In the province of Philippopolis there were 305 primary schools, 15 superior schools, with 356 teachers and 12,400 scholars; 27 girls’ schools, with 37 teachers and 2265 pupils. The Tuna vilayet, equally endowed, was also in a fair way of improvement, and the Bulgarian youth there, though less advanced than in the district of Philippopolis, were beginning to rival their brethren on the other side of the Balkans.
The lessons taught in the gymnasium at Philippopolis comprise the Turkish, Greek, and French languages, elementary mathematics, geography, Bulgarian and Turkish history, mental and moral philosophy, religious and moral instruction, and church music.
All these larger establishments, most of which I visited, were fine spacious edifices; some of them were formerly large old mansions, others were specially erected for schools.
Up to the year 1860 the schools in Bulgaria owed their creation and maintenance to voluntary subscriptions and to funds bequeathed by charitable individuals. But these funds were small compared with the demand made by the people for the extension and development of their educational institutions. At the separation of their Church from that of Constantinople, they reappropriated the revenues, which were placed under the direction of a number of men chosen from each district, and a part of them was set aside for the purposes of education. These first steps towards a systematic organization of the Church and schools were followed by the appointment of a mixed commission of clerical and lay members, annually elected in each district, charged with the immediate direction of the local ecclesiastical department. Each commission acts separately and independently of the other, but is answerable to the community at large for the supervision and advancement of public instruction. A further innovation in the shape of supplying funds for the increasing demand for schools of a higher class was made by the Bulgarians of Philippopolis by contriving to persuade the authorities of that place to allow a tax to be levied on each male Bulgarian of 52 paras (about 2½d.), by means of which they are enabled to improve and maintain their excellent gymnasium. When I visited these establishments, most of them were in their infancy. Bulgarian fathers, with genuine pride and joy, gladly led their sons to the new national schools, telling them to become good men, remain devoted to their nation, and pray for the Sultan. Exaggerated and unnatural as this feeling may appear in the face of late events, it was nevertheless genuine among the Bulgarians in those days. Russian influence had not made itself felt at that time, nor were the intellects of the poor ignorant Bulgarians sufficiently developed to enable them to entertain revolutionary notions or plot in the dark to raise the standard of rebellion. Entirely absorbed at that moment in the idea of obtaining the independence of their Church and promoting education, they were grateful to their masters for the liberty allowed them to do more than they had presumed to expect.
During the reign of Sultan Abdul-Aziz the sentiment of loyalty of the subject races towards their ruler diverged into two widely distinct paths. Among the Bulgarians this devotion originated in the intense ignorance and debasement to which centuries of bondage had reduced them: with the Greeks, after the creation of free Hellas, there existed a well-grounded confidence in themselves, a clear insight into the future, and the patience to keep quiet and wait for their opportunity. The Bulgarians were loyal because they knew no better; the Greeks because their time was not yet come. They knew the truth, “Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre.” If the minds of the Bulgarians subsequently became more alive to their actual situation and they listened to revolutionary suggestions, it was due to the teaching they had obtained from their schools and from the national ideas instilled into their minds by the priests and schoolmasters. This teaching was not always derived from books, for these were rare and precious objects not easy to obtain. Moreover, the difference between the written and spoken language is so great that the former can scarcely be understood by the bulk of the population. The original Hunnish tongue, absorbed by the Slavonic dialect that succeeded it, has preserved but little of the primitive unwritten idiom; and even the adopted one that replaced it gradually took in so great a number of Turkish, Greek, Servian, and other foreign words as to make the Bulgarian vernacular scarcely analogous with the more polished language now taught in the schools. Even in Philippopolis some years ago the Bulgarian ladies had great difficulty in understanding the conversation of the ladies belonging to the American mission, who had learnt the written language and spoke it with great purity. The modern Bulgarian is based upon the Slav, and although differing considerably from the Russian Slav language, the two nations have no great difficulty, after a little practice, in comprehending each other. No less than seven Bulgarian grammars are in existence, all written during the last fifteen years; but they agree neither in the general principles nor in the details. Some entirely disregard the popular idiom, and impose the rules of modern Russian or Servian on the language. Others attempt to reduce to rules the vernacular, which is variable, vague, and imperfect.
