PERSIAN SCHOOLS
A great many things are topsy-turvy in Persia, but perhaps reading is
as topsy-turvy as anything. It is not only that the lines, and indeed
the whole book, begin at the wrong end, but the lessons begin at the
wrong end too.
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 boys sit on the floor round the room, all reading at the top of
their voices at the same time in different parts of the book. They read
in a monotonous sing-song voice, swaying their bodies in time to the
sound.
The master sits and listens through the din to one and another
correcting mistakes here and there, and calling up any boy who seems
perfect in his lesson to learn the next bit, and then return to his
seat and read it over and over till he knows it too.
The book is the Quran, which the Muhammadans think was dictated by God
to Muhammad through the Archangel Gabriel. It would not be surprising
if the Persians, being Muhammadans, wished all their boys to learn what
they believe to be God’s Word; but the book is written in Arabic, which
Persian boys do not understand, and even the letters are not quite the
same as in Persian; so when the little pupil reaches the end of the
book he can read the Quran with the proper intonation, but he can read
nothing else, and he cannot understand the Quran.
The Muhammadans, however, think that reading the Quran, 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 they
know all the 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 Quran, said that he
had just got to his first sweets.
Having finished the Quran our little Persian boy goes on to Persian
books. These, too, he studies in much the same way as he did the Quran,
but it is more useful, because now he understands what he reads. After
plodding through the Quran it is a pleasant change for little Ghulām
Husain to turn to the War between the Cats and Mice, the Hundred
Fables, or Stories of Husain and Hasan (Muhammad’s two grandsons).
Later on he reads the poems of Hāfiz and Sa’adi, and other great
Persian poets, for there is a great deal of beautiful poetry in Persian.
There is no convenient desk or table for Ghulām Husain to write on.
He sits on the floor and holds the paper in his hand or on his knee.
His pen is a bit of fine cane, cut like a quill, but with a slanting
end. As he holds it the handle points directly to the right and it is
the horizontal lines which he must make broad, while the up and down
strokes must both be fine.
[Illustration: A PERSIAN SCHOOL]
Ghulām Husain never spills his ink. Each boy has his own inkpot, which
contains a tangled piece of silk soaked in ink. It dries up between the
lessons, so when Ghulām Husain wants to write he moistens it with water
so that the silk is thoroughly wet, but there is no water lying in the
inkpot. In among this wet silk he dips his pen.
If you look into Ghulām Husain’s pen-box you will find pens cut to
various breadths for large or small writing, a penknife, and a little
slab to rest the pen-point on for the final cut; an inkpot, and a tiny
brass ladle for adding water.
Many an English boy finds it tiresome to have to dot his i’s, but
little Ghulām Husain has to dot almost every letter, some above the
line and some below, some with one dot, some with two, and some with
three. These dots are not round, but square, and the height of the
letters is measured by the size of the dots. This letter must be one
dot high, that letter two dots high, another three, and yet another
five dots high. The size of the dot itself depends on the breadth of
the pen.
As he learns to write better he will run his letters into curious
combinations, and group his dots picturesquely in parts of the word to
which they do not belong, or leave them out altogether, until at last,
when he can write a really beautiful hand, the schoolmaster himself
will not be able to read the letter without careful study, and may even
have to guess at the meaning of particularly well-written passages.
One great beauty of a Persian letter is the way each line runs up at
the end, making a pile of words, syllables, and even single letters,
something in this style:--
rew
s sc
Persian
way the
“MY DEAR CHILDREN,--This is the
ers.
lett
write
en they
up the ends of their lines wh
f
k o
thin
ey can
words th
They also use all the longest
eir
at th
so th
arly all
els or ne
and leave out all their vow
ops.”
no st
they use
ecially as
read, esp
letters are very hard to
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 _chārvādār_, or muleteer, one of whose mules
strayed one day into a school. It was quickly driven out, and the
muleteer claimed damages from the schoolmaster to the extent of half
the value of the 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 travelling, just as a child counts half a person in train
travelling.
The punishments are as topsy-turvy as the lessons. When a boy is caned
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”--the
words are the same.
Some missionaries were picnicking one day in an orchard in a hill
village, and the village children gathered round to watch the
foreigners’ strange ways. “Do you often come and eat plums here?” one
of the ladies asked; and she was greatly bewildered by the curious
tastes of Persian boys, when the owner of the orchard answered for
them, that the boys who came into his orchard ate not the plums but the
wood.
This beating on the soles of the feet is a common punishment for every
one, from the slave and the schoolboy to the criminal and the political
offender. With schoolboys it is of course not very severe, but in more
serious cases it may be very severe indeed, even resulting in death.
The culprit in these cases is ordered not so many blows but so many
sticks, _i.e._ he is to be beaten till so many sticks have been broken.
A hundred sticks is not an uncommon punishment. If the culprit is rich
enough he may bribe the _farrāshes_ to strike the stocks when possible
and so break the sticks quickly, and not over his feet; but a poor man
has to take his punishment.
There is no compulsory education in Persia and very little free
education. There was one man who tried to atone for sins, which he
made no pretence of giving up, by founding a large free school in one
Persian town, but it is not a common form of benevolence. So it is only
those who can spare a little money who send their boys to school, and a
great many never get beyond a very early stage of reading and writing.
As for the girls very few parents care to waste their money over their
girls’ education. A certain number are taught to read the Quran, a
less number go on to reading such books as they have studied, but very
few can read at sight, and writing is even rarer. Still in the matter
of the education of girls Persia is in advance of other Muhammadan
countries.
In these days of general education it is difficult for us to realise in
this country how hard it is for the missionaries to teach the gospel
truths to the Persians. There is so much to be taught and there are so
many to be taught, and when it has to be done orally to people whose
intelligence and memory have never been developed by study of any kind,
whose minds and brains have never grown up properly, and who forget so
easily, it means an amount of work that would take up all the time and
strength of far more missionaries than are now in the field.
Many of the converts cannot come regularly for oral teaching, and they
are liable at any time to move out of the missionaries’ reach, so the
missionaries try to teach all the converts and their children to read
their Bibles at any rate, so that they can get teaching direct from
God’s Word themselves.
Besides the Persian schools there are now several Christian schools in
Persia, but we will talk about those in the next chapter. Since they
were started there has been an attempt in some of the big towns to
introduce an improved system of teaching, and Persian reading-books
are now printed with _ba-bi-bu_, _pa-pi-pu_, etc. etc.; but this is
the exceptional method of teaching, and not the rule in Persia, and I
doubt if any orthodox schoolmaster would care to teach Persian before
he taught the Arabic Quran.
The Parsees have a very good school in Yezd, largely supported by the
Parsees in Bombay, but this is only for Parsee boys.