Many of the converts cannot come regularly for oral teaching, and they are liable at any time to move out of the missionaries’ reach, so the missionaries try to teach all the converts and their children to read their Bibles at any rate, so that they can get teaching direct from God’s Word themselves.
Besides the Persian schools there are now several Christian schools in Persia, but we will talk about those in the next chapter. Since they were started there has been an attempt in some of the big towns to introduce an improved system of teaching, and Persian reading-books are now printed with _ba-bi-bu_, _pa-pi-pu_, etc. etc.; but this is the exceptional method of teaching, and not the rule in Persia, and I doubt if any orthodox schoolmaster would care to teach Persian before he taught the Arabic Quran.
The Parsees have a very good school in Yezd, largely supported by the Parsees in Bombay, but this is only for Parsee boys.
There are two branches of mission-work in Persia that bring the missionaries into close touch with Persian children: one is the hospital, the other is the school. You will hear about the medical work presently; in this chapter we will look at the school work.
There are Europeans in Persia, wanting English-speaking servants and employés; there are rich Persians wanting secretaries who can write French and English; there are business firms trading with England and India who want English-speaking clerks and correspondents; so naturally many Persians want their sons to learn English; and who should teach it better than the Englishman?
But this is not all they want. As they get to know the Christians they see that there is something in English ways and English character that the Persian lacks. And they bring their boys to the missionary, and ask him not merely to teach them English, not merely to teach them book-learning of any sort, but to teach them to be good boys.
They do not so often ask for a girls’ school, for they do not think a girl needs any book education as a rule, and only a few of the Persian women can even read. Yet in some of the Mission-stations girls’ schools have been started with great success, and year by year the demand for them is growing.