> In Australia in my experience it would really be socially obligatory
> to invite them to your home rather than the reverse if you take the
> initiative.
Dear John,
Certainly they are invited to do that, but we find that when we invite
them to our home they are less likely to show up. We generally have
better success with home visits. Besides this gives us a chance to
meet other members of the family.
> I didn't say that. I said it doesn't provide the skills needed.
The skills are learned in the doing, and it is up to the tutors to
make sure that the doing occurs.
> > If you lived in Australia you wouldn't have done book 7 either - at
> least not unless you went back and did book 3 first.
You are right, I wouldn't have. The rigid way your country is
implementing this program seems to be retarding the development of
human resources not encouraging them.
> long time ago (I was in the first study circle in Scotland). The
> feature you were talking about where tutors are encouraged to
> accompany their students on the practical exercises (is it called
> 'walking together on the path of service or something similar'?) was
> introduced later specifically, as I understand it, to address the fact
> I am pointing out - that the books were not leading to the predicted
> acts of service.
I think it was always a part of it. The problem was that a lot of the
early tutors had been trained in the quick start method and didn't
know what they were supposed to do to implement the practices, and
hence they skipped over them.
> (a) devotional meetings are primarily organised by either people who,
> having looked at the core activities described by the House, chose to
> contribute to devotional meetings rather than Ruhi;
That happened in my community in Florida as well Those of us who liked
devotional meetings weren't doing Study Circles and those doing Study
Circles wouldn't go to devotional meetings with us. I think we are all
crowing past that.
or by dedicated
> folk who have done the whole sequence and started organising
> devotional meetings not when they completed book 1 but much more
> recently.
That's changed, Now nearly all participants in Book One Study Circles
plan and implement a devotional meeting.
> (b) Home visits are claimed to be done by almost everybody in the
> cluster but as yet there is no real evidence that more than a tiny
> handful, if any, are doing them as defined here.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'defined here.' How did we define home
visits here?
> (c) Childrens classes are being run by the same people who always ran
> children's classes whether or not they have done book 3.
For awhile we stopped having them at all because we hardly had any
children or youth in our community. Then we started holding junior
youth empowerment circles and children's classes piggy-backed off of
those.
Before we began
Australia is
> perhaps a special case here as the local laws allowed an opening for
> Baha'i classes in state schools which is enormously successful (6000
> children I think the great majority from non-Baha'i families). BESS
> uses locally produced material which predates the use of Ruhi in this
> country.
If I'm not mistaken the materials used for junior empowerment circles
are based on the curriculum developed for this purpose in Australia.
> (d) Junior Youth is being done by people who haven't done book 5 but
> that is irrelevant because for some reason the roll-out of book 5 is
> taking ages.
We using a preliminary version.
>
> As a final example, consider the case of Anna's Presentation or, as I
> prefer to call it, the presentation to Emilia. This is a component
> part of book 6 which is supposed to impart teaching skills. Yet here
> (not yet in my small cluster) there are follow up classes of, I think,
> two intensive weekends on 'How to use Anna's Presentation'.
That's because they are using Anna's Presentation in a way in which
Book Six does not use it. In Book Six Anna's Presentation is a model
of how one might present the Faith and a lot of time is spent
discussing the advantages and disadvantages of presenting the Faith in
certain ways. Now the stress seems to be in using Anna's Presentation
verbatim.
> What skills are the Ruhi books actually, demonstratably imparting?<
You'll have to take the Books in order to find that out. ;-} But I
would say that you would get a lot more wisdom about Teaching the
Faith doing Book Six than you will in a couple of intensive workshops
on using "Anna's Presentation."
warmest, Susan
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