You are right! School textbooks stress calligraphy and present many of the lessons in the Persian textbook (but not the other books) with traditional Persian calligraphy. In the earlier grades, it’s simple so kids can read, and it goes on to become more refined.

They do this so that kids can get used to reading text like that … And it’s a useful strategy, your eyes get used to it at an early age and it becomes at one with reading regular printed text.

But in class, students only use ordinary pencils/pens as people do in other parts of the world
The special calligraphy pens are only used in art class, where calligraphy is taught in some of the grades.

For everyday writing, in school or university or whatever, do Iranians just use ordinary ballpoint pens? You don’t all carry around calligraphy pens, do you? (I saw in one of the pictures for the “Ayatollah and the Kids” post that one of the boys was holding a very ordinary-looking pencil…so I’m guessing the answer to this question is no.)

I’m just confused because, as I mentioned, I’ve been studying some Farsi recently and – both in my book and whenever I see it printed – it looks as though it were written with a calligraphy pen, not just a round-nibbed pen/pencil like the type we use here. In fact I went and bought a calligraphy pen for the purposes of practicing Persian script, because otherwise I couldn’t get the letters to look right!

(On a side note – though I have horrible handwriting in English, sometimes so bad even I can’t read it – my handwriting in Persian seems to be far clearer. Probably because it’s such a beautiful script I’d feel guilty if I mangled it. But returning to the main question…)

So, anyway, what writing implement(s) are commonly used in Iran?

No particularly good reason for asking, I’m just curious.