Wanderings

I recently had the great honor to sit in on a Children’s Class.  Baha’i Children’s Classes are for young people of all faiths and focus on the morals and values that are common to all religions while also promoting the concept of becoming a world citizen.

The children were memorizing the following quote:

All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.

~ Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 214

They were a little stuck on exactly what “an ever-advancing civilization meant”.  The teacher and I seemed to explain that “ever-advancing” refers to something that continuously progresses and improves; and that a civilization is comprised of the society we live in, containing social rules and a government.  They were not quite seeing how it all fit together, though.

I attempted to use the example of technology, presenting my digital camera, and how devices such as that have advanced over time—each generation making slight improvements.  They seemed to accept this concept, though I’m not sure it was fully absorbed.  Unfortunately, it was not until after the class that more ideas came to me.

While technology certainly is one advancement that can be seen, it came to mind first only because it is tangible.  Other advancements in our civilization have been much more profound, though not always as apparent on the surface:

• 600 years ago people believed the world was flat
• 150 years ago there was slavery in the United States
• 90 years ago women in the United States were not allowed to vote
• 70 years ago nobody had heard of a computer
• 60 years ago placing a long-distance telephone call required speaking to an operator
• 60 years ago White and Black were prohibited by law from attending the same schools
• 20 years ago the World Wide Web had not yet come into existence
• 100 days ago all of the Presidents of the United States were White

There have clearly been some advancements that our civilization has realized.  Baha’u’llah has told us all that our purpose is to “carry forward” further advancement and there are still plenty of area that need it:

• 2,700,000 = the number of slaves in the world, including children
• 93,000,000 = the number of children who are being denied an education
• 2,800,000,000 = the number of people living on less than $2 per day

Incidentally, the teacher of this class is the author of Meeting the Dual Challenge

TeacherJay Gleanings, Reflections children, development, education, poverty, progress, spiritual maturation, world citizen