Note 79 — Chapter IV · VAN

The healthy absence or subordination of such an element among the Americans has contributed in no small measure to their success. The missionaries live on good terms with the Armenian clergy, and are sometimes invited to preach in their churches. They are loud in their praise of the tolerance of the Armenian hierarchy. They assured me that no attempt is made in their schools to convert the pupils from their ancestral religion. An early opportunity was afforded me of visiting these schools. They are two in number, one in the gardens and the other in the walled city. To both are attached companion institutions for girls. The school in the gardens was attended by 110 boys and 115 girls. That in the city had only a third of this number. The better-to-do among the people pay a small yearly fee, ranging, according to the standard of education which they may be receiving, from 15 to 60 piastres.79 The highest class are expected to pay the last-named sum. Boys enter the school at seven years of age, and some remain as late as their sixteenth year or even into their eighteenth. The course consists of primary, intermediary and high-school classes; and to each class it would be usual to devote three years. The curriculum of the highest class consists of English and French among foreign languages, algebra and geometry in the domain of mathematics, and physics and physiology in that of natural science. History is taught under certain drawbacks. I saw a copy of Xenophon’s Anabasis which had been abstracted from the trunk of a teacher, and in which the name of Armenia had been erased with a penknife from the map!