Iran's education minister teaches lesson to country's powerful publishers
Iranian education minister’s campaign against the country’s unchallenged educational book publishers seems to be getting him top marks among the public.
Mohammad Bathaei, Iran’s controversial education minister, can finally claim some victory in gathering bipartisan support for his campaign against the country’s educational book publishers. During his two years in office, the 55-year-old former teacher has managed to ban supplementary books from schools, claiming that they are “detrimental” to the school curriculum. These books are one of the main sources of income for private educational book publishers.
Bathaei also announced, on Jan. 2, the partial end of "the konkur," Iran’s highly competitive national university entrance exam. This, too, will deliver another blow to the publishers who earn millions in test preparations for the multiple-choice exam that is taken by millions of high school graduates every year, after intense preparations.
Bathaei’s battle against homework at schools is another blow. In Iran's elementary and secondary schools, most of the homework is assigned from — and solved with the help of — supplementary textbooks rather than official textbooks. Banning homework — as Bathaei did in September 2018 — means that these textbooks will no longer be necessary, depriving private book publishers from another chunk of their revenues.
Ironically, the most vocal reaction to the homework ban has not come from the educational book publishers but from Grand Ayatollah Jabar Sobhani. "This is not a correct measure, and a student should not be set loose after school … their brains should exercise by doing homework," Sobhani was quoted as saying in the local media in mid-December.
