Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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When these young people return to their homes the change that has taken place in them makes a profound impression upon the entire village. The value of education is promptly recognized, and often one pupil from a district in the interior of the country will be the means of bringing dozens of others to the school, sent by parents who, ambitious for their children, wish for them the same kind of education and to see in them the same advance that has appeared in the child of a neighbour. One does not need to use his imagination to see how the entire villages and communities are elevated through a single pupil who has spent, it may be, no more than a couple of years in an American mission boarding-school in some remote city and who, upon his return, not only exercises a silent influence for education and morals, but may at once open a school for the children of his own village.

This represents, in a simple way, something of the influence and power of the missionary boarding-school upon the region in which it is located. While time is required for the full exercise of this influence, and while the lines can only in the remotest degree ever be traced, it is found that they are far-reaching and fundamental. These schools also prepare students for college. The graduates of the two high schools at Erzroom have gone chiefly to the colleges at Harpoot, Marsovan, and Constantinople.