Community School () was a boarding school in Tehran, Iran, originally intended for the children of Presbyterian missionaries from the United States who were stationed in Iran since the 1830s. However, it soon served expatriates of all stripes raising children while in Iran. In the late 1940s, the school moved from its original location at Saint Peter Church at Qavām os-Saltaneh Street, to a new location at Kucheh Marizkhaneh (Hospital Drive) near Jaleh Street. In the summer of 1979, it was permanently shut down by the new government of the Islamic Republic after the fall of the Shah. After the revolution, the school was renamed Modarres Shahed school which is now reserved for the children of the war veterans.
The new campus had been an old Presbyterian missionary hospital during World War II where the last Queen of Iran, Farah Pahlavi Diba, was born. After the war, it was returned to the missionaries to be used as the school campus and J. Richard Irvine was hired as its headmaster in 1951. The large, tree-filled shady compound had several buildings, a small church, and walking paths.
History
The Presbyterian missionary school established itself in the early 1900s in Hamadan, Western Persia (as it was known by the West then), growing from a "home school" into a formal school. In the 1930s the school moved to Tehran due to logistical considerations, located on Qavām os-Saltaneh Street and had slightly more than 200 students. By the 1950s only a few of the students were children of missionaries as the number of Iranians and foreign students increased. It was commonly called the "American School" because students were taught primarily in English, with French and Persian as secondary languages. Classes met Monday through Thursday and on Saturdays, eventually switching to a permanent Saturday through Wednesday schedule (with Friday as the common holy day). With the exception of some of the Americans, most of the students spoke two or more languages.
The expatriate population of Persia in the early 1900s, in the reign of Ahmad Shah Qajar, was very small and consisted mainly of British people; Persia was in both the British and Russian Empire's sphere of influence during the era (the Great Game). Some of the expatriate population included Swedish officers of the early Persian Gendarmerie, and Russian officers of Cossack brigades which largely made up the Iranian military. It was from such a Cossack brigade that Reza Shah came to prominence. The American presence in Persia was small at that time and consisted largely of missionaries. The Presbyterian missionaries had a delicate relationship with the Persian government, which found it easier to appease irritation in the Islamic establishment by restricting Christian religious activities at the school.
New campus: Khiaban-e Jaleh 1935-1979
After the accession to power of Reza Shah, the influence and presence of Britain and Russia increased in Iran despite the pro-axis leanings of the Shah who refused the Allies' use of the trans-Iranian railroad. He was deposed and exiled to South Africa in favor of his son in 1941, three months after the launch of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The American Army's Persian Gulf Command used Iran as a conduit for materiel to the Soviet Union, other routes being far more hazardous. By 1945, 150,000 assembled trucks, jeeps, aircraft, and even fire engines were transhipped from Khorramshar through Qazvin by truck and Tehran by train and then north to the Soviet Union1. In 1943, the Allies met for the Tehran Conference as a measure of its importance to the Allied war effort. During the war, the Presbyterian missionary hospital, later to become the Community School campus, was taken over for use as a military hospital. After the war, increasing United States involvement with Iran meant more Americans in Iran, and the Community School was the only school in town for their children's education.
In 1953 Headmaster Richard Irvine stated that he was going to limit the number of Americans at Community School. The school did this to preserve a balance in the cultures among the student body. A separate American School of Tehran was established shortly afterward.
President Truman's Point-Four program put a heavy strain on Community School because it brought many more American students. It also brought Iran closer to the US politically, and marked the beginning of a period of economic growth; many Iranians were stimulated to seek a western education for their children.