New Schools

Education in the Qajar era had been considered in Iran, especially in Tabriz. Most kind people tried to help scientific development and performed many educational and cultural efforts. The establishment of printing, translation skills, publishing the newspapers, and new schools were the first efforts that had been made in Tabriz. Education was in maktab forms until Nasereldin Shah and had many limitations, but there were more than 100 maktabs in Tabriz; most of the people were poor, the number of pupils was a few, and the lessons were religious. The classes in maktabs were held in houses and mosques. Every maktab had characteristics. The methods of teaching were not equal. The teachers in maktabs had some notable qualifications. The maktabs in that period had many problems. The curriculum in maktabs involved Quranic instructions, Arabic grammar and some religious passages. In that period, some new schools were established by Iranian Muslims, such as Roshdieh, Mozafari, Loghmanieh, Mellieh, Kamal and Sanaye Mostazrafe.

Before the introduction of modern Western civilization, education in Iran was primarily under the control of the clergy and considered one of their main responsibilities. With the arrival of Western culture and civilization in Iran, particularly during the Pahlavi era, formal education, like many official governmental institutions, came to be managed by graduates of the new educational system. As a result, today some people view the clergy's involvement in official education as unconventional. The central question of this research is whether, with the formation of new schools and the informal status of old schools during the Pahlavi period, the clergy still played a role in formal education. The author's investigation indicates that a comprehensive and focused study on this topic has not been conducted. Although various academic works have touched upon the role of religious movements and clergy during the Pahlavi era, as well as memoirs related to active clerics in this area, these references are scattered and lack coherence. The present study, by descriptive and historical analysis methods, aims to explore this issue in historical documents. The findings indicated that after the reign of Reza Shah and with the opening of the political and cultural atmosphere, Shia scholars and clerics undertook two fundamental actions to play their role in education: The first was a gradual reform of the government’s new education system, conducted in four stages: Requesting the inclusion of religious subjects in schools, selecting suitable teachers for instruction, separating girls' and boys' schools, and the writing of textbooks by clerics with their presence to teach these books. The second action was the establishment and management of new private schools by clerics. This involvement of the clergy provoked a reaction from the Pahlavi regime, resulting in pressure on these schools and even the closure of some of them.