Deschooling from Religious Education in Islamic Republic of Iran: Possibility and Necessity?

Abstract

Nowadays negative implications of Globalization, the crisis of values, crisis of media, consumerism, and lack of cultural identification, impatience in the face of religion, virtual identification and loss of religious and traditional values are the main challenges confronting students. Besides transfer of knowledge, schools are responsible for educating the graduates, too. It means that it should invest in flourishing all existential dimensions of students including intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and moral dimensions and care for their education and productivity. Now this question arises is that since religious education is a process accomplished through granting vision, genuine and practical obligation to the person, in harmony with his nature and far from force and pressure, in order to gain this- and other-worldly prosperity, can the school undertake this important responsibility or not and in the case of disability to fulfill this duty, should religious education be deschooled; i.e. the mission of religious education should be assigned to institutions other than school or not?  The findings of this investigation show that religious education doesn’t have desirable situation and the new generation doesn’t receive the religious thoughts and behaviors as is qualified. Teachers use grade and other quantitative indices to teach values and morality and evaluate the progress in religious education of students; this results in duality of the student’s identity, personality and behavior, because they are not motivated internally to learn religious issues. On the other hand, in Islamic societies, the administrators and politicians cannot be irresponsible for the religious education of members of their society. According to the doctrines of the true religion, Islam, governors and politicians are obliged to attempt to accomplish this affair, so ministry of education in Iran as a public institution has taken the charge of this affair and schools are charged with delivering religious and divine education to the students and the necessity of deschooling the religious education is denied in Islamic republic of Iran and since our formal education is directly governed by the government and is mentioned in national document of school curriculum and also the document of fundamental transition in education, the objective of education is to educate a religious and committed human being, we may not separate the religious education of students from school. So the possibility of deschooling from religious education in Iran is denied, too. But the tenure of government and formal education relating to religious education is conditional upon conditions, that if accomplished, the tenure will be permitted. In this article these conditions are indicated in detail.