Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/162

156 we shall call Hoja effendi, the lord teacher. These frequent howlings are generally accompanied with a hard stroke of a four-foot-long heavy stick upon the floor its full length; and often with vulgar words.

We can never expect to see anything like maps, black-boards or other school furniture, but only a dirty and badly torn pamphlet in each pupil's hand, in which are some extracts from the Koran in the Arabic language, which the Turkish children do not understand. No geography, arithmetic, natural or unnatural science; and no writing, class system or programme; but beginning from the right hand of the teacher each pupil must come separately and kneel down before him on the bare floor, and after a solemn denunciation of "Satan the Instigator," and recognition of "the name of Allah, the most merciful," must repeat his lesson with a louder voice and chanting tone, all the time swinging the body to and fro. As an approval of the recitation the teacher will simply say "Hum!" two or three times in every line, or sometimes for every single word, even for every syllable if the pupil is spelling. After one or two hundred shut-mouthed "hums!" and an uncertain number of scornful corrections, the so-called lesson comes to its end and the next pupil is called. Of the disapproval or complimentary words that pour out from the mouth of the Haja effendi, the following are comparatively milder ones: "Donkey," "Donkey-headed," "Frozen-brain," "Stiff-skulled," "Lazy donkey," "Blind hog," "Lame dog," "Crippled bear," according to the bodily defects of the children;