Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran

by Nina Ansary

  ISLAMIZING EDUCATION

  The Islamic Republic inherited the monarchy’s system of education and almost immediately embarked on the task of purifying the embedded infrastructure in order to foster a solid Islamic identity. In fact, in its quest to Islamize the nation, one of the Republic’s highest priorities was transformation of Iran’s westernized education system. Shortly after the revolution’s victory, Khomeini declared:

  Our universities are westoxicated.… Many of our universities are at the service of the West. They brainwash our youth.37

  The term “westoxication” derives from the title of a well-known book written in the early 1960s by Iranian intellectual and author Jalal Al-i Ahmad entitled Occidentosis: A Plague from the West. Renowned for coining the term gharbzadegi (westoxication), the author critiqued the West, stressing the loss of cultural identity and the contradictions arising from rapid westernization in Iranian society. Al-i Ahmad maintained that this foreign intrusion would transform Iranians into “aliens with unfamiliar customs” and contended that the westernized vision of the “emancipated” Iranian woman would lead to “swelling an army of lipstick and powder aficionados.”38

  As part of Khomeini’s new directive, it was stipulated that education at all levels must “reflect the independent nature of Islamic thought, and cleanse itself from all western values and influence,” as the previous leadership was “contaminated and controlled by the superpowers.…”39 In accordance with this mandate, the Constitution specified providing all citizens with “free education through secondary school and expanding higher education to the extent required by the country for attaining self-sufficiency.”40

  Accordingly, the official launch of the Cultural Revolution (Enqelab-e Farhangi, 1980–1984) engaged in a systematic cleansing (paksazi) of every facet of Iranian life, including its educational landscape.41 In 1980, the Council for Cultural Revolution, a seven-member task force selected by the Ayatollah, began dismissing all “non-believers,” including professionals, administrators, students, professors, and supporters of the ancien regime. All universities were shut down for a period of four years (1980 through 1983) in order to formulate the foundations of an Islamic education. During this time, the Center for Textbooks, composed mainly of clerics, produced some 3,000 college-level textbooks in conformity with “Islamic criteria.”42

  When the universities reopened, they had been purged of all dissident faculty and pupils with a revised rule mandating “ideological testing” for recruitment and admission. This so-called “purification” procedure resulted in the departure of the country’s most educated citizens, which struck “a major blow to Iran’s intellectual life and achievement…job skills and capital.”43 What was Khomeini’s response to the escalating brain drain? These are his words:

  They say there is a brain drain. Let these decaying brains flee and be replaced by more appropriate brains. These brains are of no use to us. If you know this is not the place for you, you should flee.44

  Given the regime’s aversion to a foreign ideology, the practice of study abroad, which had significantly climbed during the previous era, was almost entirely eliminated. According to statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, while in 1978/1979 there were some 50,000 Iranian students matriculated in institutions all over the United States, the numbers drastically diminished to 14,000 in 1985 and to barely 4,900 in 1992. Furthermore, as part of a fervent quest to dismantle all remnants of Western influence, a number of well-known modern schools of the Pahlavi period were renamed to reflect the sacred climate of the era. Religious practices were initiated, including daily prayers and Koranic studies, and a moral education teacher (morrabi-ye tarbiat), well-versed in Islam, presided over all religious functions. Persian became the primary language of instruction, and while English and other foreign languages were initially banned, they were allowed in later years.45

  The new regime was additionally committed to allocating substantial funds toward the expansion of education and the extension of urban amenities to rural areas.46 In this process, the Literacy Movement Organization (LMO) replaced the Literacy Corps of the Pahlavi era, tackling illiteracy and the training of qualified personnel committed to Khomeini’s Doctrine of Clerical Rule (Velayat-e Faqih).47 The First Republican Plan (1983–1988), presented under the banner of “changed priorities” and “new policies,” underscored the importance of education within an Islamic framework in its opening statement:

  In Islam, education is a form of worship and the search for knowledge a jihad for Allah. Education is not just a social necessity, but a Holy Duty.48

  By 1984, the Council for the Cultural Revolution, renamed the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution (SCCR, Shoray-e Enqelab-e Farhangi) and described as “the highest body for making policies and decisions in connection with all cultural, educational, and research activities within the framework of the general policies of the system,” had evolved to having seventeen members with over twenty satellite institutions.49 Headed by the country’s president and accountable only to the Supreme Leader, this entity was composed of high-ranking Shiite clerics and powerful government figures, as well as the Women’s Social and Cultural Council (WSCC), the Republic’s first organization on women’s affairs, established in 1988 within the SCCR to ensure conformity with Islamic principles for the female population at large.50 In compliance with the regime’s mandates, the council guaranteed “gender appropriateness” within academia by prohibiting married women from studying abroad unless accompanied by their husbands and restricting their enrollment in a variety of typically male-oriented disciplines, including mining, technology, animal husbandry, and agriculture.51

