EDUCATIONAL WORK IN SIAM
American missionaries were the pioneers in true educational work in Siam. They gave to Siam its first real school. They aided Siam in establishing the Government Educational system, and encouraged the Department of Education to establish normal training schools. They introduced the printing press into Siam, made the first Siamese type, and taught Siam the art of printing.
American missionaries gave Siam its first newspaper in the Siamese language, and gave the first Geography, Astronomy, Anatomy, and Physiology, Chemistry, Arithmetic, and Geometry in the Siamese language.
When the King of Siam made the first move for the establishment of a school system over Siam, he placed an American missionary at the head of the work. The present Minister of Education was at one time pupil of a missionary, later on he became fellow student of one of the missionaries in Sanscrit, and still consults the missionaries on educational questions and literary subjects.
In the past twenty-five years the Presbyterian Mission at Siam has received more money from the Siamese king, princes, nobles, and common people for the maintenance of educational work, than it has received from the Presbyterian Church in America. (Educational Work of the Bd. For. Miss. of the Pres. Ch.)
PERSIAN SCHOOLS
An English boy learns to read his own language first, and does not always go on to a foreign language. A Persian boy learns to read a foreign language first, and does not always go on to his own language. When a little Persian boy goes to school he is given a big Arabic book, with a great many long words in it, and he is not taught how the words are spelt, but is told what they are, and made to repeat them from memory, pointing to each word in the book as he says it, and gradually he gets some idea of which word is which.... The Mohammedans think that reading the Koran, quite apart from understanding it, is a very good action, so the little Persian boys work away at it, and they do not think it hard lines because all men and big boys began in the same way, so it seems the natural thing to do. And perhaps it is a little consolation to know that when they reach certain points they will be given sweets. One little boy who was asked how far he had got in the Koran, said that he had just got his first sweets.
Having finished the Koran, our little Persian boy goes on to Persian books. These, too, he studies in much the same way as he did the Koran, but it is more useful, because now he understands what he reads. After plodding through the Koran it is a pleasant change for little Ghulam Husain to turn to the “War between the Cats and Mice” or the “Hundred Fables.” Later on he reads the poems of Hafiz and Sa’adi, and other great Persian poets.
The Persians do not apparently think much of their own system of education, for they are always laughing at their schoolmasters. They have a story of a charvadar, or muleteer, one of whose mules strayed one day into a school. It was quickly driven out, and the muleteer claimed damages to the extent of half the value of a mule. The schoolmaster indignantly asked on what he based his claim. The muleteer turned to the crowd which had gathered to listen to the argument. “My beast,” said he, “went into his school a mule and it has come out a donkey.” You see, a donkey counts half a mule in caravan traveling, just as child counts half a person in train traveling.
When a boy is caned in punishment he lies on his back and holds out his feet instead of his hands. Sometimes his feet are held in a kind of stocks while he is caned across the soles. They call it “eating sticks” or “eating wood.” (Mrs. Napier Malcolm in “Children of Persia.”)