Children of Persia

by Mrs. Napier Malcolm

It is difficult to get teachers; sometimes none can be got on the spot, and they have to be fetched from some other town, perhaps several weeks’ journey away. Sometimes the missionary has to be the only teacher till he can train some of his own boys to be first monitors and then masters in the school.

Then there is the school itself. Sometimes the small beginnings of a school are started in the missionary’s own dining-room; sometimes he is able to spare a room entirely for school purposes. In one case this was supplemented by a rough tent or shed made of matting in the compound. But as the school grows, separate buildings have to be found or built.

Books are another difficulty. All books for teaching English have to be got from abroad, and many are not suitable. Readers which are very suitable for the size of boy who reads them in England or India, are not suitable for the young men who often use them in Persia. If you give an educated young man, well read in the finest Persian poetry, the childish stories and rhymes in many of the readers, he thinks English books are very, very foolish, and his opinion of English intelligence in both literary and religious matters falls very low.

All these things need money. The boys generally pay a very small fee and buy their own books, but the fees do not go far towards paying for the schools and the teachers’ salaries, and the getting together of the necessary money is another difficulty.

The pupils themselves present three great difficulties. In our country boys under fourteen generally go to different schools from boys over fourteen, and those who wish to continue their education after seventeen or eighteen leave school and go to college, or attend special lectures. But in Persia the missionary is asked to take them all together in one school, even middle-aged men wishing to become pupils. But it is quite impossible to make a satisfactory school of boys and men together. It is sometimes possible, especially in the larger schools, to arrange separately for the men, but generally an age limit has to be set.

The second difficulty arises from the number of boys who want to learn English and who are never likely to have any use for it. They have an idea that it is so new and uncommon that any one who knows it is bound to get work at a good salary, and so they want to waste their time over it when they ought to be learning the subjects they will really need for their work. It takes some time and trouble to sort these boys out from those who are really likely to need English. The third difficulty is not peculiar to Persia, though it presents some peculiarities there. It is the problem of managing the boys.

Boys in England, I am sorry to say, sometimes tell lies, but in Persia it would be more correct to say that they sometimes tell the truth.

Then again the boys are of different ranks; some of them come with their servants, and a certain amount of tact has to be used to get them to accept the ordinary rules of discipline. But in a school where everybody comes to learn most of these difficulties can be overcome.

Persian boys want knowing, like all boys, but when one tries to do one’s best for them one finds them thoroughly lovable and possessed of a large number of exceedingly good points.

Lastly, the Mullās, or Muhammadan clergy, see in the schools the greatest danger to their religion, and they oppose them strongly. They know that such close contact with Christians must open the boys’ eyes to some extent to the contrast between Muhammadanism and Christianity, and they know Muhammadanism cannot stand such a comparison.