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The studies provided are the ordinary American course for normal training, including the theory and practice of teaching and school management, lectures on the common branches by speakers of experience, and a considerable amount of practice teaching under proper supervision. A year’s course in pedagogy is also given.

American missionaries tell me that the education of women has been a critical subject of discussion among the inhabitants of Sivas and that part of Turkey. In the interior provinces it has been the common belief that women cannot learn to read under the most favourable circumstances; in intellectual ability it was customary to class them with animals. Not infrequently in conversation with men of the last generation the statement would be made that a girl could no more learn to read than a donkey, and at any rate, of what possible use in the world could a reading woman be? It was often asserted that, if women learned to read, the whole fabric of Turkish society would be overturned, since they would become independent, would be liable to talk back when beaten by their husbands, and make trouble for the family and the community. It was the general opinion that it was safer to leave women in ignorance, even if the point should be conceded that they were capable of learning anything under the most favourable conditions.