The conversion of government schools in Tehran to schools affiliated with the seminary was not a new development; by looking at the activities of the seminary, it can be seen that since the late 1970s, the seminary has focused on infiltrating and utilizing educational facilities.

But the main question is, what is the purpose of the seminary’s influence in education? Perhaps the simplest answer to this question is that the seminary seeks to expand its facilities and establish its activities among adolescents and children; a desire that is in line with the thinking of authority and the government.

But if we take a closer look at this issue and the terms of the agreement between the management of the brotherhood seminary of Tehran province and the general office of education of Tehran province, we come to more key points. In this agreement, the commitments of the seminary are mentioned, one of which is as follows: “necessary planning for providing counseling to students, monitoring the content of programs and educational and cultural spaces of schools, including the library and website.”

It seems that the clergy of the seminary are expected to hold positions as counselors in schools in the fields of psychology, education, and law. This means that the Ministry of Education prefers to use graduates of the seminary instead of various experts in the humanities, which is nothing but a constant struggle between the authority of the humanities and its desire to replace them with religious and Islamic sciences.

The conflict that began before the Iranian Revolution with the slogan “Unity of Seminary and University” continued in the country’s universities with the Cultural Revolution of 1979. This systematic and continuous project, also known as “Islamization of Universities”, was pursued by the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In this project, many professors and students who had different beliefs and thoughts from Islamic ideology were expelled and purged, especially those in fields such as law, politics, economics, and other humanities. This showed that despite the systematic attacks on universities to oppose humanities, the government was still not satisfied with the education of sciences, even in a more Islamic form after the Cultural Revolution.

For this reason, many experts consider this thirty-year experience and presence in the university as unsuccessful, and in this regard, in the last ten years, the field has been thinking about directly using the capabilities of education and Islamicizing education at the primary ages.

Another question that is raised in this regard is, who is more affected by the presence of clerics in schools?

The first group that is affected by this plan are children and teenagers whose families belong to religious minorities. These children and teenagers, who are often under pressure due to the Shia content of their textbooks and the pressure from religious and educational authorities, will now face even more pressure and direct and indirect harassment with the implementation of this agreement. With this in mind, one can perhaps better understand the fear of a child with a Baha’i or Jewish parent when faced with clerics in a seminary school. A student who has always been disgusted by their religious education teacher and textbooks due to insults towards their family’s beliefs and pressure to convert to Islam, and has been ostracized by other students, now has to endure even more pressure from clerics in a seminary school.

On the other hand, it seems that children and teenagers from working class and low-income families are also being considered in this plan. These children come from families where religion holds an important place. In its report on the 7th annual celebration of Nogolan Hosseini (Friday, December 19th), Mehr News Agency mentioned a 224% increase compared to the previous period, with the presence of seven thousand young eulogists in this competition. It seems that one of the goals of implementing this plan is to attract low-income students towards the seminary and related matters. With the mention of this topic, it appears that education, upbringing, and the seminary are not only seeking to solve the problems of students, especially those from low-income families, but also trying to use the damages inflicted on students to instill more Islamic thoughts in schools.

However, in a broader view, all children and adolescents who study in these schools are affected. Students who need a psychologist or educational counselor during their schooling not only suffer from the lack of these counselors, but also the efforts of religious leaders in schools to instill religious and seminary teachings in the minds of these students will have more serious consequences. Students who experience social problems such as academic decline, anxiety, apathy, school or home avoidance, depression, etc., are in dire need of psychological, legal, and educational counseling in schools. However, not only do seminaries insist on solving these students’ problems through Islamic sciences, but the Ministry of Education also ignores their needs and introduces the solutions to their social problems through religious leaders in seminaries.

Concerns about these damages and sensitivities towards clerics in society have caused this plan to be implemented gradually in the past years. It is still uncertain whether this plan will be finalized and put into action or not. Perhaps the uncertainty of the success of this plan has led to not only its gradual implementation, but also after the increase in sensitivities and protests towards this plan, Hojatoleslam Maleki, the Secretary of the Cooperation Committee of the Seminary and Education, announced: “None of the schools affiliated with the seminary are dependent on it.”
However, it can be predicted that with the more implementation of this plan and insistence on using clerics and religious theories instead of experts and humanities in schools, more serious damages will be inflicted on students; damages that may be impossible to compensate for.