[Lyric] Extract from the chapter Education for My Countrys Future (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi)

Each student should learn to love the truth and search for the truth and tell the truth. In the past the curricula and methods of our secondary schools have been very poorly adapted to this end. As in their earlier training, students learned mainly by rote; they were regarded as foolish or impertinent if they asked questions or challenged statements or thought for themselves. Amazing though it may sound, the Shahname, the book-length epic poem completed by our poet Ferdosi about A.D. 999 was until only a few decades ago taught in our schools as if it were authentic history! Though the work is justly renowned as one of the world’s great literary masterpieces, it can hardly stand against modern historical research. But students were taught to accept as truth even the outright legends of the poem.
       In the Persian language we have a word, dastan, which commonly implies something that is neither fact nor fiction but lies somewhere in between. In the past much of our teaching of history and other subjects was in that spirit, and the student learned nothing of modern nautral or social science.
       To combat this tradition, we have continued the vigorous reform programme inaugurated by my father. For example, a group of our scholars recently prepared a complete course in social studies, which the Ministry of Education has published in five paperback volumes and distributed to secondary schools throughout the country. Increasingly the curricula of our secondary schools resemble those in America or elsewhere in the West.
       But too much of the old dastan spirit lingers on even today; furthermore, we still over-emphasize uncritical memorization and we under-emphasize helping the student to think for himself. For these defects a number of remedies lie at hand, of which I shall mention three.
       One of these is the provision of school libraries and instruction in their use. Modern library are important for our primary schools, but are vital for the secondary schools and beyond; for through these each student can best make his own independent search for objective knowledge. Yet, few of our secondary schools have adequate libraries, and fewer still make library investigation an integral part of the curriculum. Since most of the students in our secondary schools are studying English or another foreign language, the libraries can include books and magazines in those tongues as well as in Persian. For philanthropical foundations anxious to find new ways to help Persia’s march forward, demonstration school libraries would provide a small project worthy of their consideration.
       The second remedy would be a revised examination system, for examinations largely determine the tone and content of the teaching anywhere; and this is particularly true where, as in Persia, major examinations are centrally administered by the Ministry of Education. I am glad to say that we are gradually decentralizing the administration of education here; at the same time, we must devise examinations that emphasize memorization much less and analysis far more. Modern examinations will certainly encourage better teaching, designed to help the student think creatively and in the democratic spirit.
       The third and most important improvement involves better training of teachers. It is literally true that in Persia many regular secondary teachers have had no more than a secondary education! This is not quite so shocking as it might sound because often they have broadened their backgrounds through experience and private study. Many, too, have benefited from in-service training or from summer courses or conferences; for example about 1,500 secondary teachers attended a conference in Teheran in the summer of 1959.
       While on the whole our secondary teachers are rendering laudable service to the country, we must take energetic action to raise the standards. The National Teachers’ College needs expansion to train teachers not only for the secondary normal schools but also for the ordinary secondary schools. Another source we can tap is the hundreds of Persians who have finished university work at home or abroad in subjects such as science, art, literature, and social studies; we should have a well-publicized system for coaching these graduates in methods of teaching and enabling them to qualify as secondary teachers. We can also step up the flow of teachers into the ordinary secondary schools by establishing teachers’ training faculties at each of the provincial universities, as recommended earlier in this chapter. We must make a special effort to attract a larger proportion of young women into secondary as well as primary teaching.
       Community and student self-help can aid in speeding the growth of secondary as well as primary education in Iran. Secondary schools are generally larger and more complicated structures than are primary schools, and you cannot build them so easily with volunteer labour. But to accelerate this construction, we can and should encourage local contributions, with no strings attached, of land, building materials, money, housing for teachers, and general civic support. When they are completed, the students can perfectly well maintain them with a minimum of paid custodial help. Thus the education budget will stretch further and the students will gain in experience and the development of civic responsibility.
       I think it would be a great mistake if the learning of manual skills were restricted to students enrolled in the technical and agricultural secondary schools. Such skills should be acquired by all our secondary students. The girls may want to study drawing or painting or the playing of Persian or Western musical instruments; but all should in addition receive training in home-making. In the West a girl usually receives domestic training partly from her school but chiefly from her mother; but in a newly developing country like Iran the situation is quite different. Many Persian families, even those of considerable culture or financial means, still know little of modern principles of nutrition, hygiene, and infant car. In preparing to raise her own family, a Persian girl may be much handicapped, unless she can obtain such knowledge at school. So with us courses in home-making are by no means an unnecessary luxury; they are vitally important.
       I think all boys in our ordinary secondary schools should learn the rudiments not only of the natural sciences but also of practical shop work. We should as fast as possible establish workshops for this. As they learn, the boys can produce useful articles; for example, they can readily turn out thousands of the simple infants’ and children’s toys that are in short supply here. It should also be feasible for the boys, in Iran as in America and elsewhere, to print their own school newspaper.
       Before I leave the subject of secondary education, I must suggest one other idea. I should like to see an increase in the number of private secondary boarding schools in Iran. I remember from my own school days that in the shared life of a boarding school you can better develop such values as camaraderie, friendship, and sportsmanship; and wise and good teachers can more readily mould the student.
       Turning to higher education, I naturally think first of the amazing growth and change to be seen at the University of Teheran, now unquestionably one of the leading educational institutions in the Middle East. Foreign scholars frequently compliment us on the beauty of the university's grounds, the spaciousness and modernity of its buildings, and the rapid expansion of its activities. In addition to its main site, the university owns a number of other facilities and tracts of land. A few blocks to the north we have completed the first few of a number of well-laid-out hostels. These are typical of the social as well as physical changes in the university, which until recently had few residential students.
       A social development that particularly gratifies me is the invasion of the university by our charming young Persian women, as well as by some foreign girls. A few years ago almost no girls were to be seen, but now, as I said, some 2,000 of them are enrolled; and though formerly men students made out that our really pretty girls didn't attend the university, even casual inspection shows all that has changed.
       In its academic standards the university has steadily improved, although less rapidly than in other respects. I recognize the important recent advances in academic and related programmes, but I wish to indicate six avenues along which further steps are needed. Progress here will really affect our future for it applies not only to the University of Teheran but more or less generally to our entire university system.
       In the first place, some of our professors still regard themselves as little gods whose opinions must not be disputed and whose time must not be wasted upon the students. Such a professor may march into his classroom, deliver his lecture, and march out again. He may believe a student is disrespectful if he asks for supporting evidence for one of the professor’s statements or presumes to suggest an alternative interpretation. Without any advance notification the professor may repeatedly fail to come to his class. He may neglect office hours for student consultation, and except for lectures he may spend virtually no time in the precincts. Happily our better professors scrupulously avoid such behaviour; but as our universities develop we must make certain that no staff member evades his elementary obligations as a teacher.
       A second point has to do with research. A great university professor is essentially research-minded. He possesses an attitude of deep humility towards the wonders of nature, of philosophy, of social organization, and of literary and artistic expression. He is a modest man of almost childlike curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Constantly he nourishes his teaching with fresh research. To him, the subject-matter that he is teaching is never a dead body of knowledge, to be repeated parrot-fashion year after year; instead it is something living and constantly growing through his own research and that of others, including his students, whose contributions he gladly acknowledges.