کتاب Education and the Making of Modern Iran

To seek knowledge is an Islamic obligation, and religious schools traditionally disseminated the particulars of Islamic thought and culture in Iran.

Early in the nineteenth century, however, the lure of modern military technology prompted Iranian leaders to seek Western scientific knowledge.

Drawing on a wealth of original research, David Menashri traces the history of Iran’s educational system from the departure of the first two Iranian students to Europe in 1811, through the founding of Tehran University in 1935, to the changes in educational policies enacted under the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In so doing, Menashri chronicles the wider political and social history of the struggle for control of education between the ulama, or religious elite, and the state.

Paying particular attention to the development of higher education, Menashri assesses the contribution–as well as the limitations–of educational reform in the making of modern Iran.

He provides a rich account of the role of Iranians who had been educated abroad and reveals the ambivalence of custodians of power who wanted to import Western skills without Western ideas.

Menashri reconstructs the dramatic conflicts and the enduring tensions between groups supporting the values of traditional culture and those promoting Western-oriented “progressive” education.

The resulting educational system, he shows, bore fruit in widespread literacy but also contributed to the profound ideological split that led to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Historians of education, specialists in Middle Eastern studies, and others interested in contemporary Iran will want to read this penetrating book.