Ministry of Education: Humanities Will Not Be Removed from Schools

The Iranian Ministry of Education has denied statements made by a senior official regarding a ban on students enrolling in humanities fields starting next year, calling it contrary to the ministry's overarching policies. The ministry's announcement, published on Wednesday, December 9, states that no decision has been made regarding the prohibition of students studying humanities in regular public schools. The Director General of Education in Tehran recently stated that there will be no enrollment for humanities in public schools next year, and students wishing to pursue this field must enroll in Farhang High Schools. However, the Iranian Ministry of Education emphasized in its announcement that this matter has no place in the ministry's overarching policies, and any programs or changes to them will only be communicated to the public by the Minister of Education or the ministry's public relations. The announcement also refers to Farhang Schools as a 'special educational training complex for humanities' and states that the expansion of this special school 'does not mean the removal of the humanities field from other schools in the city, and studying humanities remains firmly in place in all schools.' Farhang Schools may remind one of the school established years ago in Tehran by Gholamali Haddad Adel, a relative of the Supreme Leader and head of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, but Masoud Taqavi, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, stated in an interview with Iran newspaper that this is merely a nominal similarity. According to him, 'the management of the 12 Farhang schools in Tehran is under the Ministry of Education, and these schools are administered as trust-based institutions, whereas Mr. Haddad Adel's Farhang school is non-profit.' Previously, Ayatollah Khamenei had described the prevalent humanities education in Iranian educational centers, especially universities, as 'Western and un-Islamic' and called for a transformation in the curricula and their Islamization. He stated that the teaching of humanities in universities leads to the promotion of skepticism and doubt in religious and ideological foundations. In this context, Rouhani's criticism of the attempts to eliminate humanities from universities, Khamenei's renewed emphasis on 'cultural engineering' and 'transformation' in humanities, Haddad Adel's statement that the transformation of humanities has not reached a desirable outcome, and Rouhani's assertion that the Islamization of humanities has not been well articulated are noteworthy.