Iran: Education Ministry Defends Plan To Employ 25,000 Mullahs As Teachers

Iran’s Ministry of Education defended its plans to hire 25,000 Islamic scholars as teachers in schools across the country in a bid to Islamize schools.

The Ministry said on Monday that hiring Islamic scholars or “Talabehs” as teachers was legal and in line with laws passed by the Parliament and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a council tasked with censoring and forcing the regime’s brand of Islam on schools and universities.

The Seminaries and Ministry of Education Cooperation Headquarters also defended the move announcing that 440 male and female Talabehs had been hired as teachers in the past year as part of the Document of Fundamental Transformation of Education but said the number of hired Islamic scholars was too low.

According to the Headquarters, education was conducted by seminaries for centuries in Iran and hiring mullahs as teachers would “foster the revival of religious values”.

The regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has in the past few years specifically stressed on the necessity of the implementation of the Document of Fundamental Transformation of Education.

On Sunday May 2 which marked Teacher’s Day in Iran, the Teachers Association of Iran in a statement protested teachers’ low wages, lack of insurance and job security and using Talabehs as teachers.

Notably Iranian teachers regularly take to the streets to express their economic grievances and demand better pay and jobs.