Problems of Secondary Education in Iran

Abstract

In the developed countries secondary education is already extensive and the problem is how to coordinate the different types of secondary schools or to reorganize the curriculum to meet emerging needs. In the underdeveloped countries the secondary schools are developing under novel conditions and pressures. In the Western European countries until very recently two systems of education existed, one for the selected few destined to enter into professional and leadership positions, and the other for the masses. The elite system preceded that for the masses in time. The latter developed in response to the need for a better educated public and in response to demands by the public for wider educational opportunities. Although the countries that have emerged recently into modern nationhood took European countries as their models, they did not develop their educational systems along quite the same lines. The new countries adopted the idea of universal and compulsory education on the assumption that they were going to have a unified system of education for all. However, they also adopted the elite pattern of the Western European countries. As long as the immediate goal of the modernizing state was to build its government along European lines no difficulty was met, and a modern educated class arose to fill the new civil service positions. The difficulty arose when government offices could no longer absorb the graduates of the modern schools. It would have been ideal if economic development and industrial growth of these countries progressed as fast as the of the government offices were met, in which case there would have been job opportunities with good pay and security to serve as incentives for students to e roll in secondary technical schools rat er than crowding the schools. In this case the educational system would have expanded its functions by offering differentiated secondary curricula serving the whole nation. However, hardly any emerging country presents this ideal situation. What has happened in Iran seems, in more or less degree, to be the pattern in other Middle Eastern countries. In the absence of genuine demand for technical education the single-track system of academic schools preparing for university studies kept growing until its graduates could no longer be absorbed in the government services. Today efforts are being made to differentiate the secondary schools and to rechannel some of the students into business and industry. The efforts of the educational authorities to differentiate the curricula of the secondary schools stem primarily from their preoccupation with the assumption that too many students are preparing for university studies.' To be sure, the needs of the country for skilled workers and technicians is stated as a reason also. These, however, are not actual needs, but only projected according to the figures on the planning charts. Consider, for example, the following statement written by a responsible high official of the Ministry of Education of Iran in Unesco World Survey of Education:2