Payvand.org
Title
Iranian Community in Cupertino
Description
Iran, a country with a long history of advanced civilization, lies south of the former Soviet Union and Caspian Sea, west of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and east of Turkey and Iraq. The Persian Gulf is located on Iran's southern border. Iran (Persia), until only a few decades ago, was a country of nomadic pastoralists, peasant agriculturalists, craftsmen, and merchants and traders. Iran had long been involved in international trade, both by water through the Persian Gulf, and across land, as it was on the Silk Route. Iran was overrun by aggressive outsiders several times in its history, and has long been involved in and influenced by other cultures and contacts. Iran has contributed much to world civilization and culture, for example, in terms of early forms of government, poetry, religion, Persian carpets, international commerce, cuisine, music and learning. A country of great variety in terms of climate and terrain, its people are also found in great variety. Iran has been home to people of many religions: Shi'a and Sunni Muslims, Christians (Armenians and Assyrians),Bahais, Jews and Zoroastrians. In addition to the dominate Fars people, Turks, Kurds, Qashqai, Gillaki, Shahsavan, Turkamen, Baluch, Bandari, and Bakhtiari are some other ethnic and tribal groups. Iranians are divided into many language groups, and even Farsi (Persian) speakers use different dialects depending on the region where they live. People look different and dress differently and engage in different types of agriculture and production, depending on their local climate and natural resources.
In recent decades, Iran has experienced rapid modernization and industrialization. Although education at the beginning of the century was in maktabs or religious schools where students learned by rote, by mid-century a modern educational system was instituted and literacy rates climbed. With oil money, the infrastructure developed and the middle class grew. Iran was transformed: railroads, highways, modern cities, factories, and a growing, more educated population. Nomadic pastoralism declined. Subsistence agriculture declined, and people with resources invested money in cash crops, and even more in factories, construction, and real estate.
In the 1960s and 1970s particularly, international culture, politics, and economics influenced many aspects of Iranian life. Secular education largly replace the religious form of education, and institutions of higher education spread through out the county. Yet these educational institutions didn't grow fast enough to respond to the needs of the younger generation and the expanding job market. Increased oil prices financed development of higher education and creation of new jobs. Many Iranians traveled abroad for university education. In the 1970s Iranians formed the largest foreign student population in the United States.