  These restrictions adhered to the guidelines for gender instruction prescribed in the Principles of the System of Education decreed by the Ministry of Education, placing “education for girls and women” within the framework of “recognizing the identity of women and their roles within the family and society on the basis of Islam” and “planning for the content and method of her schooling accordingly.”52

  The plan additionally stipulated that the

  educational guidance of girls should be based on their capabilities and interests, and their vocational guidance should take into consideration the kind of occupations needed by and best fulfilled by women given their role and responsibility within the family … with curriculum development emphasizing the sanctity and stability of the family by introducing the different role of men and women in marital life.53

  The educational ideology of the Republic stood in stark contrast to that of the Pahlavi regime, wherein educational objectives avoided gender-specific formulations and were stipulated in the context of “providing equal opportunity for all Iranian men and women, in all classes of the population, urban or rural.”54 The moral educational goals were additionally specified within the framework of cultivating “human qualities and virtues inspired by spiritual principles, while making judicious use of social rights … [as] members of a free and progressive society.”55 A delineation of religious instruction was noticeably absent within the defined objectives and ethos of the Pahlavi educational establishment.

  Khomeini’s aim was to dismantle the Shah’s educational system and infuse Islamic ideology into every aspect of Iran’s academic environment. Given the Islamic Republic’s preeminent objective, logic dictates that the strategy would be to revert back to the traditional maktab school system. What is puzzling here is that for unspecified reasons, the state chose to retain the infrastructure created by the Pahlavi regime—one that was facilitated by a team of Western advisers.

  In referring to this miscalculation, author David Menashri estimates that this unusual course of action indicates that the Republic had “inherited a working institution … which was readily available for [its] use.”56 An alternate explanation for this significant oversight could simply be a lack of expertise in the art of nation-building by the architects of a newly conceived Islamic empire.

 
In the aftermath of the revolution, Khomeini continued his gender-biased sermons, which combined with the already enumerated directives concerning the female population at large, point to his overriding conviction that female education must be compatible with women’s “role” and “responsibility” within the family. With that said, it is important to note that although women were not prohibited from pursuing a career, the plethora of patriarchal edicts handicapped their autonomy in society. Author Parvin Paidar concludes that the regime was confident that their traditional gender policies would work to consolidate women’s continuous support.57

  There is no doubt that Ayatollah Khomeini regarded education as means to cultivate the ideal person (ensanha-ye nemuneh), and that this would be accomplished through transformation of the educational system into “training” (tarbiyyat) institutions.58 It was his intention that female education instill in future mothers the proper knowledge to raise children according to the ideals of the ruling authority. Given these objectives, however, one is left with these questions: Did Ayatollah Khomeini really execute radically new educational policies? Or did he inadvertently maintain much of the monarchy’s curriculum? Were the elementary school textbooks inherited from the Pahlavi era unintentionally left largely intact—and is it therefore possible that the Islamic regime merely imported westernized educational materials from the Shah’s administration—only superficially instilling them with religious dogma?

  DID KHOMEINI FORGET TO DE-WESTERNIZE THE SCHOOL BOOKS?

  The clue to one of Khomeini’s biggest blunders lies in the illustrated pages of Iran’s post-revolutionary elementary school textbooks. The regime meant to “cleanse” all educational content of its “westoxicated” ideology, but did they overlook an important building block of the educational infrastructure? To what extent did these seemingly innocent curriculum materials adhere to or deviate from the gender ideology of Islamic lawmakers? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to ascertain whether Iranian schoolgirls were exposed to images and ideology that conflicted with the government’s desired role for women in an Islamic Republic—that of wife and mother.

  As discussed in Chapter Three, child development experts affirm that the pre-adolescent years (ages seven to twelve) are when core values are instilled. Given the relevance of what sociologists regard as the “impressionable” pre-adolescent phase, it is essential to examine elementary school textbooks as a crucial component of the socialization mechanism and determine whether or not they achieve socially defined gender roles.59

  Textbooks at this particular level are considered to be one of the major tools communicating relevant information regarding ethics, codes of conduct, and behavioral guidelines by the ruling entity. And textbook content is an important indicator of gender socialization among the younger generation, who are future participants in the society at large.60 Renowned sociologists Jerome Karabel and A. H. Halsey maintain that “revolutions do not merely make educational change possible, they require it.…”61

  Given this all-important distinction, the academic arena requires transformation in order to sufficiently reflect the ideological tenets of the regime. Failure to undertake such changes may undermine the revolution, “for it is the education system that is responsible for the molding of future generations.…”62 And the purpose of education, as sociologist Emile Durkheim concluded in his studies on the socialization of young children within the school system,

  is to arouse and develop in the child a certain number of intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the political society as a whole and by the specific environment for which he is particularly destined.63

  Therefore, the possibility that the “intellectual and moral states” of elementary schoolgirls may have inadvertently been impacted and developed by the relatively liberal imagery and text included in the Pahlavi era textbooks is profoundly consequential.

