Teacher Murdered by Student: A Sign of Crisis in Iran's Education System?

Seventeen teachers' unions in Iran have issued a statement declaring a crisis in the country's education system. They released this protest statement following the murder of a high school physics teacher in Borujerd by a student. The statement addresses what the authors describe as increasing managerial, educational, economic, and cultural disorder within the education system, alongside growing insecurity in public schools. The signatories also expressed concern over the normalization of street violence, familial murders, sexual assaults, poverty, child labor, acid attacks on girls and women, and the declining tolerance threshold of the public. We sought the opinion of Mahdis Kamkar, a psychologist, regarding this statement: Mahdis Kamkar in Tehran stated: "A significant part of a system in society is its education. Because children enter a larger social environment from preschool age. This larger social system does not negate the role of the family. However, what is important here are peers. Normative and non-normative phenomena are defined for the entire peer group. In the peer group of adolescents and youth, the age conditions are such that because they are constructing their identity or even finding it, they are very susceptible to imitation and similar behaviors; and when violence takes shape within them, it is highly likely to be contagious and spread, and conversely, if cultural or artistic issues arise or sports and anything else. Especially since adolescents are in the process of building identity and personality, they are very vulnerable and very prone to feeling insulted or oppressed or thinking that their personality is being questioned or even trampled upon, their pride being crushed. That is why it is always said about adolescents to parents or educational authorities that they must be dealt with patiently at this age. Therefore, we can conclude that what is currently causing the crisis may partly lie in the way the educational system is managed, meaning that the educational system has not been accommodating and has led to this incident. At this critical age, due to the fragility of personality and reactions, there is a likelihood of any behavior occurring that is not present at younger or older ages. Because it is easy for verbal or physical aggressions to arise that could be destructive. In the educational system we currently have, we know that teachers have always been part of a vulnerable group culturally, socially, and especially economically. They bear the greatest cultural burden of society, which is raising the next generation, but they have always been financially constrained. This may lower the tolerance threshold of teachers. Now, if we combine these two, in addition to the overall societal tolerance threshold being low due to instability and social, economic, and cultural insecurity, we can conclude how a tragic disaster may occur. At the end of this statement, it is mentioned that the murdered teacher and the attacking student are both victims. But do you think they both stand at the same point, in the same situation? Whenever someone is killed, the other is very likely to be either killed based on the laws or end up in life imprisonment because it is considered murder, or socially bear a stigma, or cannot reconcile with their conscience; this is a tragedy. Why? Because the drama turns into a tragedy in such a way that both individuals are gray from both sides. They are neither completely condemned nor completely acquitted; and both are doomed to failure; therefore, what is in this statement psychologically means that it does not matter, both are victims.