One of the mainstays of this genuine culture was the autonomous school. The instruction of the rising generation was the object of constant solicitude on the part of the Kahals and the rabbis as well as the conventions and Councils. Elementary and secondary education was centered in the _heders_, while higher education was fostered in the _yeshibahs_. Attendance at the heder was compulsory for all children of school age, approximately from six to thirteen. The subjects of instruction at these schools were the Bible in the original, accompanied by a translation into the Judeo-German vernacular,[76] and the easier treatises of the Talmud with commentaries. In some heders the study of Hebrew grammar and the four fundamental operations of arithmetic were also admitted into the curriculum. The establishment of these heders was left to private initiative, every _melammed_, or Jewish elementary teacher, being allowed to open a heder for boys and to receive compensation for his labors from their parents. Only the heders for poor children or for orphans, the so-called _Talmud Torahs_, were maintained by the community from public funds. Yet the supervision of the Kahal extended not only to the public, but also to the private, elementary schools. The Kahal prescribed the curriculum of the heders, arranged examinations for the scholars, fixed the remuneration of the teachers, determined the hours of instruction (which were generally from eight to twelve a day), and took charge of the whole school work, in some places even appointing a sort of school board (_Hevrah Talmud Torah_) from among its own members. The higher Talmudic school or college, the yeshibah, was entirely under the care of the Kahal and the rabbis. This school, which provided a complete religious and juridical education based on the Talmud and the rabbinical codes of law, received the sanction of the Polish Government. King Sigismund Augustus granted the Jewish community of Lublin permission to open a yeshibah, or "gymnazium" (_gymnazium ad instituendos homines illorum religionis_), with a synagogue attached to it, bestowing upon its president, a learned rabbi, not only the title of "rector," but also extensive powers over the affairs of the community (1567). Four years later the same King granted an even larger license to "the learned Solomon of Lemberg, whom the Jewish community of Lemberg and the whole land of Russia[77] have chosen for their 'senior doctor' (_ab-beth-din_, or _rosh-yeshibah_)," conferring upon him the right to open schools in various cities, "to train the students in the sciences," to keep them under his control, and to inure them to a strict discipline.