Approval of Mother Language Teaching in Schools

The general principles of the plan for teaching mother language in schools have been approved.

Over the past two decades, efforts to implement a plan for teaching local languages in schools remained fruitless, but according to a new parliamentary plan regarding the general principles of local language teaching in the current Education Committee of the Parliament in the twelfth term, one of 48 local languages and dialects will be taught in seventh and eleventh grades.

Concern over the abandonment of local languages in remote areas of Iran has prompted many Iranian ethnic groups to advocate for mother language teaching to be implemented in schools in order to preserve and familiarize themselves with the scientific and literary figures of various ethnicities and to preserve local and ethnic languages.

Teaching mother language in schools is one of the challenges that educational institutions, particularly education ministers and parliamentary members, continue to debate over whether the mother languages of different ethnicities and tribes should be taught in schools or not. On the other hand, evidence suggests that the current members of the Education and Research Commission are committed to resolving this long-standing discussion.

According to Article 15 of the Constitution, Persian is the official language and script shared by the people of Iran. Official documents, correspondence, texts, and textbooks must be in this language and script, but the use of local and ethnic languages in the press and mass media and the teaching of their literature in schools alongside Persian is free.

Now the representatives of the people in parliament play an important role in following up on and keeping mother language alive and in achieving the goal of teaching mother language in schools, an issue that remained unresolved despite five proposals for the mother language teaching plan from 2001 to 2022.

Finally, after two decades of discussion regarding the teaching of local and mother languages in schools, the general principles of the local language teaching plan have been approved in the current parliament’s Education Committee, and one of 48 local languages and dialects is to be taught in schools.