My School Days in Armenia
“My School Days” from When I Was a Boy in Armenia, by Manoog Der Alexanian, 1926.
Location: Adana, Turkey
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“My School Days” from When I Was a Boy in Armenia, by Manoog Der Alexanian, 1926.
Adana is the capital of Cilicia, and its largest city, built on broad, level ground, and with a climate distinctly Californian. Adana has many fertile fields of cotton and wheat, and is surrounded with beautiful gardens. An hour’s ride on horseback from the city, stretch the beautiful vineyards with all kinds of fruit-trees. My home town, Adana, is two hours by train from the Mediterranean Sea, and one hour from Tarsus, where the first Christian church was built by the Apostle Paul. This church still stands to-day as it was built almost nineteen hundred years ago, with only a few repairs. Armenians still worship in this church.
Armenian schools are maintained at great cost and against many obstacles. Love of learning is a marked characteristic of our people. At that time we had a national school system, taxing our people for the maintenance of education, whose headquarters was located in Constantinople, under the name of The Union of Armenian Schools. This organization provided for a network of schools all over Armenia, closely connected with and largely supported by the Armenian church. Our elementary schools were free, but higher education was paid for, in part, by the students.
When I was six years old, I entered the kindergarten (mangabardez) in the Armenian churchyard. Here I learned the Armenian alphabet on a slate. As I became a little older, I entered the Grammar School (dzaghgots). I then learned how to read and write Armenian, ciphering, history, and church catechism. When I became ten years old, I went to High School (Partzrakouyn Varjaran). Here I learned drawing, composition, geography, music, etc. Incidentally, I want to mention the fact that when I was being transferred to the High School, the principal raised the objection that I was too young for admission, but my teacher, placing his hand on my head, caressed me and said to the principal, “Although he is young, he is first in the class, and very good in his lessons.”
Our school was open to all the Armenian boys in town. It was a three-story stone building, with a large playground, where the gymnasium was to be found. We had no indoor gymnasiums as you have here in America. In order to reach the class-room we had to climb the stone steps. Our school was void of any decorations. It contained only the students’ seats and the teacher’s desk. As you entered the school from the main entrance, the first thing you noticed directly in front of you was the teacher’s desk.
I can still see our serious-faced teacher bending over his desk on a high platform and busily engaged in his work. On the right side of his desk lay three sticks, and a hand-bell. He was a person of rather severe discipline, and always kept two or three good switches on hand, which the pupils supplied. We all competed with one another to have the honor of bringing the best stick and keeping the teacher well supplied, for we fondly hoped that the teacher would spare us for our service. On the contrary, however, the one who brought the stick usually got the first taste of it!
One day my teacher asked me to bring in a good, fresh stick from our vineyard. I knew what was coming, so I answered, “Sir, I am sorry, I cannot bring you any more sticks, because each time I brought one I was the first to feel it.” I can still see the gentle twist at the right corner of his mouth and his suppressed smile, as he made answer, “Alexanian, you have always a stone ready in your mouth,” which meant “you are always ready to give quick, witty, and clever answers.” As a boy, I was well known in the school, at home, and in my neighborhood as a “witty boy,” and well liked for it.
One day in our vineyard we had a lady visitor who wished to go home at eleven o’clock at night. I was asked to take the lady on horseback to her vineyard, which was three hours distant from ours. I jumped on the horse, and with the lady behind me, took her home. It was one o’clock in the morning when I reached her place, and turned the horse’s head towards home. The night was very dark, and I did not know the road. The night guards of the vineyard were blowing their whistles, which terrified me still more. In a moment I got on the road and dropped the reins of the horse, and then, the horse brought me back to our vineyard safely! When I arrived, my folks took me down from the horse, kissed me and praised me for being so clever and brave, but my answer was, “Give the credit to the horse; he was the one to find the road, not I.” I was very much praised for this answer.
Each morning we began our school with a prayer. All students joined in the chorus and sang “Our God, All-merciful, Omniscient.” After the prayer, we had our morning classes. The teacher read loudly from the book and we repeated after him in a loud voice. Sometimes he asked us questions which we had to answer from memory. We had our recesses and left school early in the afternoon for home. We had no grading. The smartest pupil sat at the head of the class, and he was followed by the next best. There was lively competition among us to be at the head of the class, for that, of course, was a great honor.
