Page 150 - Bahrain Gov Annual Reports (I)_Neat

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in the future. One of their arguments agoinst the need
of education is that most of the biggest peerl merchants
are uneducated and illiterate. This is true but it is

well known that much of their money disappears in the
hands of clerks and agents. The sane applies to the
Khalifah; if they had even sufficient knowledge to be

able to keep accounts properly they would be very much
richer than they are now.
One of the most remarkable differences in .the last

year or two, which is not only confined to school boys,
is the increasing popularity of out door games, All
the schools have football teams which constantly play

against each other, and there is also at least one regular
football club. Two or three years ago people playing
football would have been held up to ridicule, now they

play every evening outside the towns.
A most important result of the increase in education is
its tenuency to minimise the bitter animosity that exists

between the Sunnis and the Shias. Before the present
Shaikh came into power the intense hate of the shias for
the Sunnis was concentrated in the Shia feeling against

the Khalifah family, This feeling still exists, but
mostly among the older men. That the Shaikh has given
schools to the Shias, as well as to the Sunnis, and that

he pays for their education, is genuinely appreciated by
then, and the mixing on terras of equality of Sunni and
Shia boys must eventually diminish the bitter feeling that
used to exist between them.

Education allotment during 1348 was Bs 90,000/-
Actual expenditure Rs