Pedestrian

… Without the flower.

On November 2nd, Ali Akbar Yazdani, the deputy minister of education, announced that a new bill had been introduced by the ministry under the name: “Permanent Placement of Clerics in Schools” through which a cleric will work alongside school administrators and teachers full time in schools.

He said the clerics would be given various responsibilities, from “answering questions regarding prayer to responding to any religious question to participating in many other cultural and religious issues.”

Interesting here is the involvement of the private sector and the shipment of clerics by third party vendors. Ayandeh Sazan a private educational institution which started out by compiling konkoor [university entrance exam] books, has, according to Yazdani: “trained 300 young male clerics and 100 young female clerics to be deployed across the country whenever and wherever they are needed.”

Promises like this have been made before. In 2005, right after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the presidency, it was announced that 4000 clerics would be sent to schools throughout Iran.

They never were.

In 2008 it was announced that 2500 schools be handed to the Qom seminaries.

That never happened either.

Shirzad Abdullahi, an educational analyst (?) told Etemad newspaper: “anyone who is to appear in school full time must have a defined position in the institutional hierarchy. So we must see if these clerics are placed in schools under old titles, or whether they will be given new roles all together.”

“The ministry of education already spends more than 97% of its budget on employees’ salaries, so any such plan must be taken to parliament and approved and as far as I know, there has been no discussion with parliament regarding this new plan.”

Now today, there was more news on the topic. Yazdani appeared again to speak to ILNA and to remind journalists of the “shining example of clerics working in schools at the beginning of the revolution.”

“We have no one better than the clerics to spread the word of Islam and the Islamic code of conduct. Clerics can leave lasting impressions on students by advocating Islamic principles. We are hoping that this bill will be reviewed soon by the appropriate parliamentary committee and will be put to the vote so that students can enjoy the green presence of clerics in their schools. ”

“In this bill, clerics are set to lead the daily prayers in schools and answer students’ religious questions.”