When any one of the pupils did not behave well in class-room or in play, he was punished severely by the teacher. Almost every pupil has felt the force of one of those sticks on the palm of his hand during some time of his school days. We were very much afraid of our teacher, for, with the consent of our parents, he had absolute control over his pupils. In a way, he virtually owned us.
I remember once hearing a mother with her boy (a truant who used to run away from school) tell the teacher: “Here is my boy; his flesh is yours, his bones mine, do as you wish with him to keep him at school! ” Which meant that the teacher could whip him as much as he wanted if he ran away again from school.
In the school we had a man called dendes, a kind of truant officer. When a pupil was absent from school this dendes went after him. As there were no streetcars or taxis, the school officer would sling the boy over his back and carry him back to school, where he generally got a whipping from the teacher. I always liked to go to school and was never absent.
I was, however, very lively and sanguine in play, and on account of this, used to have many fights with the boys. I remember having a good many welts on my palm. Besides the stick, another punishment in the school was to stand up on one foot for an hour—usually with another pupil watching you to see that you kept your foot up in the air. Still another punishment was to hold a large volume of the Holy Bible in your hands for an hour. Again, many of us knew the tedium of being kept after school hours in the evening, and copy from 100 to 500 lines from a book. This discipline produced many good penmen. The punishment that the boys disliked most of all was to have their faces blackened with charcoal and stand at the door of the school, to be looked at by all the pupils.
The Turkish government did not allow our teacher to teach Armenian history in the schools. If a teacher was caught with a book on Armenian history, seen or related of as teaching Armenian history, he was imprisoned for life. Against this, our teacher forbade us to speak Turkish in class-room or play; there was a secret-service pupil who reported any one speaking Turkish. Those who were reported had to pay a penny each time they were caught. The money thus collected was used in buying paper and pens for needy students.
After school in the evening we used to go home in groups. All the pupils living on the same street or neighborhood formed a separate squad and marched home in rows of fours under the guidance of a leader. On our way home, no one was allowed to speak or make noise. We had to behave well. Those who did not were reported to the teacher the next day, and the one reported duly received his punishment. Usually the pupil who misbehaved in the squad did not appear the next morning for fear of punishment; and then he was not safe, because the truant officer would be after him and bring him back to school, where he received double punishment. When our squad reached its neighborhood, it was disbanded, and each pupil went merrily to his home.
In Armenia, girls’ and boys’ schools are separate. Boys do not mix with girls of their age, either in school or in play. There was no school on Saturdays. Every Saturday being a house-cleaning day for the Armenian homes, we boys ran errands for our parents and then were free to play. On Sunday afternoons after church, the boys in the neighborhood came together to go off swimming and playing outside the city in the gardens and vineyards.
One Sunday afternoon, with some school chums, I went to the gardens to play. When we were returning, we met another group of school chums, who asked us to join them. I told them we were going home to supper.
“We have lunch with us,” answered one of the boys in the other group; “if you join us, you can share our lunch.”
“All right,” said I, and anxious to play a little longer, we crossed the river to an island. While we were playing on this island, one of the boys, who happened to be the son of our teacher, fell into the river on becoming top-heavy trying to dip his head into the water. I rushed after him, throwing out my long belt to him so he could hold on and I could pull him out, but he was unconscious and could not help himself. Then I took off my clothes, for I was a good swimmer, and jumped into the river. It was a very deep and dangerous place; the current tossed me about. I was near to getting drowned myself but I kept after him until a big current tossed me to the shore and carried the little boy away. We ran to the countryside for help; older swimmers jumped into the water but could not find him. After three days, his body was discovered by divers under the bridge of the River Sihoon.
Poor boy, I felt very sorry for him, but it was his fault and we could not help it; as the boys told me, he would not listen to them, and by going too far into the river, he lost his life. Ever since I have been especially careful in swimming.
Thus I lived the first half of my boyhood in Adana, working in school and playing outside of school hours. How I wish I could go back to those golden days of my boyhood! But they are gone; gone forever!
Alexanian, Manoog Der. When I Was a Boy in Armenia. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
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