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in singing, so loved by all Armenian youth. At 7:30 in the morning an hour of games and playground work was held, the group dividing into sections, so all took part. Most of the curriculum studied dealt with primary and elementary school subjects, but a group of over twenty were given kindergarten training throughout the entire time. Such, in bare outline, was the experiment which proved so beneficial that the larger plan for similar work has been adopted more permanently. It is interesting to consider some of the conditions which these Armenian teachers working in the American Near East Relief institutions, have to cope with.

To begin with, it is for many of them their first offense in teaching. The director at Sivas, one of the large interior stations, writes: "We have long since given up hope of finding trained teachers, and our search now is for those who know at least reading and writing and can be taught to take the place of teachers. Fortunately our head teacher is very well prepared for this work, and as we look back upon the teachers who were trained during the past year, we cannot say too much in appreciation of this branch of our work." This situation is true of those regions which were most severely hit by the massacres and deportations, for in 1915 Armenian educators were especially marked for the extermination, and the job was done most thoroughly. Those now doing the work were too old or too young at the time to arouse suspicion, yet they are now bravely filling in the gaps. Here and there will be found a real leader of the old days. The head teacher spoken of in Sivas, for example, is a former member of the Sivas Teachers' College, the only one of the faculty who survived, owing to his absence in Switzerland. He changed his course at once from music to pedagogy, and was one of the first to return to Turkey after the armistice, in order to help the children. During the past dangerous years, he has been sticking heroically to his post, organizing the education of more than 1,300 orphans. The word "heroically" is used advisedly, for the Turk who killed off Armenian intellectuals in 1915 is still in power, and there is a constant quite pardonable temptation to the teachers to leave the country for safer quarters.

The real caliber of these new teachers was brought out in true relief against the dark background of conditions in the Caucasus last spring. In April, the director at Alexandropol writes: "At present our local employees are all on a volunteer basis, receiving only food, lodging, and a fairly generous supply of clothing. The last salary list at Kasatche Post was paid in December. The teachers at the huge Polygon orphanages received no salaries since the beginning of December. At the end of January the teachers at Kasatche Post orphanages held a mass meeting and selected a committee to inform the District Commander that they preferred to donate the amount of their salaries to help support the orphans. Also a greater thing, they voluntarily cut their food ration in half. This was entirely the idea of the employees themselves." Surely no higher standard of devotion than this could be applied to teachers in any clime.

If the teachers have to start themselves from a beginning of almost zero in educational training, the condition of the children is even lower, as regards the most elementary requirements for successful school work. The first problem that faces these teachers is to bring the children up to the place where most elementary education begins.

They come sick, stunted in growth from starvation, with minds dulled by hardships, nerves unbalanced by the strain of cruelty and constant fear. Half of them do not know their own names. It has been estimated that two-thirds in the interior orphanages do not even remember their own mother tongue. Even the oldest know scarcely anything of what they were taught in pre-war school days. The food and care and kindness of the orphanage home soon work marvels in the physique of these boys and girls, who rebound with that almost miraculous recuperative power so characteristic of their race.

Then comes the question of how to classify school work for these children. The majority, though of widely differing ages, are on about a level of ignorance. After a while, however, the school falls naturally into grades. A great many of the children were found in the first year to be able to catch up three to five years' work in one, so that by now there is a fairly normal gradation.

The policy is to teach the children their own language first of all. Hence the new method of modern language teaching is one of the most necessary studies in the teachers' training course. Next is the question of teaching them English. Orientals take to languages like ducks to water, and there is a temptation, espe cially considering the eagerness of the children to learn our tongue, to give them all English instruction. But, bearing in mind the fundamental principles of all education in Armenia today,—that of making the child self-supporting at the earliest possible moment, the policy has been established of teaching English only for the older pupils of marked ability.

In the work given, the simple subjects of a good primary and elementary education are aimed at. But this is not enough. The problem of education becomes a distinctive vocational one for these orphan children. More and more every child is being given industrial training. In the orphanages there is instruction in carpentry, shoemaking, tinsmithing, bookbinding, photography, masonry, weaving, tailoring, and pottery. For the girls, all kinds of sewing, knitting, embroidery and lacemaking, dressmaking, rugmaking, housework, baking and nursing.

