I learned a day or so ago that Maxwell International Baha'i School was closing by order of the National Spiritual Assembly. It appears that it's no longer able to sustain itself financially and that, coupled with "other issues," is forcing the school to close. That's little surprise since enrollments have apparently fallen by half in the past 10 years. I'm not particularly well connected with the Maxwell community but of course you hear rumors in the wider community. Every school is plagued with difficulties but it's sad to see an institution of Baha'i education suffer from so many problems of the "real world" as it were.
I must be prematurely turning into a crabby old man for feeling like some fault is with the students. Then again I've never had a very rosy outlook on youth in the community. They're either extremely committed or woefully disobedient to the Cause. I know a lot of youth go through a rebellious stage where religion means nothing to them and more often than not they end up returning to some moral lifestyle. I can only imagine what faculty and staff members at the school must have to deal with when parents send their bad kids to the school in the hopes that they'll reform.
I don't know exactly how I feel about the school closing but I do commend the National Assembly for "daring" to take a bold step. Sometimes I feel Baha'i institutions allow themselves to be paralyzed to take a bold step forward out of fear of blowback from conservative community members. So maybe it wasn't the right decision but at least they made a decisive decision. Hmm...that doesn't seem like proper grammar.
21 November 2007
A School's End
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2 comments:
Bryan,
Our daughter is a sophomore at Maxwell this year. This is her third year. Before her, we've provided some assistance to friends so their children could attend. All told, our association with Maxwell spans more than a decade.
Based on my experience, I have a hard time believing that this has anything to do with parents sending "bad" kids to Maxwell in order to straighten them out. Maxwell has always had very clear rules of conduct, and students have been expelled.
If anything, I'd attribute the lack of enrollments to a variety of false impressions that people have had about Maxwell, of which yours would be an example.
I've seen other false impressions: that Maxwell is an elitist school, or that it's a place where Baha'i children will develop a Baha'i identity. Most of these impressions fail to grasp Maxwell's unique educational opportunity, which really stems from the diversity of the student population itself.
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