Cultural Revolution in Iran
Contrary to the ridiculous claims about the death of religion in today’s daily lives of human beings, the Islamic Revolution showed that religion presents a program for life and is a source of change. Certainly, the Islamic Revolution plays a significant role in this regard. The post-revolutionary education system of schools and universities has also been affected as part of the social system, and the curriculum and content of post-revolutionary books represent an interesting compromise between various aspects of tradition and modernity; the part before the Revolution was given to the Americans by the second Pahlavi as compensation for the coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq’s government, and they exercised overwhelming political, economic and cultural control over most Muslim countries and their elites. Given the importance of education in the process of character formation, the government recognized the duty of the Revolution regarding the values of the educational system, the part of which was the cultural revolution.
The cultural revolution aimed at replacing the pre-revolutionary value system with new norms, creating an ideal society based on Islamic standards, and educating the modern Muslim. Imam Khomeini (ra) viewed university as a basis and a fundamental element. He considered the university as the source of development believing that the reform of the university and the seminary would guarantee the country’s independence. In his intellectual and doctrinal framework, the university is the source and center of social and cultural developments, “reform and deviation” of society as well as “prosperity or destruction” of the country. According to Imam Khomeini’s system of thought, the significance of changing the content of the books is such that days after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, he asked the officials to make fundamental changes in the textbooks used in various educational courses, delete the contents that advocate the colonialist views and replace them with Islamic and revolutionary issues that would awaken children and bring freedom and independence. In his message on the occasion of the formation of the Headquarters of the Cultural Revolution, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, while emphasizing the necessity of the cultural revolution and the concerns of the nation and the faithful university students regarding the activities of the conspirators, pointed out the negative effects of universities before the Revolution and its possibility after it and described negligence in cultural revolution as committing great treachery against Islam and Islamic Revolution.
In the mentioned message, while appointing the members of the Headquarters of the Cultural Revolution, he asked them to invite people who are committed and faithful to the Islamic Republic to participate in planning and outlining the future cultural policy. Careful revision of high school textbooks to prevent deviation is another part of Imam Khomeini’s demands. He considered culture as an element of identity believing that the reason for the Westernization and Easternization of the educated people is the invasion of the colonialists, especially the Westerners, and more recently the United States and the Soviet Union. In his view, the languages and pens of the Westernized and the Easternized people were consciously or unconsciously in the service of colonialism. However, he believed that there are a small number of committed people among the writers and professors of the university. For this reason, the elites of the Islamic Revolution did not have much trust in universities that served the interests of the colonialists and the enemies of Islam.
The determination of the university students and professors who followed Imam Khomeini’s thoughts during the cultural revolution to engage in the administration of the country and revolutionary institutions on the one hand, and the release of prisoners and the return of immigrants who opposed the Islamic movement, on the other hand, paved the way for the rise of opposition movements in universities. That caused Imam Khomeini (ra) and the revolutionaries to feel the need for closing the universities. Another point that should be considered about the Iranian cultural revolution is the relationship between the seminary and university. There are various approaches to the relationship between these two educational institutions in Iran.
Most of these approaches have analyzed the relationship between these two educational institutions with a level of engagement. The cultural revolution can be considered as one of the movements that act in line with the unity of the seminary and university and has tried to bring these two institutions closer to each other in an attempt to Islamize the universities. After the Islamic Revolution, government textbooks replaced the existing ones, especially in the field of humanities. Although this change of the books was partly due to scientific reasons, no one can deny the political and Islamization processes of the curriculum. The disciplines of history, philosophy, Arabic language and literature, Islamic studies, geography and Persian literature were considered suitable for promoting the ideology of the Islamic Republic. There are also opposing views on the consequences of Iran’s cultural revolution.
Attitude to Religion
The Islamic Revolution of Iran was a purely religious Revolution that was formed with a religious ideology and sought to revive the religious and spiritual values of the people. This Revolution was religious in terms of ideology, leadership, the origin of the revolutionaries and the objectives.
Policies of Changes in the Cultural Revolution
The experience of the cultural revolution in Iran reflected the expansion of institutionalization, correction of the structure and filling of the spiritual vacuum that existed in the formal education system which was modelled on the Western one, and the use of seminary experiences to complement the academic system and create a new plan, especially in the field of humanities thought in universities.
Politicizing the Education
There was a political confrontation between the Revolution and the counter-revolution in the cultural revolution of Iran which set the ground for removing the anti-revolution officials and the supporters of the pre-revolutionary regime from universities. In Iran, there is a difference between the founders and officials of the cultural revolution. The founders are members of the Islamic Association, which, after Imam Khomeini’s message, initiated a movement to realize this revolution. Then, the responsibility was given to people with experience in the academic system, and they were selected based on their commitment to the Revolution.
The Destination of Those Engaged in Academic Activities
The cultural revolution and the temporary closure of universities in Iran paved the way for the opposition forces to expand their activities in the streets of cities. It seems that this situation, in addition to being rooted in opposing the ruling revolutionary current, also originated from the short distance between the socio-political revolution and the cultural one. During that period, the government was not established and the opposition forces could maintain and utilize their communication networks, fighting styles and strategies.
Centralism
In Iran, the process of taking an entrance exam for the universities continued but with the difference that various classes and regions received some privileges so that deprivation will be eliminated (and sometimes the families of the Muslim martyrs and fighters will be supported).
Duration of the Education
Due to the expansion of course titles, sometimes we have even witnessed an increase in the duration of education and the teaching hours in Iran. In this country, the seminary backgrounds of revolutionary leaders have set the grounds for giving more
importance to the duration and content of the education.
The Criteria for Accepting a Student in University
The selection process was applied in Iran, a system that sought to prevent those who had deviant beliefs or were affiliated with opposing political groups and undesirable moral behaviours, from entering the universities. In such a selection process, an acceptable level of commitment to Islam and the Revolution was considered a condition for enrollment. The new council undertook the responsibility of assessing the ideological beliefs of the faculty members and the student of universities. Therefore, ideological questions were embedded in the universities entrance exam.
Curriculum
The curriculum also underwent changes during the cultural revolution.
Various aspects of the curriculum, especially the humanities and social sciences, experienced a change. The Cultural Revolution Committee began revising the curriculum and the content of the books. By the end of 1981, the Research and Educational Planning Organization, and the Research Council, managed to create a new curriculum and provide the students with the new books under the supervision of the Cultural Revolution Committee. While some books, such as physics and mathematics in higher education, remained unchanged, others related to the fields of history, economics, sociology, psychology, religion, Persian literature, Arabic, and social studies were changed with the aim of presenting Islamic approaches and the worldview of the Islamic Republic. At the macro level, two criteria for revising the textbooks were considered: emphasizing the Islamic period of Iran and replacing the Western values with Islamic ones, and representing the West as a hostile enemy that opposes peace and dialogue.
The Islamic model and ideal and the leadership of the absolute mujtahid in Iran’s cultural revolution, which has placed the Shi’ah reading of Islam at the center of revolutionary developments, set the ground for committing to values, avoiding treating people based on their social class, helping the oppressed, supporting the indigenous community, becoming centralized, following rationality and spirituality, the increase of the content and duration of education, and the continuity of the cultural revolution.
Reference: Journal of Political Sociology of Islamic World. Vol 8, No 17, Summer and Fall 2020, Pp 305-332.
Archive of The Thought of the Islamic Revolution
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