Such training at a glance raises many difficulties. How shall it be taught? Two methods are at present being followed: the system of school shops with regular manual training teachers; and that of apprenticing the boys for half time with local artisans, the other half time being spent on regular school subjects.

Vocational choice must be made early. How shall it be directed? A real economic problem is raised here, involving much knowledge of conditions and an almost impossible amount of wisdom in foreseeing the possible development of the country. Any good sized Turkish town can support a number of carpenters, but only a couple of bookbinders or photographers.

The work must necessarily be practical from the very first. The needs of the orphanage themselves supply a very real demand for the products of these school industries. Every kind of equipment and clothing has been made by the children themselves, and, of course, the actual work of the institution is more and more entrusted to them under supervision. The temptation to the

teachers to make showy, intricate articles, unfit for local use, must constantly be curbed. Indeed, the product must be marketable, for as soon as the orphanage needs are supplied the output must be disposed of at a financial gain to help cover the heavy expense of these industrial training schools. Thus, in connection with the Tarsus Trade School, a shop has been opened in the town market, where, side by side, are exhibited for sale, bread, shoes, cloth, bound books, tin cups, oxen yokes, and other useful objects. Moreover, children who are preparing to fill a useful place in the community at an early age, should be kept in constant touch with the life around them, difficult though this may be in the crowded orphanage where hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of children are brought up together. In one place the boys gained very practical experience in constructing a drainage system for the town.

In this very concrete vocational work the orphans of the Near East may, indeed, have a very real advantage over their small benefactors in America, where the purpose and the use of what is learned is often too distant and entirely too abstract.

Agricultural training is of great necessity, and nearly every large orphan center has its farm. The farm for the orphanage of Trebizond has a most historic site on the very hill where, as tradition has it, Zenophon and his men first came upon the sea. This agricultural work has the practical value that fresh vege tables, potatoes, even wheat for the school use are often entirely raised by the boys. At Caesarea, dairy products are even marketed. All of this is obviously of great economy in relief work, where land is easy to get, but it serves an educational purpose beyond the confines of the orphanage, serving as a demonstration center for the surrounding country, just as the newer rural school is trying to do over here. For teachers with any knowledge of modern agriculture it is, indeed, a great opportunity, for in this rich agricultural land the methods employed date well bak to the days of Abraham himself. Practically every orphanage, however small, has at least its own truck garden, which can be made a fine part of the children's education, even when not distinctly Vocational.

In all this work, whether of schoolroom, or work bench, or field, the teachers face huge handicaps. The looms in the weaving

classes are usually crude things constructed by fellow students in carpentry, and many of the tools come from the orphanage smithy. There is a tremendous dearth of books of any kind. The children may study four or five to one much-used volume. Indeed, it is usually a volume no longer, for books have literally to be divided up among the pupils. One teacher writes from a large center in Cilicia: "Can you send us some paper? None can be found here. We have no decent pencils. A dozen would help us out." There are never anywhere near enough slates to go around, and real blackboards are almost unknown. But the teachers have hit upon many a clever expedient. Perhaps one of the practical questions to be discussed at the summer schools will be, "How to teach writing without paper or slates." From one, the answer will come, "Just paint the four sides of your courtyard with black dye; we've done it and it works finely." From another, "We have used the whitewashed walls of the schoolrooms, and then scrubbed them off."

There is always lack of fine thread to be had for the lacemakers, and exquisite embroideries are often produced on coarsest materials. A real S. O. S. insert in a cable from the Caucasus recently, read, “All out of needles." Some time ago a knitting class without any knitting needles whatever found a fine substitute in the old umbrella of one of the American workers.

Picture the problem of a kindergartner struggling to arouse from apathy the little creature in her care and not daring to take enough beans from the children's limited food supply to carry on the small games intended.

There, as here, schoolroom space is a great problem, for the orphanages are full to overflowing, with children still uncared for at the door. Fortunately, the oriental bed of simple mattress and quilt lends itself to the necessity of economy, and can be rolled up, put in the corner, and bedrooms and dining-hall used for schoolrooms. The difficulty of heating in the winter makes sedentary school work difficult, for many an orphanage is a breezy old barrack. In one place school had to be abandoned for some weeks while the children spent most of the day in bed, because of the difficulty in getting firewood.

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