Perspectives - Encouraging 'Mandatory Prayer' in Schools

Mohammad Bat'haei, the Minister of Education in Iran, has announced that his ministry will implement programs this year to encourage students to pray. However, he noted that if prayer becomes mandatory, it might have the opposite effect, causing students to shy away from it. Nonetheless, the head of the Schools Organization has reported that schools are now required to allocate 15% of tuition fees received from parents towards prayer activities. Additionally, eight thousand primary school teachers will be trained for what is termed 'quality prayer.' This week's Perspectives program raises the question of what impact mandatory prayer and the inclusion of prayer hours in schools will have, and why the Islamic Republic is once again emphasizing the encouragement of prayer. The discussion features Saeed Peyvandi, a sociology professor and education expert in Paris, and Hassan Farashtian, a legal scholar and religious researcher residing in France. Mr. Farashtian, I would like to start the program with you. The Minister of Education has announced that this ministry has a series of programs to encourage students to pray this year. Why have officials in the Islamic Republic recently begun discussing the encouragement of prayer again? The recent discussions stem from a plan based on a document titled 'Comprehensive Document for the Development and Restoration of Prayer Culture.' According to this document, the Ministry of Education has been and is obligated to promote the culture of prayer among students in recent years. A study has previously shown that teenagers are reluctant to pray, and this reluctance is decreasing day by day. In this context, they have decided to implement programs that promote cultural activities to encourage youth and students to pray. The issue that has been raised recently and the duty assigned to education in relation to this document is significant. This study you mentioned, who conducted it? It was conducted by cultural institutions within the country, some of which, as you know, are critical, meaning they believe that cultural officials have not done their job well. When the results of this data come out, naturally, each sector shifts the responsibility to another; thus, some of these cultural officials have blamed the Ministry of Education, saying they have neglected the education of youth. However, I believe the Minister of Education has provided a correct response, stating that it is not only us who educate children; rather, children are products of the upbringing of society, family, and school. That is, there are other institutions, including the family and a larger institution called society, which are also responsible for educating teenagers and students. Mr. Peyvandi, Mr. Farashtian referred to the criticisms of the Ministry of Education. Among those who have criticized is Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Assembly of Experts, who stated that the lack of prayer among children in schools is due to the negligence of the Ministry of Education. The Minister of Education has also stated that we have programs for establishing prayer in schools. Although this issue is repeated occasionally, the statement that prayer should be promoted in schools and that it should start from schools—why has this discussion started again now? In fact, I believe that at any given time, officials, by revisiting the past, come to the conclusion that our society, especially the youth segment, is not sufficiently religious and does not have a desirable relationship with religion and religiosity. Therefore, they seek solutions that they believe might address this deficiency. However, in my opinion, the flaw in this analysis is that they never consider whether religiosity is fundamentally a governmental issue that should be addressed from above by the government, or whether religiosity, as a form of spirituality and one of the forms of relationship with spirituality, is an individual matter that governments and official institutions cannot manage, nor can they compel students and youth to pray or have a specific relationship with religiosity. This approach, in practice, empties religion and spirituality of its core essence, which is a personal relationship with spirituality, and turns it into a normative relationship with a phenomenon that does not fit within the framework of the government or official institutions. For this reason, we have been in a vicious cycle for the past forty years. That is, society constantly resists, and youth do not submit to state-imposed religion and religiosity. Officials, in turn, believe that the shortcoming lies with schools or other cultural institutions. The problem, in my opinion, lies elsewhere. Not recognizing this issue, as you rightly pointed out in your remarks, leads to the reproduction of this discussion in society without yielding the desired and expected results. Saeed Peyvandi, sociologist: 'The difference in a country like Iran compared to a religious school in France, Germany, Brazil, or anywhere else in the world is that when a child goes to a religious school, they choose to attend a Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or any other religious school, and they go with the awareness that this is a religious school. In contrast, we are dealing with a school in Iran that imposes religion from above and unilaterally without asking the students.' Mr. Peyvandi, as an education expert, do you think, considering the models that exist in other countries, should the issue of religion and prayer be left to the youth themselves, or should it be enforced upon them? How should it be approached? Among the various models that exist today, their approach to the issue of religiosity or religious practices differs. We have a group of minority countries like Iran or, for example, Saudi Arabia, or some countries with religious schools that are not public schools but special ones, where religious practices sometimes take on a mandatory nature. However, the difference in a country like Iran compared to a religious school in France, Germany, Brazil, or anywhere else in the world is that when a child goes to a religious school, they choose to attend a Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or any other religious school, and they go with the awareness that this is a religious school. In contrast, we are dealing with a school in Iran that imposes religion from above and unilaterally without asking the students. This model in the world is a very isolated one. The dominant models in the world consist of two groups of countries: countries where participation in