Page:Syria and Palestine WDL11774.pdf/71

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Syria and
Palestine
]
PUBLIC EDUCATION
55

2,000 scholars on the rolls; the Lazarists conducted a boys' school; there were also a boarding school and a day school for between 5,000 and 6,000 girls, and three other boys' schools. In Aleppo there was a Franciscan commercial college.

The Jesuit University in Beirut, founded as a school in 1875, almost immediately took the rank of a university, which has since 1891 had the power to confer degrees in philosophy and theology in accordance with the usage of the Gregorian University in Rome. The French Ministry of Public Instruction has also authorized it to grant the classical baccalaureate for Oriental lay scholars desirous of pursuing medical or legal studies in France. The Medical School, opened in 1883, was given, five years later, the power of conferring medical degrees after an examination passed before a Medical Committee sent out from France. These degrees were recognized in 1890 by Egypt, and in 1898 by Turkey; 390 doctors and 92 chemists have thus qualified. There were 275 students in 1911. There was also an Oriental Faculty, the lectures of which were open free; and smaller schools of law and engineering. secondary and an elementary school, connected with this machinery for higher education, had, in 1913, 582 and 600 scholars respectively.

In Palestine there are 13 schools, several of them for girls, controlled by the Franciscans; these contain 1,700 children.

Jewish Educational Agencies.—European Jews have for the last half-century paid special regard to the educational needs of their co-religionists in Palestine. In Jerusalem there are the Rothschild Technical School and the Evelina Girls' School (Anglo-Jewish Association of London), and two boys' schools, one of which is administered by the Alliance Israélite of Paris (which also has founded an agricultural school at Jaffa); the other was formerly managed by the Hilfsverein of Berlin. These Jewish schools have restored Hebrew to its ancient rôle as the vernacular