Iranian ministry of education announced that 400 thousand university topics are being revised and 70 percent of the management activities at the ministry are taken up by this endeavour.
In the aftermath of the mass protests against the disputed victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections and in view of the large contingency of youth and university students amongst the protesters, Islamic Republic government has focused on overhauling university curricula especially in the humanities.
“All humanities topics that were reviewed over five years ago will have to be updated,” an education ministry official announced.
He added that in the Fifth Development Plan of the government, the universities are charged with heavy assignments and the reform of the content and topics of study have top priority.
Iranian authorities have demanded strict correspondence between university curricula and Islamic principles.
Following the election protests, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader referred to the 2 million students enrolled in the humanities as a problem. He claimed that the country did not have sufficient professors who are committed to Islamic principles to satisfy this large demand for education in the humanities.
Following these statements from the leader, a number of Iranian professors were dismissed from their teaching positions and a government campaign to overhaul university curricula and make it more representative of Islamic ideology began.
Law, human rights studies, women’s studies, economy, sociology, social communications, political science, philosophy, psychology, education, administration and arts administration are listed amongst the top concerns of the ministry of education in this revision campaign.
Iranian opposition leader, MirHosein Mousavi has spoken out against the government policies to alter the content of higher education and accused the administration of totalitarianism.
