Daybreak in Turkey / Second Edition

by James L. Barton

Under the impulse of the reform movement it was impossible to keep out schools for girls. These multiplied in the large cities first and then extended into the interior until they became almost as popular as the schools for young men. The Mission School for girls in Constantinople became the foremost institution of its kind in the empire. After passing through several changes, all in the line of progress, it became, nearly twenty years ago, the American College for Girls in Constantinople. It is to-day the most advanced school for the education of women in the Levant. Euphrates College at Harpoot has also a female department, while in Central Turkey at Marash there is now a collegiate school for young women as well as a similar institution at Smyrna. These schools, for both boys and girls, are overcrowded with students and have been from the beginning. It has been impossible to keep pace by enlargement with the increasing desire on the part of the people for the education of their children.

The collegiate institutions are well scattered over the length and breadth of the country. The two colleges for boys which are the nearest together are St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus and Central Turkey College at Aintab, and yet these are some four days’ journey apart. The students in Beirut speak Arabic for the most part; those in Marash and Aintab use Turkish; those at Harpoot, Armenian; at Marsovan and Smyrna, Armenian, Greek and Turkish; and those at the American College for Girls and at Robert College, both in Constantinople, use about all the languages of the empire. English is taught in all, and constitutes, in some of the institutions, the only common tongue; as, for instance, in Robert College there are seldom less than a dozen nationalities and languages represented among the students. The only language they all wish to master is English. This becomes, then, the common linguistic meeting-place of scholars in the Ottoman empire.

All but three of the American colleges here mentioned are incorporated under the laws of either New York or Massachusetts, and so are distinctively and legally American institutions. All of them have some kind of official recognition from the Sublime Porte or from the sultan himself. Below the colleges are schools for both boys and girls of a grade which admits to the collegiate courses. This is true of schools remote from any college where the pupils who cannot go to a distant part of the country for an education are numerous.

Including the preparatory departments, there are not less than six thousand pupils studying in connection with these collegiate institutions, and all under Christian training. The grade in many respects, if not in all, is equal to that of the ordinary American college. In languages they all give the broadest courses. In Euphrates College, for instance, there are from six to eight languages taught, at least six of which are compulsory. The courses of study are adapted to the needs of the country and with a view to training the students for the highest service to their own people. The college at Beirut has a medical department which is of great value to the country, drawing its students from every race.

When the direct collegiate work was entered upon, in every instance the theological schools were made separate departments or were entirely set apart by themselves. There are at the present time six distinct training-schools in Turkey which have for their object the preparation of young men for the gospel ministry. Two of these, namely the schools at Beirut, and at Mardin, in northern Mesopotamia, train their pupils for work among Arabic speaking peoples; the one at Harpoot, for work among the Armenians, where the Armenian language is chiefly used, although some of its pupils speak Turkish; the one at Marash for Turkish speaking peoples; the one at Marsovan for those who speak Armenian, Turkish and Greek; and the one at Samakov, Bulgaria, for Bulgarians alone. Attempts have been made to unite this theological work, but the long distance separating the schools and the time and cost of the journey to and from them, the barriers of the different languages, and the restrictions put upon all native students in travel, have made it impracticable to do so up to the present time.

In these institutions, by far the largest number of teachers are natives of Turkey, some of whom, after taking a course of study in their own country, have had postgraduate work in Europe or the United States. In each case, the president is an American who is usually assisted by one or more Americans. It is the policy of all these institutions to employ as many thoroughly equipped native teachers and professors as can be secured consistent with maintaining the high intellectual and moral tone of the schools.

In no case are these free schools. The students are charged tuition, room rent, and board, and they also purchase their own books and supplies. Some of these colleges secure from fees and payments by the pupils nearly three-fourths of the entire cost of conducting the institution. This is true of Robert College at Constantinople and Anatolia College at Marsovan, and others. In addition to the fees paid, the people of the country have contributed in some cases most liberally for the college plant. Aintab College is a marked instance of this. In recent years the early students who have prospered in business have given freely for the endowment of their Alma Mater, as in the case of Euphrates College at Harpoot. The willingness of the people to contribute for the support of these higher educational institutions demonstrates most unmistakably belief in their value.

Such numerous collegiate and theological institutions necessitate a large and ever increasing number of schools of lower grade all over the country. These have sprung up in nearly every village and are found in every town of size. They are for the most part entirely supported by the people themselves. The great value of the educational work done in Turkey by the missionaries does not lie alone in the schools of different grades now controlled and directed by them; it also appears in the thirst for education which manifests itself in independent village, parochial, and city schools, with more or less modern equipment, and stretching from Persia to the Bosporus, from the Black Sea to Arabia. There is much yet to be desired in this respect, but much has already been accomplished.

This educational work has made no perceptible impression upon the Jews, for whose special awakening mission work in Turkey was first undertaken. The Greeks have slowly responded and many young men from that race are found in Robert College at Constantinople, in the International College at Smyrna and in Anatolia College in Marsovan. The race as a race, however, in Turkey has not taken up the cause of modern education with vigor and pressed it with moral earnestness. It is the Armenian race that has responded most fully to the call of modern learning. By far the largest number of students of any one race in the schools in Turkey are Armenians. They constitute as large a proportion of the pupils of Robert College as that of any other race. While they number probably less than one-tenth of the inhabitants of the empire, they furnish a large proportion of its student body.

These modern educational institutions in Turkey are a mighty force in reshaping the life, thought, customs and practises of the people of that country. Men and women from these schools are taking leading positions there in the learned professions as well as in commerce and trade. Large numbers of former students in the mission schools are now prosperous merchants and business men in Europe and America. Through these men of modern ideas Western machinery and the products of our factories are finding their way into that part of the East in increasing quantities while the products of Turkey are in exchange brought to us. It is probably true, as has been frequently stated, that the money given from America for the establishment and support of American colleges in Turkey is far more than returned, with large interest, in the form of increased trade with that country.