Philanthropy instruction in elementary schools in Iran

Childhood is of fundamental importance for basic and universal education. One of these basic educations is the transfer of concepts related to moral values, including philanthropy. Philanthropy is one of the basic needs for social life, which is as important as obeying the law. Due to the important position of philanthropy in achieving personal and social perfection, creating a sense of interest in doing philanthropy in children and teenagers is considered one of the important missions of education. In this article, an attempt is made to examine the policy-making and curriculum planning of elementary education in Iran from this point of view.

To reveal the importance and place of philanthropy in Iran's primary education policies and curricula, the content of upper-level documents and primary course textbooks in terms of the extent of dealing with philanthropy and its examples using a qualitative approach and inductive content analysis method was investigated. The research community includes the upstream documents of the field of education, i.e. "Twenty-year vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1404 solar horizon", "General policies of transformation in the education system", "Fundamental transformation document of education", "National Curriculum" and "all the textbooks of the elementary school"; the sample was purposefully selected from among them.

The analysis of the policy documents of Iran's primary education field shows that philanthropy is followed from their point of view with this approach "philanthropy activities are a religious phenomenon that is mostly done for the community of believers and even sometimes only for friends". The facts reveal that the topic of philanthropy, with all its related concepts (even with a slight similarity), in the upstream documents, including "Twenty-year vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the horizon of 1404 solar", six items, "general policies of creating transformation in the education system", three items and "fundamental transformation document of education", thirty items have been proposed; Basically, their emphasis is on "sacrifice" with the meaning of defending the ideas of sovereignty. In the document more related to the field of curriculum, i.e. "National Curriculum", twenty-eight concepts related to philanthropy are used. These policies have been crystallized in the school curriculum, i.e. "textbooks" of the elementary school, and most of all, "Quran" and "Gifts of Heaven" textbooks have been used to outline the teachings.

Looking deeply into the content of the upstream documents, it becomes clear that the term philanthropy, which means serving others without expectations, is mentioned only once in the form of "spreading the culture of philanthropy" in the fundamental transformation document. In other documents, the concepts and examples of its counterparts have been taken into consideration, and in many cases, those concepts had a meaning outside of the concept of philanthropy. As a result of the analysis of the policies and curricula of the elementary school in Iran, it was revealed that the education and curriculum based on the limited meaning of philanthropy are followed in such a way that five achievements can be imagined for it: cultivating virtuous students, limiting self-sacrifice to relatives, believing in helping others, encouraging good deeds and endowment in the forms of governance and material assistance to others. Also, the pursuit of policies and teachings related to charity and its equivalent concepts in children's education, which are followed through open curricula, mainly is presented in the context of the "Quran" and "Gifts of Heaven" textbooks with limited meaning. In this study, it was revealed that the desired set of teachings and thoughts related to philanthropy in Iran's primary schools are organized and followed under thirteen basic topics which include: logic, concept, nature, position, types, examples, effects, models, training and order (recommendation), necessity, commemoration, mediating forces and scope of philanthropy.