Educational Development in Iran: The Pivotal Role of the Mission Schools and Alborz College

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.