Rasoul Badaghi is a teacher and a member of the board of directors of the Iranian Teachers’ Association, with a 30-year history of teaching in schools across the country. In September 2009, after the popular protests against the results of the presidential election, he was arrested and sentenced to 6 years in prison and 5 years of social activity ban. This teacher, with a record, was released from prison in April 2016 after nearly seven years of imprisonment. In this issue of the Peace Line, Rasoul Badaghi talks about the basic education system in Iran, privatization, and the shortcomings of education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What type of perspective does the government have towards education, especially public education? Can this perspective address the needs of today’s society?

The ruling view towards education is a religious one. This religious view has predetermined and inflexible expectations that it wants to impose on the minds of all members of society, young and old. It demands certain things from people and wants them to fulfill its desires. It has a program and expectations that it wants all humans to blindly follow. It expects a certain type of behavior from individuals and wants everyone to conform to it.

This view expects a specific type of person and wants everyone to be the same, following predetermined behaviors that it wants to see from individuals. Overall, it has a closed and inflexible mindset towards humans, wanting each and every member of society to exhibit these behaviors. It wants the community to blindly follow these predetermined programs. Therefore, it plans education in a way that serves these behaviors and programs.

This view is like that of a soldier, only wanting soldiers and foot soldiers, whether it is for implementing these programs or for exploitation. The religious view in Iran is manifested in two forms.

To what extent can general education be acceptable according to international standards in the current constitution of the Islamic Republic?

The laws of the Islamic Republic are different from international standards. International standards of education can be viewed from two perspectives, one being quantitative and the other being qualitative.
Quantitative education has a significant impact on education from a qualitative perspective, meaning that qualitative education is a set of characteristics that must be provided by quantitative education. Qualitative education includes textbooks and teachers, meaning that the behavior and speech of teachers and the content of education and textbooks create the quality of education and upbringing.
So what factors affect this quality? Quantitative characteristics have an impact on the qualitative needs of education. These quantitative characteristics include: educational space, sports facilities, libraries, sports halls, classrooms, class density, technological facilities, language laboratories, etc.
Educational space and other facilities such as sports facilities, laboratories, libraries, electronic equipment, and language laboratories are important for creating a quality education.
Just consider sports equipment, nowadays, maybe in one out of a thousand schools in Iran, there are no sports facilities or equipment. It

What are the shortcomings and negative aspects of the current law that need to be changed and updated?

The constitution only specifies general principles and does not include details related to education. The only mention of education in the constitution is in Article 30, which states that the government must provide all education services for free until the end of high school. However, if we consider the laws related to education, there is an annual plan called the “Decisions of the Supreme Council of Education” which is a complex and heavy book that determines the goals, programs, budget, and all issues related to education. This book is referred to as the “Decisions of the Supreme Council of Education” and sets the goals of education. This Supreme Council has 15 members, including the Minister of Education and the Minister of Higher Education. For example, it has been stated that the goal of education is to reach human perfection, which is a completely religious concept and not compatible with science. The ultimate goal of Islamic education is to reach nearness to God, and this is divided into the following objectives: creating the necessary

What procedure is followed in private education?

Privatizing the public sector and emptying the pockets of the people is a means of control. In my opinion, the budget for the country’s natural resources is being spent on military objectives, while the people are being forced to pay for education and scientific budgets out of their own pockets. This is the reality of the situation.

How is privatization of education viewed in similar countries to Iran?

In the world, whether it is private or government, education has standards that must be followed, such as class size, sports facilities, libraries, audio-visual equipment, or language learning laboratories. Every school should have these facilities. Privatization of education in Iran is only about emptying people’s pockets. They do not care about international standards and are not accountable to anyone. They are self-centered and have predetermined programs. In countries with similar conditions to Iran, privatization of education is aimed at improving the quality of education, not just for economic reasons. And if there is an economic goal, it is to improve education, not to compensate for the military budget shortages and empty people’s pockets to fund foreign programs and weapons. This is my perspective and I believe that they are emptying people’s pockets to buy and equip missiles. Although it may not be direct, it is indirect. They are emptying people’s pockets to fund the country’s budget, which does not contribute to the welfare

What happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of public education?

During the coronavirus period, from my perspective, education has been suspended. Imagine being in a physical classroom with forty students, and now consider how much less effective education becomes in a virtual classroom. The teacher never cuts corners, but here they have no choice. The conditions are not right, meaning the teacher has to use their mobile phone or personal computer to convey their voice to the students. They can’t see the students, they can’t feel them, and it’s not clear if the person behind the phone is a student or someone else, like a parent or sibling.
In the virtual space of messaging apps or social media, students write their assignments from previous posts sent by other students. This means zero percent and nothing! Some students may have personal motivations due to their upbringing or previous teachings, but not everyone is like that. Maybe one percent of students are like this. Meaning, the students are not engaged and are only sitting there because of pressure from their parents, or to get a certificate

What impact does the COVID-19 pandemic have on privatization policies implemented by the government?

