Our Girls at Their School Desks — The Islamic Girls' College

I told the readers of "The Woman's Voice" in the last issue about my visit to the Ahliah Girls' School, and I thought I would now tell them about my recent visit to the Girls' College of the Islamic Makassed Charitable Society. Despite the newness of this institute, it is, like the other institutes of learning in this dear country — young in its renaissance — taking its part in raising the new generation with a lofty, guiding education. It is an advanced institute in which the girl students study the natural sciences, mathematics, and the three languages — Arabic, English, and French — by the most modern educational methods and under a select company of the finest women teachers, in preparation for the Lebanese baccalaureate certificate.

When I asked to see the directress of the College, Miss Zahiyah Dughan, she received me with cheerfulness and welcome, the marks of effort plain upon her face from the mighty labors she has expended, and still expends, to raise the standard of the institute whose direction is entrusted to her. No sooner had she learned my errand than she began by saying that instead of giving me the information I sought about the institute, it would be better to take me around all its quarters to see its various departments. So she brought me into the department of fine arts and handwork, where some of the students were completing beautiful oil paintings on porcelain vessels and on panels; some were at work embroidering silk garments, and others were at work cutting out and sewing women's clothes

as fine as anything made in the most advanced and most famous ladies' dressmaking establishments of the city.

From there we passed to the household management department, where the girls are trained to master the various household tasks at the hands of a teacher who specializes in these arts. I admired exceedingly the well-wrought work the students produce in these two departments, in addition to their high scholarly and cultural attainment; for hardly does a girl finish her studies at this institute before she has been trained sufficiently to fit her to become a housewife, a mother, and a wife of high refinement, in the full meaning of the word.

The Islamic Makassed Charitable Society has attended to the religious side, taking care to instruct the students in the principles of the Islamic religion and to teach the Holy Quran; for this purpose it brought a sheikh from al-Azhar University, who draws his salary from the treasury of the Egyptian government. The institute's other expenses are borne by the Makassed Charitable Society itself, and more than half of the students are educated at the Society's expense.

I cannot close without a word addressed to those responsible for this institute — namely, the necessity of lifting the restrictions which tend to keep this advanced institute in an isolated atmosphere, since its functions are confined to invited ladies. Would that they worked to remove this barrier which isolates the institute from its surroundings — yet in such a way that it remains, like the other advanced institutes, a sanctuary of learning, truth, and freedom, to which our girls make pilgrimage, to be blessed by its blessing and to draw the sciences from its spring.