Approval of teaching mother tongue in schools

The general outline of the plan for teaching the mother tongue in schools was approved.

In the last two decades, efforts to teach local languages ​​in schools have been fruitless, but based on the new parliamentary plan regarding the general outline of the local language teaching plan, the Education Commission of the current parliament - the twelfth term - decided that one of the 48 local languages ​​and dialects would be taught in the seventh and eleventh grades.

Concerns about the forgetting of local languages ​​in every corner of Iran have led many Iranian ethnic groups to demand that native language teaching be popularized in schools in order to preserve and familiarize themselves with the scientific and literary luminaries of different ethnic groups and preserve local and ethnic languages.

Teaching the mother tongue in schools is one of the challenges that educational institutions, especially the Ministers of Education and the members of the Parliament, continue to debate whether the mother tongue of different ethnic groups and tribes should be taught in schools or not. On the other hand, evidence shows that the current members of the Education and Research Commission are insistent on finalizing this long-standing debate.

According to Article 15 of the Constitution, the common official language and script of the Iranian people is Persian. Documents, correspondence, official 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 is free, alongside Persian.

Now, the people's representatives in the parliament play a significant role in pursuing and keeping the Mari language alive and achieving the goal of teaching the mother tongue in schools, an issue that remained unresolved despite five proposals for a mother tongue education plan from 2002 to 2022.

Finally, after two decades of debate over teaching local and native languages ​​in schools, the outlines of the plan for teaching local languages ​​have been approved by the current parliament's Education Committee, and one of the 48 local languages ​​and dialects is set to be taught in schools.