Journeys In Persia And Kurdistan ( Vol.Ii).

THE ANGLICAN SCHOOLS 231

It is not a proselytising mission. It teaches, trains,
and prints. It has one High School at Urmi for boys
under seventeen, and two upon the Urmi Plain, but the
work to which these may be regarded as subsidiary
is the Urmi Upper School for priests, deacons, and can-
didates for holy orders. In these four establishments
there are about 200 pupils, mostly boarders. There are
also seventy-two village day-schools, and the total attend-
ance last year was—boys 1248, girls 225. Seventy-six
deacons and young men above seventeen are in the Upper
School at Urmi.

The education given in the ordinary schools is on a
level with that of our elementary schools. In the school
of St. Mary and St. John, which contains priests, deacons,
and laymen, some being mountaineers, the subjects taught
are Holy Scripture, catechism, Scripture geography, uni-
versal history, liturgy, preaching, English, Persian, Osmanli
Turkish, arithmetic, and Old Syriac.1 Preaching is taught
practically. A list of 10 0 subjects on a systematic theo-
logical plan has been drawn up, and each week two of the
deacons choose topics from the list and write sermons
upon them.

In 1887 the Mission clergy drew up a catechism con-
taining between 200 and 300 questions, with " Scripture
proofs," which the scholars in all their schools are obliged
to learn by heart.

The boys of the Urmi High School and of the Upper
School board in the mission house, and are under the
constant supervision of the clergy. Their food and habits
of living are strictly Oriental. All imitations of Western
manners and customs are forbidden, the policy of the
Mission being to make the Syrians take a pride in their
national customs, which as a rule are adapted to their

1 " Old Syriac as a lesson means reading portions of Holy Scripture,
and translating them into modern Syriac."