Children in Pompeii had only very little education, but were lucky to have it. Most kids were taught at home, by tutors who would come to the house for around 5-6 hours. Others, with more fortunate families could afford to go to the public schools in the village. However, there were very few public schools, and they were all very small, only allowing few amounts of children in. Teachers in these schools were not properly trained, because they were only some of the local parents living in other villages. Lessons taught the children maths, arithmetic, reading, writing, public speaking, poetry and history.
Classrooms in public school only had room for one teacher and one set of students. Children sat down in small cold, clay stools on the floor, while the teacher sat on chairs with a back rest. No class rooms had a whiteboard, blackboard or desks. Writing stationary was usually just rocks that would be scraped against the ground to create white lines.
Some children in Pompeii who were too poor to afford the slightest time for education were not able to go to school. They were taught daily chores for survival by their own parents. These chores included working in the fields and hoeing, weeding and plowing the farms. As soon as these poorer children were old enough, their parents would send them off to other villages to collect food and water, so that they could have the energy they needed for the next day of work. The girls were the ones who would fetch the food, and the boys were the ones who hunted for the food.