The Islamic Revolution and Education in Iran

Abstract

Iran is a multiethnic society differentiated by language, religion, and other factors that distinguish its ethnic boundaries. The majority of Iranians belong to the 12 Imami Shici school of thought in Islam. Shi'ism as a school of thought has been around since early Islam. But it was only at the beginning of the sixteenth century that it became the state religion in Iran. However, Islam as a general system was never implemented in the country. This article is about the effect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on Iran's educational system. The revolutionaries in Iran are rearranging many of that country's institutions, including the contents of the curricula, in order to implement the Islamic ideals and values that were articulated at the dawn of Islam 15 centuries ago. The article has two aims: (1) to profile the ideal Islamic person in the context of the aspirations of the Iranian revolutionaries as expressed in the pages of the school textbooks and (2) to speculate on the degree of congruity between values taught in the schools and other governmentsponsored media and those disseminated through other socializing agencies of Iran not controlled by the government. It is assumed that the existence of congruities (or incongruities) between the socializing agencies of a society has a great deal to do with the effectiveness of the socialization processes in the development of its citizenry.