Return to Archive

IRAN UPDATE March 20, 2008 MORE IRANIAN INDOCTRINATION Another look into the Islamic Republic's radical curriculum Anyone hoping for a more moderate social and political line from Iran’s youth should take a hard look at the country’s primary schools, through which Tehran’s radical regime is actively cultivating a new generation of radical, anti-Western activists. That’s the conclusion of a new, comprehensive, and troubling study on the subject by Freedom House. The report, Discrimination and Intolerance in Iran’s Textbooks – a successor to an earlier study by the Center for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education – outlines a program of systematic indoctrination and radicalization in Iran’s schools, perpetuated by mandatory textbooks that promote an uncompromising, confrontational view of the world to children as early as the first grade. (For the Freedom House report, click here. For the earlier report, click here. For the October 12, 2007 Iran Update on the earlier report, click here.) Among the study’s major findings, Iran’s textbooks: · Sustain and promote gender inequality, citing Koranic teachings and Islamic practice to ignore or marginalize the place of women in society, · Ignore or minimize the importance of Iran’s numerous minorities, and “express suspicion of ethnic minorities and denigrate certain religious beliefs,” · Emphasize Iran’s role as a protector of the region’s Islamic movements (including such radical groups as Hezbollah and Hamas), and · Depict the Islamic Republic as a “sacred regime” that is not subject to internal or external criticism, and whose edicts must be obeyed unquestioningly. These examples of discrimination and intolerance “are neither accidental nor sporadic,” the study warns. “They are consistent and systematic throughout the textbooks at the core of the curriculum in Iranian schools.” The implications are clear - and troubling. “The values propagated in the textbooks are shaping the way the next generation of Iranian citizens will view the outside world and the majority of the country’s population who are not Shi’a Muslim males,” the report concludes.” Just as clearly, they are doing so in a way that makes rapprochement with the United States and the West less likely, not more.

www.committeeonthepresentdanger.org. P.O. Box 33249, Washington DC 20003-3249 Contact: Larry Haas, larry@larryhaasonline.com. 202 257-9592

 

 Return to Archive