With regard to your activities in connection with the training and education of Bahá’í children: needless to tell you what a vital importance the Guardian attaches to such activities, on which so much of the strength, welfare and growth of the Community must necessarily depend. What a more sacred privilege, and also what a weightier responsibility than the task of rearing up the new generation of believers, and of inculcating into their youthful and receptive minds the principles and teachings of the Cause, and of thus preparing them to fully assume, and properly discharge the weighty responsibilities and obligations of their future life in the Bahá’í Community.
(From a letter dated 28 April, 1939 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to a National Committee and an individual believer) [120]
“121: You have asked him for detailed information concerning the Bahá’í...”
You have asked him for detailed information concerning the Bahá’í educational programme: there is as yet no such thing as a Bahá’í curriculum, and there are no Bahá’í publications exclusively devoted to this subject, since the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá do not present a definite and detailed educational 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, and would thus meet the requirements and needs of the modern age.
These basic principles are available in the sacred writings of the Cause, and should be carefully studied, and gradually incorporated in various college and university programmes. But the task of formulating a system of education which would be officially recognized by the Cause, and enforced as such throughout the Bahá’í world is one which [the] present-day generation of believers cannot obviously undertake, and which has to be gradually accomplished by Bahá’í scholars and educationalists of the future.
(From a letter dated 7 June, 1939 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer) [121]