The Iranian Teachers Organization Appreciates Robert’s Rules Of Order

The fifth of July, Sunday, 2020, probably would be a remarkable date in the history of Robert’s Rules of Order in Iran. On the eve of this day, the first meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee of the Iranian Teachers Organization (ITO) took place at the Office of Robert’s Rules Workshops. Why this simple meeting has a great significance?

The relationship between the ITO and Robert’s Rules of Oder is long and throughout all the period ITO’s main officials sincerely were attempting to learn Rules of Order and to teach them to the ITO’s members.

Among the ITO’s officials, Mrs. Naghiee who is now secretary-general of the organization especially is distinctive. Since more than 7 years ago, she constantly has attempted to prepare the inside situation for localization of Robert’s Rules of Order at the ITO.

It is useful to mention that the ITO also like other civil organizations in Iran naturally has founded upon the Iranian traditions of social organization.

According to these traditions, the decision-making process in small meetings has not any kind of rules and the agreement is usually obtained through bargaining. Therefore, just when the number of the members of a meeting mounted to, for example, 10, the problems emerge.

Because of lacking any rules of order governing the group decision-making process, it is said that Iranians are like a herd of cats.

As usual, in every meeting, every individual can speak about any issue he wants, and the chairmen themself yet don’t believe that at any time only one issue must be considered.

Indeed, any Iranian organization constantly lives in a chaotic/tyrannical situation. And only after acquaintance with parliamentary procedure one can understand the cause deeply and justly. And Mrs. Naghiee is one of them. So she attempts as hard as possible to encourage her colleagues to learn and exercise Rules of Order.

The above-mentioned meeting took place at the Cadres’ Office was a result of her long endeavors.

The meeting took 4 hours and therefore a lot of issues were considered that most of them were specific and not be allowed to be discussed here. But some of them are fit for discussing as national experiences.

Lawlessness Is The Main Problem

Just from the start point, every society in contemporary Iran begins its life in unknown lawlessness. Yes, "unknown", because they don’t know the law and unfortunately they don’t know that they don’t know it at all!

Usually, civil societies are established according to the governmental guidance, but, the government officials also know nothing about it, and therefore, their guidance is indeed misguided.

The ITO as a reformist political party also has been formed based on the same manuals, and thus suffers the same difficulties.

Criticizing the governmental manuals according to them the civil societies must be formed in Iran is an important objective that the Main Association will consider it as soon as possible. But it is worth reviewing some of them here.

Every civil society in Iran, depending on its functions and purposes, must obtain governmental permission from one of the government authorities even before starting its establishing. As a result, for example, the founding members of any society must be endorsed by security authorities before they could start to form it!

In such a social and political situation, every civil society is forced to manage itself according to the misguided governmental manuals and ITO also tries to do so. And. as it was said before, the way is paved to hell.

The Experiences Of The Meeting

The first and foremost importance of the meeting was that a few numbers of professional members of ITO became familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order practically. And at the end of the assembly, all of them acknowledged the necessity of learning the parliamentary procedure as described in Robert’s Rules of Order.

The Strategic Planning Committee of the Iranian Teachers Organization is looking for the best way for doing its job. The committee found out that the best way for planing any strategy is the participation of all members of any organization, and the best way for full participation is doing the job according to Robert’s Rules of Order.