Page 20 - Records of Bahrain (7) (i)_Neat

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6 Records of Bahrain

2.

village boys are now no longer content, os they were

in the past, to work for low rates of pay in the
date gardens, most of which ore owned by rich people,
or as fishermen, Thus the town dwelling landlords
are not enthusiastic over the spread of village
education - and perhaps over the spread of education
generally in the islands, There is, moreover, the

making of a labour problem both as regards work in
date gardens and as regards suitable employment for
village youths with aspirations bred of a modicum of
education. Forthright comment is also made on the
value of educating Bahrain boys at school in England -
11 if (the few boys who were at school in England) can
be taken as typical of the results of a European

education then it is clear that the experiment is not
usually successful". And "they have acquired some
education, sufficient to make them critical and
contemptuous of many things in their own homes and
country. They resent having to return to the life

v/hich they used to lead and they have no inclination
to settle down in Bahrain". This state of affairs
is, of course, no new thing to anyone who has lived
in the east; I have myself seen exactly the same
thing with young Persians coming home from an
English education. Even in India, after two hundred

and fifty years of close contact with the British,

/the