The great uprising of the students of the seminary to conquer the schools of education and training

One of the most important programs being implemented by the Islamic Republic is the control of schools by seminaries; a program that includes recruiting and sending thousands of students to schools across the country, revising textbooks, increasing the share of students in teaching instead of teachers, and even setting up "preschools" under the supervision of the seminaries.

Based on the Ministry of Education’s cooperation with seminaries and a resolution passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly in 1998, “25,000 male and female students” are to be employed in the country’s education system. The ministry officially announced in May of last year that the goal of implementing this decision is to “Islamize schools.”

Also, district officials, citing a resolution from the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, say that "10 percent of all employment in education must be from among students."

The path to hiring students in schools has been paved specifically through Article 28 of the Farhangian University statute. This article, aimed at “compensating for teacher shortages,” states that graduates of the field with a termination of service card can be recruited into the country’s education system by passing only one exam. According to this article, level two and three of the field are classified as equivalent to a bachelor’s and master’s degree.

In the last academic year alone, 440 students were hired as teachers, but the district has officially stated that it is "not satisfied" with this level of hiring.

"Student Soldiers"; Faster and Easier

Of course, official recruitment is not the only way for students to enter schools; an easier way is to complete military service in schools.

On June 7, 2018, the Ministry of Education issued a circular numbered 12/710 to the provinces, emphasizing that students could serve their military service in schools across the country, as they had done in previous years. Physical fitness, an active code at the seminary management center, and wearing clerical attire were among the requirements for these "student soldiers."

According to official statistics, "two thousand student soldiers" have entered schools this academic year.

The entry of thousands of students into schools is being closely monitored by various institutions of the Islamic Republic. In January of last year, 29 members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly submitted a bill not only calling for the acceleration and facilitation of the attendance of student soldiers in schools, but also requesting that the entire salary and benefits of these students be paid by the Education and Training Department during these two years.

All this while the ministry itself is facing a severe budget deficit and Iranian teachers are periodically gathering and protesting their livelihood problems and inadequate salaries.

District-wide plans and programs for schools

A review of the news and activities of seminaries in recent years indicates that seminarians have a clear intention to enter schools as teachers, and for this purpose, a separate center was established within the seminaries; namely, the "Seminary Teacher Training Center," which was approved on March 10, 2018, to organize all matters related to the entry of students into schools.

One of these issues is the definition of new fields in the field of schools. According to the secretary of the Secretariat for Cooperation between Seminaries and Education, “about four hundred new fields” have been defined in the seminaries, mainly in the field of education, of which more than two hundred are active. Officials of this Secretariat have repeatedly stated explicitly that “education is the closest field for the activities of the students.”

We are talking about “thousands of students.” In the last academic year, “more than 12,000 students” were given the opportunity to take the education and training employment exam, and it was officially announced that “about three thousand clerics” could be employed to teach in education and training schools, and this number will increase in the coming years. This is despite the fact that, according to official statistics from the last academic year, at least 4,500 “official teachers” in education and training have a degree from seminaries.

The district's initiative for schools also includes smaller projects to provide the maximum and widest possible presence of clerics in schools. One of them is the "Boom Project." According to this plan, two hours of the weekly program are available to the school principal, and district officials say that in a number of provinces, they are using the "Boom Project" for issues such as "the impact of clerics in schools."

Students have also been sent to schools for years through projects such as "Islamic Education Week."

In addition to all these projects, numerous training courses are also held by clerics in schools under the pretext of "answering religious doubts," "promoting a resistance economy," "a culture of sacrifice and martyrdom," "enjoining good and forbidding evil," "accepting the province," and "promoting religious discourse."

Students are not the only target of seminarians; part of the seminary's plans is even for parents. Seminary officials say that in the 2019-20 academic year alone, about twenty thousand short-term training courses were held for parents of students on the topic of "Hijab and Islamic Lifestyle." In all of these courses, students are present as "propagandists."

The original and older scheme of the school is called "Amin", through which students were brought into schools across the country, mainly under the pretext of teaching "educational subjects".