  Although the few studies done on post-revolutionary elementary textbooks have noted the insertion of religious content, research concerning identity formation by way of a revised elementary curriculum remained relatively unexplored, specifically where it applied to long-term implications for the female population at large.

  Therefore, this research study was undertaken. In examining both text and illustrations in the elementary textbooks (grades 1–5) of the Republican era, specific attention was given to gender ideology—a term referring to attitudes regarding the appropriate, expected roles and obligations of men and women in a given society.64 A “traditional” gender ideology emphasizes the distinctive roles assigned to both sexes based on presumed differences, with men fulfilling their primary duty as breadwinners, and women as homemakers and principal caregivers within the family unit. In direct contrast, an “egalitarian” ideology regarding the family unit endorses the shared responsibility of both men and women in the private and public sphere.65

  Textbook topics, themes, and storylines were assessed for gender visibility, professional and domestic undertakings, and performance of stereotypical and nonstereotypical tasks, in order to determine the overall message internalized by young minds regarding the “appropriate” male and female roles in an Islamic society and the degree to which the curriculum mirrored the gender ideology of the ruling entity.

  The study’s findings are as follows:

  In the Reading and Writing Farsi (Khandan va Neveshtan-e Farsi) textbooks (grades 1–5) of the Islamic Republic:

  ♦Men, women, and children are cloaked in somber attire, with the female population conforming to the veiling laws of the regime.

  ♦Women are portrayed as mothers, wives, teachers, and physicians.66

  ♦Women are also shown undertaking numerous rural tasks and engaging in various professional occupations in the urban community at large.67

  ♦There are relatively few passages and illustrations presenting women in typically “blue-collar” occupations. Those cited and/or exhibited include “factory worker” and “seamstress.”68

  ♦Men are depicted as fathers, husbands, soldiers, pilots, farmers, physicians, and teachers.69 Moreover, they are pictured in diversified blue-collar occupations, including construction worker, mailman, grocer, and cobbler.70

  ♦Aside from their portrayal in the medical, education, and aviation industries, the male population is conspicuously nonexistent in excerpts and images representing them in any other occupational capacity.

  ♦The absence of women from manual and technical labor is countered by their presence in an array of white-collar vocations exemplified by their portrayal in medical and healthcare facilities and an assortment of professional office settings.71

  ♦The lack of women in the specified unskilled trades is not highly unusual, in view of the fact that until fairly recently, the delineated tasks tended to be performed by men in most traditional and Western societies.

  ♦Contrary to strict Islamic ideology, public segregation of men and women is portrayed only in classroom settings and mosque prayer scenes.72 Female instructors are shown teaching girls, and male instructors are exclusively situated in the boys classroom,73 but in every other public or private environment, integration of the sexes is shown, with boys and girls frequently portrayed together in various leisurely activities.

  ♦Mothers, fathers, and children are seen interacting as a family unit, both within the household and in the community at large.

  Post-revolutionary elementary school textbooks.

  ♦The following textbook passages and illustrations reflect scenes highlighting public and private interaction with the opposite sex, in addition to a shared responsibility in performing domestic chores and parental cooperation in child rearing:

  ▸Men, women, and children engaged in farm labor74

  ▸Kitchen scene:

  •Young girl fills the sugar bowl

  •Mother washes the spoons and plates

  •Father carries the serving tray of teapot and teacups75

  ▸Mothers and fathers shopping with
their children in the bazaars76

  ▸Boys and girls walking together to and from school, sharing picture books, playing in the snow, and building a snowman (see below)77

  ▸Narrative of a young girl simultaneously comforted by her father and mother78

  ▸Passage about a father tenderly and lovingly dispensing advice to his daughter79

  Post-revolutionary elementary school textbooks.

  In the social studies (Taalimat-e Ejtemai), mathematics (Riazi), and science (Ulum-e Tajrobi) textbooks of the Islamic Republic:

  ♦There is no evidence relating to stereotypical chores performed by the female population. The social studies books are essentially constituted by geography lessons and extensive narratives on revered Islamic figures and ancient Persian rulers. Except for classroom scenes, men, women, and children continue to be shown in “mixed” settings, participating in a variety of indoor and outdoor activities.

  ♦The mathematics and science books substantially replicate those from the late Pahlavi period, with an overall balanced depiction of boys and girls engaged in coloring activities, laboratory experiments, and field assignments.

  ♦Both sexes adorn the pages of most textbooks and are likewise illustrated in a multitude of coeducational settings in the scientific arena.80

  ♦Men and women continue to be engaged in a variety of leisurely activities and continue to be shown as mothers, fathers, instructors, and physicians.

  ♦In a photograph of children playing in the park, some of the girls are surprisingly shown without their headscarves (next image).81 This may have been a snapshot inadvertently incorporated from the Pahlavi period, but an obvious faux pas by the architects of the post-revolutionary educational system.