On the other hand, in a country where education is so expensive and so difficult to obtain as it is in Turkey, there were not wanting liberal-minded people who were willing to pass over these niceties for the sake or the counterbalancing advantages; and at the opening of the Lyceum, 147 Mohammedan, 48 Gregorian Armenian, 86 Greek, 34 Jew, 34 Bulgarian, 23 Roman Catholic, and 19 Armenian Catholic students applied for admission, forming a total of 341.
At the end of two years their numbers were almost doubled, for as long as Ali and Fouad Pashas had the direction the institution continued to prosper and to give satisfaction to those who had placed their children in it; but after the death of these true benefactors of Turkey everything changed for the worse.
The French director, disgusted with the intrigues that surrounded him and the interference he then met with in the performance of his functions, sent in his resignation and returned to Villa Franca; and within a month 109 pupils were withdrawn.
The post of director was successively filled by men whose mismanagement provoked so much discontent as to cause the still greater reduction in the number of students from 640 to 382.
The following extract from an article by M. de Salve in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th Oct., 1874, contains a pretty correct estimate of the talent, capacity, and general good conduct of the pupils that attended the Lyceum:
“After three years in the month of June, 1871, eight pupils of the Lyceum received the French decree of Bachelier des Sciences before a French Commission, and in the following years similar results were obtained.
“When the starting-point is considered and the progress made reflected upon, it will be admitted that it was impossible to foresee, or hardly to hope, for success. The degree that was attained bears testimony to the value and devotion of the masters as much as to the persevering industry and good-will of the pupils. In general, the progress made in the various branches of study, and particularly in that of the French language, and in the imitative art, has surpassed all our hopes, and in this struggle of emulation between pupils of such varied extractions, the most laudable results have been accomplished.
“We should then be wrong in looking upon the Eastern races as having become incapable of receiving a serious intellectual culture, and condemning them to final and fatal inaction. It may be interesting to know which nationalities have produced the most intelligent and best-conducted pupils. In these respects the Bulgarians have always held the first rank, and after them the Armenians, then the Turks and Jews, and lastly, I regret to say, the Roman Catholics. The Greeks, in addition to some good characters, presented a great many bad ones.”
The supremacy of the Bulgarians is a fine augury for the coming state of things; and that the Greeks and Roman Catholics should not have greatly distinguished themselves need not surprise us; for all the children of the better classes of these communities are educated in schools kept by professors of their own persuasion. One of the reasons why the Lyceum has been abandoned by the majority of the Christian pupils is its removal to Stamboul, which made it very difficult for their children to attend, together with the radical changes which have taken place in its administration and in the tone, which has now become quite Turkish.
In describing the improvements effected by Ali and Fouad Pashas upon the old Moslem Mekteb, we have been led away from the other primeval Moslem institution, the Medressé, or Mosque College. These Medressés, supported by the funds of the mosques to which they are attached, are the universities where the Softas and Ulema, and lower down the Imams and Kyatibs, study, and, so to speak, graduate. The subjects taught are much the same as in the Medressés of other Mohammedan countries. Language and theology are the main things in the eye of the Ulema (or Dons) of a Medressé. Language means grammar, rhetoric, poetry, calligraphy, and what not, in Arabic, and (though less essentially) in Persian and Turkish. Theology includes the interpretation of the Koran and traditions; and when we have said that we have said enough for one lifetime, as every one knows who knows anything of Arab commentators and traditionists and recommentators and traditionists commentated. Theology, it should however be added, of course includes Moslem law, since both are bound together in the Koran and the traditions of Mohammed. It may easily be conceived that the instruction in these Medressés was and is always of a stiff conservative sort, not likely to advance in any great degree the cause of general enlightenment in Turkey. Still, since all the scholars and statesmen of the country were, until quite lately, invariably educated at the Medressés, it cannot be denied that they have done service in their time. Whatever historians, poets, or literary men Turkey can boast of more than a generation back, to the Medressés be the credit! In the case of statesmen the result of this training has not always been very happy. It is not satisfactory to know that in quite recent times a Minister of Public Instruction (of the old school), sitting upon a commission for looking into the state of the schools of Turkey, on being shown some maps and some mathematical problems executed by the pupils, appeared entirely ignorant of their meaning, and exclaimed, “Life of me! Mathematics, geography, this, that, and the other, what use is such rubbish to us?”