4,300 years ago, or yesterday?

2. 5–20 min
   The sort

   Pairs work through the printed sheet and sort all 37 into three baskets:

   1. Still holds

   Good advice right now, unchanged.

   2. Needs updating

   The core idea works, but the context has shifted.

   3. Ancient world only

   Belongs to a hierarchical bronze-age court, not here.

   If students are on devices, they can use the category filter buttons — Leadership, Relationships, Character, Conflict, Speech — to divide the reading.

3. 20–35 min
   Draft the seven

   Each pair nominates one maxim to adapt for the class charter. They rewrite it in Ptahhotep's style: a short imperative title, then two or three sentences of practical guidance.

   Collect nominations on the board. The class votes down to seven rules — not ten, not twenty. Seven is memorable; twenty is a list nobody reads.

4. 35–45 min
   Sign the charter

   Scribe writes the seven rules onto the charter board. Every student and the teacher signs it. Hang it on the wall.

Assessment

This is a charter, not a quiz. Evidence of learning is the quality of the adapted rule: does it capture an underlying principle rather than just ban a behavior? "Listen before you disagree" is a rule in Ptahhotep's tradition; "Don't talk over people" is merely a classroom rule.

Differentiation and extension

• Advisory / SEL: focus entirely on the Conflict category (Maxims #02, #03, #04 — arguing with a superior, an equal, and an inferior). Ptahhotep's advice on arguing with an inferior — "do not attack him, for he is already wretched" — produces genuine discussion about fairness and restraint.
• ELA / Rhetoric: study Ptahhotep's compression. He never explains why a virtue is morally good; he explains why it works. Have students identify where his reasoning is practical rather than moral.
• History: use the maxims to reconstruct Egyptian court society: what was valued, what was dangerous, and who held power?

Notes on accuracy