“It doesn’t have much impact. They take their money and it may even benefit them, as some expenses are eliminated such as water, electricity, phone, and many other things, and they no longer pay for teachers’ overtime. In general, they have delegated education to the teachers and do nothing while taking the money and sitting comfortably. Students and families are the ones who have to pay for everything, and in many cases, even commit suicide.”

What is the appropriate level of position for teachers and educational-cultural forces in macro planning and beyond education and training programs?

They have no place, none, absolute zero! This means that teachers have no role in developing textbooks and educational planning, both on a large and small scale. Even in the classroom, a teacher is not a teacher, but a class supervisor. When there are forty students in a class, what can a teacher do? They are just controllers. See, a teacher in the classroom is not a transmitter of education, but a controller of the class. These are the conditions that the government has created, not the teachers’ desires.

Like forty-person classes, like three or four-room classrooms designated for a class, while a class should be like all classes in the world, a workshop. Part of this workshop should be a theoretical class with desks and chairs for teaching theory, and another part with desks and chairs for the workshop. For example, consider geography or chemistry or science in elementary education. Well, there should be a workshop section for these subjects, which is not available.

Geography has physical

How do educational institutions such as Gaj and Qalamchi impact this process?

“Knowledge and education are something to be discovered and thoughtfully considered, and the subject of examination, research, investigation, and reaching conclusions. There must be a connection between knowledge, education, and upbringing, and the power of analysis must be present. Exam preparation schools mostly teach things like how to take tests and the four-answer method to students. These are closed questions in the education system. They call them “four-answer questions”. This method is a closed education, not an open analytical one. It means that there are not multiple answers for the student to think about, analyze, and give their personal opinion. For example, a question might ask, “What is your perspective on the world today and what do you expect from it?” This question requires thinking, analyzing, discussing, and studying, and it is a long process that cannot be contained in four answers. The goals of exam preparation schools are a closed education that does not give the student any imaginative power of the world. These types of

What are the potential harms to students with the start of online education and the happy network and all its shortcomings that are reflected in the media?

With this, education in Iran is closed. Besides the fact that, according to the Ministry of Education, four and a half million students in the country do not have access to online education, even those who do have access, it has its own limitations. The virtual space is very different from the real world. A student needs verbal and face-to-face communication, and these are suppressed in the student. In a way, the student feels lonely and isolated, unable to express their emotions and see their classmates face-to-face. This leads to feelings of loneliness, longing, boredom, and restlessness. A student is not an adult who can say that it is better for the environment around them to be calm and quiet. As they reach a certain age, they prefer to be surrounded by a calm environment, but students and young people want to be busy, learn, establish connections, and communicate with their peers, which is not possible in the virtual space. They have questions and answers with their teachers,

What conditions can we hope for in the future of public education in Iran?

One of the conditions of the ruling attitude towards education is that it mostly sees it as a tool for the student, teacher, and school, and as a means of serving political and unethical policies. Policies that support execution, seek to open up the country, and develop missiles, are inhumane policies. Execution, killing, exile, poverty, and misery are the current policies, and education is also influenced by these policies. When the attitudes of the officials change and become more humanistic, there is hope in the first place, and secondly, education requires a large budget. Today, the dictatorship of the current political system is the focus of development.

Suppression, looting, oppression, theft, lies, deception, drugs, and these are the focus of the country’s development. But if the focus of development is education, if it is humanistic development, it requires a large budget, the same budget that they spend on launching missiles. A budget that is spent on the destruction of

If there is any point that you feel needs to be mentioned at the end, please let me know.

An important topic that exists and may not have been asked is that art is a part of human talent, emotion, and artistic abilities. Currently, art is non-existent in education and has no place, meaning that the religious and spiritual system is against art, against music and sculpture, and is an enemy to many forms of art. Art is not taught in education, only in some schools in Tehran and some cities. Firstly, when a student does not see or know that there is a subject called art, how can they go to an art school and possibly pay twelve million tomans per month for high school in an art school? In schools, we do not have a subject called art or a teacher called an art teacher. In a country where drug dealers are free, but artists are suppressed, what can we expect from education?
Any place where education is neglected is a place of pain, suffering, ignorance, and forgetfulness. We should have a subject called academic counseling, meaning that students

Thank you for the time you have given to the peace line.