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Educational Development in Iran: The Pivotal Role of the Mission Schools and Alborz College
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
There were many channels of Western impact on nineteenth-century Iran. The military sphere was the first and continued to be of importance throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Diplomatic interchanges, travelers and new types of economic activity were all influential in opening Iranians to awareness of another world. But perhaps the foremost channel through which the impact of the West was transmitted to Iran was education. Several areas in the educational sphere were important in the influx of Western ideas and ways into nineteenth and early twentieth century Iran. These were: students sent abroad; Western-inspired educational institutions set up by the Iranian government, and later by private individuals; and mission schools. This analysis focuses on the last of these influences and, above all, on the most renowned of the mission schools, Alborz College. In surveying the evidence, one can conclude that mission-provided Western education formed a significant chapter in the early modern period of Iranian history.
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- Copyright © 2011 The International Society for Iranian Studies
References
1 Amir Kabir was the reform-minded first Grand Vizier (Chief Minister) of the Qajar King Nasir al-Din Shah. His extensive reforms constituted a major step in modernization efforts in nineteenth century Iran and the establishment of the Dar al-Funun was perhaps the foremost and most consequential of those reforms. For details on Amir Kabir and the Dar al-Funun see: Lorentz, John H., “Iran's Great Reformer of the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis of Amir Kabir's Reforms,” Iranian Studies 4, no. 2–3 (1971): 85–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A full account in Persian can be found in Adamiyat, Faridun, Amir Kabir va Iran (Tehran, 1969).Google Scholar
2 The literature on mission education in Iran is sparse. Some works, which by dint of their titles might be expected to have considerable information, in fact have little. A notable example would be Education, Religion and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran by Monica M. Ringer which barely mentions the subject. Perhaps the most extensive work in published form is that of Michael Zirinsky, who has written a number of articles and chapters on missionaries and mission education in Iran. See, for example, “Harbingers of Change: Presbyterian Women in Iran, 1883–1949,” American Presbyterian 70, no. 3 (1992): 171–86; “A Panacea for the Ills of the Country: American Presbyterian Education in Inter-War Iran,” Iranian Studies 26, no. 1–2 (1993): 119–37; and “Render Therefore unto Caesar That Which Is Caesar's: American Presbyterian Educators and Reza Shah,” Iranian Studies 26, no. 3–4 (1993): 337–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Overall, there are many bits here and there, but the topic of mission education in Iran awaits a comprehensive examination in book form.
3 “New education” was the name attributed to western-styled educational institutions in all the major political entities in the Middle East when such schools were established during the nineteenth century.
4 Rushdiyih got this sobriquet because this was the name of his school. Nikki Keddie has suggested in a personal communiqué that the term was probably taken from new schools of that generic name in the Ottoman Empire. Details on the educational efforts of Rushdiyih are found in: “Farhang-i Nau Chiguih Dar Iran Aghaz Shod? Khidmat-i Rushdiyih bih Ma‘arif,” Amuzish va Parvarish, 25, no. 8–9, n.d.Google Scholar
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10 The most important source of enrollment figures is the Presbyterian Church in the USA, Iran Mission: A Century of Mission Work in Iran (Persia), 1834–1934 (Beirut, 1936).Google Scholar
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12 Letter of former missionary John Elder to author dated 28 June 1977.
13 In a letter dated 17 February 1973 Professor Yahya Armajani, a former student of a mission school, writes that mission school students were generally the “well to do ‘liberal’ type, with lots of poor thrown in.” He adds that in his Alborz College high school class (1927), “four or five of us came from the peasant class with illiterate parents and did not pay any tuition. We had in our class the second cousin of the Shah (Qajar), two sons of tribal chiefs and several from the provinces as well as sons of merchants, administrators, etc. The ‘rule’ was for nine students to pay extra tuition to take care of a tenth.”
14 This point clearly emerged in interviews with, or personal communiqués from, former mission students, Yahya Armajani and William Yoel, and former missionaries, John Elder, F. Taylor Gurney, T. Cuyler Young and Walter Groves.
15 Elder, History of the American Mission, 28.
16 Elder, History of the American Mission, 70.
17 Letter of former missionary, William Wysham, dated 23 January 1973.
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21 Boyce, “Alborz College,” 176. See also Elder, History of the American Mission, 27.
22 It is not by accident, for instance, that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company hired many graduates of the American mission schools.