Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/161



1. A Visit to a Turkish Common School. The first thing which will attract the visitor's attention is the noise produced in a Turkish school, because every pupil must study his lesson with a loud voice. The exterior appearance of the building, which is generally attached to a mosque, has nothing worthy to be called a school house—a single small room, with very low and narrow windows, if at all. During the cold weather these windows are covered with paper or white thin cotton cloth instead of glass, and in the hot seasons they are left open to the burning sun without any shades, unless it be the coats of the students sitting in front of them. There is no chair or desk, or anything like tables. All the children are sitting flat on the floor, on coarse mats or bare boards, which have never seen washing. The teacher is also sitting on the floor, on a small hard cushion, and a little one-foot-high box before him for his table. All the boys (for no girl is allowed in this school) keep small turbaned fezes on their heads, but their shoes or wooden slippers are left at the front door. All the pupils are repeating their lessons in a loud voice, which is stimulated every six or seven minutes by the coarse howling of the long-bearded, large-turbaned and wide, loose-robed man, whom for convenience