UK Bahá’í Curriculum

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SECTION ONE (In 3 parts. At bottom of this part, click continue for next part)

Unfolding Guidance & Developing Response

A tracing of the evolution of guidance on Bahá’í education of children and curriculum development from Bahá’í institutions since the 1970s and the growing response of the United Kingdom believers to it.

"...the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá do not present a definite and detailed education system, but simply offer certain basic principles and set forth a number of teaching ideals that should guide future Bahá’í educationalists in their efforts to formulate an adequate teaching curriculum which would be in full harmony with the spirit of the Bahá’í Teachings ... These basic principles are available in the sacred writings of the Cause ..." Shoghi Effendi B.E. (1987) p56

So wrote a secretary of Shoghi Effendi on his behalf in 1939. From the start we can see that everything we do in Bahá’í education must be guided by the Bahá’í Writings. Reference to Bahá’í Writings and Pronouncements is therefore made throughout this document.

The production of a United Kingdom National Bahá’í Curriculum has been a long-standing goal of the Friends in this country who have been involved in Bahá’í education. It has not proved an easy task, but then curriculum development has never been easy. So much is involved and so much hinges upon it. However, everything has its time and now seems to be the time.

Curriculum Studies, as a discreet branch of enquiry in the U.K., only emerged in the early 1970s, prompted partly by the pioneering work of the Open University. Interestingly enough, pronouncements about the Bahá’í education of children from the Universal House of Justice began at about the same time. The Naw Ruz 1974 message, launching the Five Year Plan, stated in paragraph 11:

"The education of children in the teachings of the Faith must be regarded as an essential obligation of every Bahá’í parent, every local and national community, and it must become a firmly established Bahá’í activity during the course of this Plan. It should include moral instruction by word and example ..."

This was followed, shortly afterwards, by the seventh of the compilations issued by the Universal House of Justice in August 1976, entitled: "Bahá’í Education". This compilation contains a letter from the House addressed to all National Spiritual Assemblies. In it they say:

"The proper education of children is of vital importance to the progress of mankind, and the heart and essential foundation of all education is spiritual and moral training ..."

They go on to say:

"...in our new-born children we are presented with pure souls, untarnished by the world. As they grow they will face countless tests and difficulties. From their earliest moments we have the duty to train them, both spiritually and materially, in the way God has shown, and thus, as they come to adulthood, they can become champions of His Cause and spiritual and moral giants among mankind, equipped to meet all tests ..."

By the mid-1970s, then, we had the mandate and the general guidelines for the Bahá’í Education of children in the U.K. The Universal House of Justice gave us a further nudge when they wrote to the Bahá’ís of the United Kingdom in January 1981 giving the homefront goals for the second phase of the Seven Year Plan. Paragraph six, subsection four reads:

"... organisation of classes for the Bahá’í education of children (to which non-Bahá’í children may be invited with their parents’ consent), and the development of Bahá’í lesson plans suitable for children’s classes ..."

Now the guidance was becoming more specific, and was repeated in the message of April 17th 1981 to all National Spiritual Assemblies, where it said that:

"In order to make these classes effective, it is important to have a graduated system of lesson plans suited to different age groups."

In their message to the Bahá’ís of the World on 20th October 1983, concerning social and economic development, the Universal House of Justice wrote:

"Progress in the development field will largely depend on natural stirrings at the grassroots, and it should receive its driving force from those sources rather than from an imposition of plans and programs from the top ... such pursuits as the founding of tutorial and other schools ..."

This message proved prophetic for the United Kingdom as, on 7th October 1984, a Local Spiritual Assembly in South London, Lambeth, on its own initiative, convened a meeting for the establishment of the first regular Bahá’í Sunday School and started one week later with three classes in the hired premises of a full-time educational establishment. At that point the Bahá’í Education of children in the U.K. moved into a new era.

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