For this purpose, it was necessary to provide the necessary capacity for all these students in the country's educational structure. In this regard, in October 2019, it was officially announced that the employment exams for "sister and brother students" in education had been increased from three to eight fields. The new fields for students were history, philosophy, Persian literature, and social sciences. Previously, students were mainly recruited in the fields of Arabic language, Quran, and educational sciences.

This is not the end of the story, of course, because the seminary also wants guarantees. In October 1401, a course called "Preparation for the Employment Exam for Students in Education" was held to reassure seminarians about the "successful attendance of students in this exam."

New shop opened!

Perhaps there is no need to explain that alongside all these plans and programs, a huge store with huge budgets has been opened; new centers that are springing up like mushrooms all over the country and require billions of tomans in budget. Among them, the officials of the seminary say that they have foreseen and launched a special education research center for cooperation between the seminary and schools, think tanks, numerous magazines to define "teachers and students on the level of revolution," and numerous theory-building chairs; new tables have been spread.

Recently, the head of the missionary-teacher training center for seminaries said in December 1402 that in recent years, appropriate conditions have been created for students to attend the seminaries, and that "various seminary deputies" are currently busy making further preparations.

In several centers that have been set up with the aim of students attending schools, numerous small and large projects have been defined. In September last year, seminary officials announced the formation of “12 major megaprojects” and “several new research groups” in the Qom Seminary’s Teacher Training and Evangelism Center, and said that “fifty researchers” were to be recruited for these projects. The publication of the magazines “Tarbit Muallem Taraz” and “Obudesh va Parvaresh va Tarbit Mete’ali” are among other activities in such centers.

According to district officials, "more than eight thousand meetings" were held across the country in the 2019-20 academic year about the need for students to attend schools. They also promised last summer that "five specialized teacher-student training programs will soon be launched."

Part of this shop is related to cyberspace. In November last year, the head of applied education and propaganda at the Isfahan Seminary announced the formation of “a content production team for cyberspace that is tailored to students,” and said that this team, as a support for teacher-propagandists, “will produce clips, podcasts, and such products.”

More clearly than all of this, the director of the seminary teacher-propagandist training center in Khordad 1400 put aside the compliments and specifically asked the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the government to "consider a separate budget line for this center."

Of course, years have passed since the unofficial opening of this shop. For example, in 2015, as part of a project called "Mobin," nearly two billion tomans were spent to train a number of high school principals about prayer. The dollar exchange rate that year was under four thousand tomans.

Of course, the seminary also pursues a kind of “reverse engineering” in all these plans and shops; that is, attracting students to the seminaries. According to one official, many programs are held every year for “students to meet with the seminary’s scholars and scholars,” and most of these students are “in the ninth and twelfth grades and on the verge of choosing a major.”

Little opportunity and many students!

The seminary’s extensive program for the country’s education system is being implemented directly under the personal supervision of the Leader of the Islamic Republic, through the agency of Alireza Aarafi, the head of the country’s seminaries. Aarafi occasionally provides statistics on his successes. For example, recently in Semnan, he announced the recruitment of 4,500 students into education and said that “60 percent of them are sister students.” Aarafi called on these new student-teachers to “conquer new arenas.”

In terms of organization and execution, plans related to the attendance of students in schools are implemented by the Supreme Leader's representative in the provinces, the Friday Imam, the Director General of Education, the directors of the seminaries, the Endowment Organization, and the Islamic Propaganda Organization.

Meanwhile, media outlets under Khamenei's control are also regularly beating this drum. For example, the Kayhan newspaper, in its issue of December 1, 2011, specifically called for "one brother or sister student in every school" and for this issue to become a "law."

The seminarians' plan to take over schools is so extensive that the seminary has even considered establishing a preschool. In November 2020, the secretary of the Seminary-Education Cooperation Headquarters announced the launch of a "preschool affiliated with the seminary," whose "management and programs will be regulated by the seminary based on the framework, regulations, and laws of education."

What the seminarians are emphasizing is the “faster” presence of students in schools. The director of the Sisters’ Seminaries said in July last year that “the opportunity is limited and students must be prepared faster.” He added that “with a one-year or maximum two-year course, students can be prepared to attend education and training,” although some other clerics believe that the student is a teacher in himself and that there is no need for the same one- or two-year courses.

Source: Radio Farda