religious practices is completely optional. Many European countries or many Latin American countries fall into this category, meaning that religious practices are not mandatory; although there may be religious lessons in schools, students become familiar with religious culture like any other subject. Ultimately, we have countries where, despite some form of compulsion, there is no specific strictness, and students are not forced to do so. Many Muslim countries fall into this category. Finally, we must mention countries like France, where religion has essentially been removed from schools, meaning that to avoid problems with students of different identities regarding religion, schools have no relationship with religion, and religion is a private matter for each family or individual, and official institutions, especially schools, do not take any specific stance on religion. Hassan Farashtian, religious researcher: 'Not only in prayer, but you also cannot force your child to become a football player or a chess champion in other matters like sports. The result is disillusionment, and sometimes it has the opposite effect.' Mr. Farashtian, if possible, please also answer this question from the perspective of a religious scholar. It was mentioned that the government has concluded that teenagers are not sufficiently religious. Is it possible, from a religious perspective, to encourage youth or teenagers to religion or prayer through compulsion? The points that Mr. Peyvandi mentioned are clear. In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, this issue is the same. Education is a global matter. That is, the effects of compulsory education do not differ, whether in an Islamic country or a non-Islamic one; it has the same effect. It can even be said that Islam does not foresee such a thing. Before I mention Islam, I want to refer to a mental background of some officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the minds of some officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran, who themselves were students in the 30s, 40s, and 50s before the revolution, there are models that existed during the previous regime in Iran, and within the framework of those models, we witnessed a series of schools and high schools that had a religious aspect. In fact, some of the outputs of these schools were very good. These schools, which had a national aspect, and in Tehran, there were several high schools that had a national and religious character, and many students who graduated from there entered industrial universities and top universities in the country. There was a model in these schools where sometimes practices were even mandatory, and there were strictnesses. These schools had a religious aspect, but as I said, they were national and outside the issue of government. Now this model exists in the minds of these officials. They believe that if those programs had an impact on the education of the previous generation, they could also impact the education of the current generation. However, this is not the case. In that pre-revolution generation, these national schools had a situational aspect, meaning they were chosen by the student and the student's guardian, and the student went there with a specific culture, with a specific background, meaning they went there to perform these practices. Today, in the Islamic Republic, this is being generalized to all schools, and many of these students neither want this output nor do their parents. They send them to school to come out as prayerful and religious individuals. They send them to become educated individuals. This is entirely different. I return to the topic of religious education. In religious education, even the ages of individuals have been divided. It has been said that in childhood, individuals should be left easy and to themselves; in some narratives, it has been mentioned that for the first seven years of life, there should be no commands or prohibitions; the child should be free, and then, in the next seven years, they should be accustomed to certain matters, and in the third seven years, they should have a counseling aspect. The ages I mentioned change even in different societies and countries, even in different centuries. Childhood ages are not uniform across all eras. That is, at certain ages, guidance should be provided, and then they should be left alone; that is, the subject should be given to them, not that they should be forced. Not only in prayer, but you cannot force your child to become a football player or a chess champion in other matters like sports. The result is disillusionment, and sometimes it has the opposite effect. Mr. Peyvandi. Mohammad Bat'haei, the Minister of Education, stated, 'The only thing that can save society, especially teenagers and youth, from anxiety and social harms is prayer.' How much do you agree with this notion that prayer or religiosity can save society, especially youth and teenagers? I believe that nothing like the report of the past forty years in Iran can answer this question. That is, if performing religious rituals alone were supposed to save society, we should not be in the situation we are in now. In Iranian society, perhaps more than in all other societies, the voice of religious texts is heard, from radio and television to mosque loudspeakers and everywhere; more than anywhere else in the world, religious ceremonies are held, there are religious holidays, and what is done in Iran is unprecedented compared to other countries, and we hardly have any country that gives as much importance to religious rituals in their apparent and ritualistic form as Iran does. However, simultaneously, we face another bitter reality that we have a society where there is a complete collapse of morality, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and all officials lament that there is a lot of lying, stealing, and corruption in the country... Returning to the Minister of Education, the question is, if these things were supposed to ensure the health of society, anxiety aside, even to prevent these social harms, we should not be here. The result should have been the opposite. I believe the problem of officials is that, as Mr. Farashtian rightly said, they operate on assumptions that are no longer applicable today or are entirely unfounded and incorrect, and they constantly remain on these assumptions instead of moving from realities, resulting in misaligned goals and pursuing solutions that take them further away from these goals, because what the Minister of Education does not realize is that nothing is resolved by praying. You can pray, bow and prostrate without it having any meaning.