At School in Palestine
In 1901 the Friends of New England opened a Boys' Training Home in Ram Allah, my native town.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“At School in Palestine” from When I was a Boy in Palestine by Mousa Kaleel, 1914.
In 1901 the Friends of New England opened a Boys' Training Home in Ram Allah, my native town. Mr. Elihu Grant (now Professor of Biblical Literature at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts) and his wife were the teachers for the first four years. I was one of the boys who entered at the beginning, and in 1906 I was graduated, one of a class of three.
Girls seldom have any schooling, and in 1838 it is recorded that my home town had only one school for boys, where five or six boys were considered educated when they could read Arabic. To-day things are decidedly changed: all the different sects have schools, which are usually very jealous of one another, but they serve their purpose. There are now over ten schools in my home village of about five thousand inhabitants. Among them are two boarding-schools, one for boys, and the other for girls. This girls' school breaks all precedents, and is considered the finest of its kind in the country.
You see I was not in a position to escape schooling. I was taken to school for short periods when I was very young, but I never learned anything until after I was eight years old. Before that I did not go frequently enough, and when I did go, I paid no attention, and no attention was paid to me if I kept quiet. At the age of eight I became interested in the easy arithmetical problems, and I reported, unfortunately for myself, as you shall see later, daily improvements and changes of lessons to my father. These changes meant progress, for the teacher never allowed a boy to pass over a lesson without first mastering what was supposed to be taught by it.
Let me first picture the school-room. We enter. One-half of the room is filled with long benches on which the boys are seated. The more advanced ones sit in the rear, because they are supposed to keep better order, and need not be in the immediate neighborhood of the teacher. One class is usually reciting. The boys stand in a semicircle round the teacher, with the brightest boys on one end and the dullest on the other. First one boy reads and is corrected, and then another.
Those who know their lessons are allowed to sit down, while the others have to undergo punishment. Kneeling in the corner is considered getting out of it easily, for usually the teacher inflicts other penalties. He keeps a few small and pliant sticks with which he hits the erring boys on their hands. This method is usually measured by the number of mistakes made, one mistake, one blow, and so on. Whenever the teacher wishes to make the punishment more severe and humiliating to the boy, he whips his bare feet instead of his hands. Often the teacher inflicts these punishments because of complaints by the mothers. Somebody has to do the punishing, and since most fathers are over-indulgent with their boys, the teachers have to be all the more stern on their part. This whipping is fast being done away with and more humane methods are used. Memories force me to drop the subject.
After reading come writing lessons. The boys go up to the teacher and watch him write models for them. They follow the elegance of his motions and try to imitate them, much to the disadvantage of the reed pens that squeak and break at the least pretext. Thus the teacher is kept busy; when not whetting his knife, he is sharpening pens for his imitators. Older boys learn to sharpen their own pens.
After the writing lesson they have a lesson in poetry. All the boys have to learn a few verses of poetry daily. This used to be my easiest lesson, for the whole school chanted the verses together, and all I had to do was to move my lips.
Our lessons consisted chiefly of parables and fables. Very few of us had books, and since most of us were blessed with strong memories, we escaped actually learning anything. I used to be able to recite most of the gospels by heart, but could not read them. One day there was to be a boarding-school opened for boys, and tests were being held. My father, thinking me the scholar of the family, took me for these tests, and to his surprise I could not read the plainest of passages. The examining teacher, who was dividing the aspirants into two classes, pushed me aside into the second class. But my father saved me. He protested at the teacher's action, saying that if they did not place me with the first class, they could not have me at all.
Boys who wanted to enter and pay the fees were rather scarce, so not having any alternative, the teacher placed me in the first class for a trial month.
Never till that time had I known that school and reading were anything but a foolish imposition on a boy's free nature. Now I was put to it, or rather, it was put to me to “make good," and I resolved to try my best because of my father. The first night found us having our try-outs to determine who was the strongest boy in school. This being established, we were ready for the school year. We began to learn not only Arabic, but English, not only reading, but also writing, and how to work problems in arithmethic. Grammar and many more arduous things followed. I happened to “make good," and stayed in the class, but it told on my strength, and from one of the strongest boys in school I fell down to seventh. This did not make any difference, however; I led my classes and at home I was the hero.
It certainly was a tactical mistake on my part to make such a reputation at the beginning, for I had to maintain the lead, or bear the shame which my father would have to share with me. In the tribal coffee-house it was a subject of continual conversation and argument. This was more vehement as each examination drew near, and everybody was praising his favorite.
Our games at school became organized, and we used to take long walks every afternoon after school. While passing through town, we had to march two by two, but out in the open we ran as we pleased. The red-letter day of our school year was picnic day. We started early in the morning for some spring out in the woods. We took all our food out with us and spent a most enjoyable day playing games. On these occasions we had many track contests, and we also spent some time swinging under the huge olive trees.
The longest of these trips was the one we took in my second year. We went to ''Ayn Fara'' in the Wady Fara, a few hours' trip to the northwest of Jerusalem. Leaving Earn Allah as early as five o'clock, we proceeded eastward for about a mile. Here was the much smaller town of El Bereh, lying on the southeast side of a curve in the carriage road which leads south to Jerusalem, nine miles away, and north to Nablus, the Shecem of the Bible. From this town we could see Jerusalem. To our left, north of El Bereh, is a lofty mountain on which there is a high watchtower commanding a large section of the neighboring country on all sides.
