The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-15
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ashamed of their poverty and I saw much to admire.
 The professors serve for nothing and support themselves by teaching in private houses or by reading the prayer at the mosques. It Is considered a great honor to be professor here; and the most learned men of the Mohammedan world are glad to lecture h the El-Azhar With out reward In fact the only man about the institution who receives salary IS the president, who has 10000 plasters year. This seems much until one knows that the plaster is only cents, and that it takes this many of them to make SooJ'
 asked as to the government of the uni versity, and was told 1t had principal and under professors. All students are under the direct control of the university, and if they misbenave outside It's walls the police hand them over to the col legiate authorities for punishment. The students are exempt from military serV- ice. and it is said that many enter tho institution for that reason alone. mere seem to be no limitations as to age nor as to the time one may spend at the col lege. I saw boys between six and elght studying the Koran in one corner of the building, and gray-bearded men sitting around a professor in another The mos. of the scholars, however are from l6 to p or of about the same age as our col lege students at home.
 Education In Egypt.
 This university has but little to do with the great movement of modern educa- ton which is now going on in Egypt. 1t is rather religious than educational and the live. active educational forces out side 1t are two. One of these is the Unit ed Presbyterian church and it's mission .I -1.f ,-t4 1ota si,..fa l visit their college at Assiout about three hundred miles farther up the Nile valley, and the other Is the government, directed by the British. who are collect ing the taxes and administering all maj ters of importance in Egypt today. In addition to these there are about one thousand schools supported by the Copts, who. by the way, are the most intelli- gent of the native population.
 Egypt was very illiterate when the British took hold of the administration, and even now not more than six or seven per cent of the natives can read and write The desire for learning Is fncreds- ing, however. and the system of common schools which has been inaugurated is being rapidly developed. There are now over ten thousand schools in the country, with something like twenty thousand teachers and perhaps a quarter of 2 million pupllS. are d huiiipci bi private schools devoted to special train- ing In the last few years a system of technical education has been inauguratcd. and the government now has model work shops at Boulac and Assiout. It has a school of agriculture here at Cairo. a school of engineering and schools of law and medicine.
 An important movement has been the introduction of modern studies into the ,,il1a a1e ha1n inrr to nl- medans. These were formerly, and are to some extent now under the university at El-Azhar. They were connected with the mosques and were taught by Mohani- medan priests. They were supported by the people themselves, and also by a Mo- hammedan religious organization known as the Wakf, which has an enormous en- dowment. There are something like ten thousand of these schools here and there over the lower part of the Nile valley and they had an attendance of something like two hundred thousand. They taught little more than the Arabic language, the Koran, and reading, writing and arith- metic Lord Cromer wanted to bring these schools under the ministery of pub. lie instruction and introduce our modern studies He tried to force the teachers tc 1 come under him. but they refused. He l then offered to give every mosque schoo | that would come in an appropriation oi 50 cents for every boy and 75 cents foi every girl, and this has apparently solved the problem. The village schools are rapidly adopting modern methods.
 Already 6C00 of them are subject to the government, and within a short time they will all be under the immediate direction of it's educational department. At present it is necessary to handle them carefully and to make the religious studies among l the most impOrtant. Now the half Oi