Yes Amado, I agree with you; I have seen everything you describe and even worse. These are mistakes from people who would have been completely inactive without the institute. We sometimes have fun laughing at postings with examples mistakes students and even teachers make in their school work; this doesn't mean we have to close down schools, but proves how badly we need them.

But I also remember when our friends in Colombia began developing these materials, starting with some little booklets with suggestions on doing children’s classes, with coloring, singing, playing (non-competitive) games – nice! And I have therefore seen this as a stage in evolution, and not something we are stuck with.
Partly so people will not have the typical first reaction (these materials are offensively simplistic, pointless, with no relation to practical life) I have always started out by saying, “We have a religion without a clergy, and are still trying to figure out how to do that. We have tried different kinds of ‘deepening’, different study guides and children’s class materials, courses and so on. This is one of the most recent tries at finding a way to run a religion in which each of us is responsible for knowing what to do!”
Then we emphasize that Book 1 starts with a three-step process: the too-simple parroting of the quote, the not-so-easy giving of examples of what that means – and the pretty-hard design of ways to put that idea into practice in our own lives. So, we proceed much as in “values clarification” (most of our study-circle members are not Bahá’ís) emphasizing that we all believe pretty much the same things, and the world will be better when we find more ways to put what-we-all-believe into practice!
Every time we find a question that might have different answers, we work hard to elicit diversity in the answers, and get people explaining why it might be this or it might be that – rather than saying “just put X” as if filling in the spaces in a book would change the world…

And the results seem reasonably satisfying: everyone in the circle gives some thought to “spiritual things”, about 10-15% become Bahá’ís and most of them continue meeting to study. There is a Local Spiritual Assembly here for the first time. People make comments indicating that their quality of life has improved. For example, a wife says her husband is nicer to her and their marriage is working better now, attributing it to the study circle even though there is so little about family relations in the whole series (so far, anyway). A daughter says she is getting along better with her family (again, totally tangential to the subjects studied, but she says it is a result!).
I remember in the early 70s when Dr. Muhajir wanted us to form “cells” like the Communists in order to study together. Maybe this would have worked better if there had been a workbook series, committees to track stepwise progress, and other backstopping / accountability structures and mechanisms. Perhaps the whole world would be using the workbook series developed in some other country if it had been supported / pushed this way!

No worse than the “read some books” system, which kept most of us ignorant and a lot of people leaving the Faith without ever finding out much about it. So many countries got up to about 10 thousand declared Bahá’ís and then stagnated there, with hundreds of “paper Assemblies” elected by one vote dictated at Ridván to a traveling teacher but never to meet or act again – till next Ridván’s “election”.
Of course the idea that anything but the Ruhi Institute Process is wrong, a waste of time, an obstacle to progress, is abhorrent. But we can’t discard a pretty good system just because there are some squares involved!
There is a saying in “the ed. biz” that you can’t teach what you know – only what you are. Another example from Colombia: the Tutorial Learning System (SAT), created by much the same bunch of Bahá’ís and committed, creative friends of Bahá’ís. The whole idea was to create livelihoods for peasants, giving them the ability to create their own modus vivendi, rather than being squeezed into exploitation as cheap labor. We have met dozens of people who have come out of this process in Colombia, and they all just wish someone would give them a job…
Similarly, until we learn not to be bossy, dogmatic lovers of adulation and easy answers, some of the drawbacks we see in the “Institute Process” are actually just the fruits of who we are starting out as.

The roll out for Ruhi is only ever for trying to obtain mass conversions, to try and achieve entry by troops which the UHJ has been promising was just on the horizon since it first started.

ummyasmin, we _are_ in the Lesser Peace; as its name indicates, it is a minor achievement _between_ the world's nations and a failure in internal peace, as compared to what the world could have accomplished had the world's rulers responded to Baha'u'llah's appeal 140 years back.

Eric, the books don't need revising; they are mere instruments providing a framework for canalizing a study session. No two study circles are the same, depending on the participants and the experience of tutors. As we repeat the circles and mature in experience, we see the practical results and our understanding of the institute process increases, and this understanding is outlined in the abundant messages of the UHJ on the subject, which few participants have had the time to thoroughly study

I think you have expressed a noble ideal, and I hope Baha'i communities are moving toward it. I wish you were writing the official letters that tell Ruhi Tutors what it's all about. In fact, I'd put you in charge of revising the Ruhi books.

I'm referring to this passage:
"The purpose of the acts of service is to foster a new culture where people become “the lump” with which their neighbourhood can be “leavened”, PROMOTING a way of life, a culture of service, and not an expansion through competition with other religions or as a political enterprise. These acts of service are open to all, whether Baha’is or not"

progresive revelation is a very bad model for spiritual evolution, and is just one example of bad bahai metaphysics, and why bahai is a religion stuck in an old set of inflexible ideas and paradigms that have become "regressive".