Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/168



1. The Essence of Turkish Institutions of Education. Education is not obligatory in the Turkish empire; therefore, the number of the public Turkish schools and the students is considerably smaller compared with other European countries, or even with non-Moslem communities of the empire. During the last twenty to thirty years the government established some public schools in four grades: a primary school for each town, a higher school for each county, an academy for each State and three to four highest institutions in Constantinople for the whole country. The approximate proportion of the numbers of the institutions to that of the population cannot be more than one primary school for 10,000, one higher school for 100,000, one academy for 1,000,000 and one university for the whole population.

The grade of these schools also is very inferior, because with the exception of some Christian professors in the university (?) all the teachers and superintendents are Mohametan fanatics or infidels, unworthy of their position. In the system of instruction there is no radical improvement and can not be as long as the spirit and practice of Islam prevails. That is why the Mohametan students in