On the left side of the road toward the south we saw the pride of the village, one of the finest and strongest water supplies for many miles around. A mosque is built on the site. We could see women and girls coming and going, carrying their water jars on their heads, and a little further in the same direction we caught a glimpse of the old Khan, or inn. This is the inn where Joseph and Mary missed Christ on their homeward journey to Nazareth, and returned back to find him arguing with the learned Jewish elders. Everywhere we saw reservoirs, and other devices, and ruins of Bible times, and to the southeast rose Jebel Ettawil, the long mountain which barred our view of the River Jordan and the Dead Sea.
We continued toward the south along our road, which sloped downward gently but steadily. After walking a mile, we got to the ruins of Atara at the foot of Jebel Deborah. On the top of this mountain the prophetess Deborah sat and judged among the tribes of Israel.
Following the road for about three more miles, we took a road leading eastward. We were now between two villages: to our right was Er Eam, the Ramah of Samuel, another judge and prophet of Israel; to our left was a smaller village, Jeba, also of Bible fame. Here the road began to sound hollow under the donkey's feet; the sound was noticeable even under our own tread. This may be accounted for by the fact that there are many underground caves, some of which may be entered by stairs cut in the stone. Undoubtedly these caves must have served either as dwellings or hiding-places to peoples of former times, for they are cemented and otherwise fitted for habitation.
After passing these villages, we found ourselves in a wilderness abounding with birds and flowers. The birds we saw were mostly large, many of them crows. Flowers of many colors bloomed everywhere; anemones and red poppies were especially numerous.
Following a steep incline which circled down the mountain-side, we reached the stream bed of Ayn Fara, and after a short walk, the fountain-head of the Ayn itself. Large volumes of water were gushing out of the rocks.
Mountains, high and steep, towered almost perpendicularly above us, shutting us from the rest of the world. We were in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alluded to in the twenty-third Psalm, and for a short time we were awed and almost seared by the resounding echoes. But soon we began fishing with pin-hooks in the only little pond in the valley. Some even went swimming in it.
After dinner we were ready to go on exploring parties. We climbed up the side of the only mountain climbable. After going up a little way we reached a cave that was unlike anything we ever saw before. It must have been one of the caves in which Saul cornered David, when he was trying to kill him. It is about sixty feet above the fountain in a cliff of limestone rock, and has several square chambers with many passages and vestibules. In front of the rooms is a narrow ledge commanding the path, and cut through this natural platform is a manhole, which is the only entrance to the cave, offering access to only one man at a time. When manned and provisioned properly, the cave must have been impregnable in early-time warfare, and I cannot help but wander back to those times, and picture scenes of battle around the cave. This was not the only cave in the mountain, for all along up and down the valley we found caves of varying sizes and depths. Many of them are improved upon, probably for the purpose of the hermit-dwelling so prevalent in the early and middle ages of Christianity. This mountain is the place where God sent Elijah to dwell in the time of famine; here the crows brought him meat and food, and the fountain furnished him with water, while the famine lasted. It is an ideal place for such an experience.
Our journey homeward along the same road we had taken in the morning was much quieter than our coming, for we were tired, and besides, it was uphill, with nothing in sight but recitations, blackboards, books and the teacher's stick.
And so I passed my school-life in Palestine. Five years later my class graduated. There were eight in the class, but only three of us received diplomas, which shows the severity of examinations and requirements. The Spanish Consul, acting for the American Consul, who was absent from Jerusalem at the time, gave us our diplomas, amidst the most impressive of ceremonies.
The school from which I graduated was young and consequently without any recognition from the other schools. Graduates of the school had to “show the goods '' and not their diplomas on application for entrance to a higher school. The English College of Jerusalem was stricter on this point than any other institution. My father, however, was induced to let me try the examinations to the college, and I passed. They were hard, and included several studies not taught at my old school, which I had to pick up to please my father, because failure now, after a fine record at the preparatory school, would be fatal to all my aspirations.
The college students were nearly all men, so the methods of teaching were different from what I had been accustomed to. We had several professors, but my favorite was the professor of Arabic, for I loved the Arabic language, and soon excelled in it. The method of teaching it was by concrete examples. As soon as the teacher entered the room, he made straight for the blackboard and wrote several stanzas of Arabic classical poetry. We were asked to analyze and parse it, telling the different functions of the words. This is extremely difficult, more so in the Arabic than in any other language. We started also to read a book, but never finished more than a few pages. Our teacher had so much to say upon each word and its construction, its history, and instances of its use, that the year passed on a few pages. This method is essential in order to get a working knowledge of classical Arabic, such as that in the Koran. At other times he took us out walking, reciting to us as we went some of the most delightfully musical poetry in the world.
For other studies we had algebra, plane and solid geometry, with a general review of arithmetic. We studied mediaeval and modern history, and physiology, the Bible, and school methods. For English we read Lamb's “Tales from Shakespeare," Irving 's “Sketch Book," and Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar; " along with our reading we had a thorough review of grammar and syntax. I must admit that although I was supposed to have mastered these subjects, and got good marks to show it, I was left with almost no exact knowledge as a result of my long and laborious work.
My knowledge of English was not of the kind to cope successfully with the older English literature, such as “Julius Caesar," and in those trying times of examinations I had on many occasions to trust to my parrot-like, yet strong, memory. One year of such hard study, however, was enough for me; the constant application to books, many of them in fine print, had almost ruined my eyes. I decided to come to America.
But I must go back in my story now, and tell about an important event of my school life, a visit to Jerusalem.
Kaleel, Mousa. When I was a Boy in Palestine. Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co. 1914.
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