The schoolmasters are, generally speaking, young, ardent, and enthusiastic; if educated abroad, they are fully versed in all the usual branches of study, earnest in their work, as if pressed forwards by the impetus of their desire for inculcating into the minds of their ignorant but by no means unintelligent brethren all the views and sentiments that engross their own. The priests of the towns and villages become their confidants and co-workers; and thus the two bodies that had obtained self-existence at the same time, and had the same object in view, served later on as organs for instilling into the people some notions of personal independence and the wish for national liberty.
As a rule the Bulgarian is neither bright nor intelligent in appearance. His timid look, reserved and awkward manner, and his obstinate doggedness when he cannot or will not understand, give the peasant an air of impenetrability often amounting to brute stupidity. But those who have well studied the capacity and disposition of the Bulgarian consider this due rather to an incapability of comprehending at the first glance the object or subject presented to his attention, and a dogged obstinacy that will not allow him to yield readily to the proofs offered him.
This defect is so prominent in the Bulgarians that they have received from the Greeks the cognomen of χονδροκεφάλους (thick-heads), and a Turk, wishing to denote a person of an obstinate character, will use the expression of “Bulgar Kaphalu,” while the Bulgarian himself makes a joke of it, and, striking his head, or that of his neighbor, exclaims, “Bulgarski glava” (Bulgarian head). These heads, however, when put to the proof, by their capacity for study, their patience, and perseverance, gain complete mastery of the subject they interest themselves in, giving evidence of intelligence, which requires only time and opportunity to develop into maturity.
The rivalry between this nation and the Greeks is also doing much to promote education. But another and more friendly and effective stimulant exists in the untiring efforts of the American missionaries who have chosen this promising field of labor. Their civilizing influence has taken an unassuming but well-rooted foundation in all the places in which they have established themselves, and gradually develops and makes itself evident in more than one way. Indefatigable in their work of promoting religious enlightenment and education, these missionaries went about in their respective districts, preaching the Gospel and distributing tracts and Bibles among the people, who, in some places, received them gladly with kindness and confidence, while in others they were regarded with distrust. Frequently, however, a stray sheep or two would be found, in even the most ignorant and benighted parts, willing to be led away from his natural shepherd, ready to listen to and accept the teaching that spoke to his better feelings and his judgment. If wholesale conversion to Protestantism (of which I am no advocate, unless it be based upon real intellectual progress and moral development) does not follow, much good is done in promoting a spirit of inquiry, which can be satisfied by the cheap and excellent religious books furnished by the Bible societies. The purity and devotion that characterize the lives of these worthy people, who abandon a home in their own land to undertake a toilsome occupation among an ignorant and often hostile population, form another moral argument which cannot fail in the end to tell upon the people. Nor has their work of charity amidst death, cold, and starvation, after the massacres, often at the risk of their own lives, tended to lessen the general esteem and regard in which they are held by all classes and creeds of the population by which they are surrounded.
The Bulgarian student, whether in his own national schools or in those of foreign nations, is hard-working and steady; grave and temperate by disposition, he seldom exposes himself to correction or to the infliction of punishment. The scarcity of teachers was at first a great hindrance to the propagation of knowledge; this difficulty was by degrees removed by sending youths to study in foreign countries, who, on their return, fulfilled the functions of schoolmasters. In former times Russia was a great resort for these students, but lately, notwithstanding the great facilities, financial and otherwise, afforded them in that country, they now prefer the schools of France and Germany, together with the College of the American Mission at Bebek, and the training schools that have been lately established in the country, which are now capable of supplying the teachers necessary for the village schools. Recent events have, to a great extent, disorganized this excellent system: had it been allowed ten years longer to work, a transformed Bulgarian nation might have occupied the world’s attention.