By the beginning of 1970 the regime seemed to have scored substantial progress in the field of education. Illiteracy had been reduced considerably, if not actually eliminated. Through an intensive program to train elementary and secondary school teachers, build schoolhouses, and make schooling obligatory up to the eighth grade, the government had enabled all the country's children to obtain some kind of rudimentary education. It had also instituted a system of higher education and had founded the first university in the history of the country and was thus no longer dependent on foreign universities to train people in the various professions. It had also instituted a widespread network of professional and vocational schools intended to train badly needed technicians and skilled workers. The whole education network, however, was a one-track system geared to serve the ideological and political objectives of the Party. The Party, through the Central Commission on Education and the Directorate of Education and Culture, both attached to the Party's Central Committee, controlled every facet of the school system: programs, curricula, administration, teaching staffs, and funds. The schools, students, teachers, and professors were so organized as to form a monolithic establishment centrally directed and completely immersed in Marxism-Leninism. The entire system was dedicated to the education of the new man with Communist traits and morality. As defined by the Party leaders and Party theoreticians, these traits and morality meant the development of a "revolutionary spirit and responsibility for one's tasks for society and the cause of socialism, the defense of the basic principles of the Party and the implementation of its correct policy." The whole school system, as developed in the past twenty-five years, therefore, was for the building of communism as defined and interpreted by the Albanian Communists. All other ideologies, beliefs, cultures, and thoughts were banned from the country's schools. RELIGION Situation Before the Communist Takeover One of the major legacies of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule was the conversion of over 70 percent of the population to Islam. When independence came, therefore, the country emerged as a predominantly Muslim nation, the only Islamic state in Europe. No censuses taken by the Communist regime since it assumed power in 1944 have shown the religious affiliations of the people. It has been estimated that of a total population of 1,180,500, at the end of World War II, about 826,000 were Muslims, 212,500 Eastern Orthodox, and 142,000 Roman Catholics. The Muslims were divided between adherents of the Sunni branch and over 200,000 followers of a dervish order known as Bektashi, an offshoot of the Shia branch.