British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 649

CHAPTER XVI.

Apart from mere quantity the main problem, as briefly indicated iu paragraph 58, has been to fit the school to the rural environment of the pupil without thereby establishing the rural population as a separate caste from the urban. This involves on the one hand a special curriculum and on the other the lengthening of the course to five standards wherever the number of pupils suffices, the introduction of English where it is justified by the demand and the provision of central facilities for higher elementary and secondary instruction of selected pupils.

63. The disturbances of 1936/39 and the war between 1939 and 1945 were in general a serious bar to expansion of village education and in particular interrupted the supply of trained agricultural teachers almost completely, owing first to the occupation of the Kadoorie Agricultural School at Tulkarm by troops and later to the employment of its ex-pupils on war work. The school was transferred by the Director of Agriculture to the management of the Education Department on 1st August, 1944, and has now resumed the training of teachers at the rate of about 15 per year. These teachers pass through two years of general secondary studies, two years of agriculture at Kadooris and a third year of teacher training including the management of a school garden.

In spite of these difficulties the number of school gardens has increased from 209 with a total acreage of 480 in 1936 to 238 with a total acreage of 685 in January, 1946. The average size of a school garden is just under 2.9 acres, but many of the larger gardens in the plain land are small farms.

As regards the educational ladder which is briefly mentioned in paragraph 58, the number of rural hostels was increased from four in 1936 to thirteen in 1945. These hostels enable village boys ultimately to reach the town boarding institutions, viz. the three training institutions for teachers, which are the Government Arab College (academic), the Kadoorie School (agricultural), the Haifa Trade School (manual), and the post-matriculation academic secondary classes of the Rashidiya College. Thereafter university and other scholarships to Beirut, Egypt and the United Kingdom are available for highly selected pnpils from town or country.

64. The following table shows the increase in admissions to the lowest class of rural schools immediately after the expansion scheme of 1934 and also in recent years.

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