Iran

In Article 3, the IRI constitution of 1979 establishes the goal of "free education and physical training for everyone at all levels, and the facilitation and expansion of higher education." Additionally, article 30 requires that the government "provide all citizen with free education up to secondary school," and "expand free higher education to the extent required by the country for attaining self-sufficiency." To ensure the expansion of literacy and enrollment in the public educational system, the Second Economic, Social, and Cultural Development plan (1995-99) made education not only free, but also compulsory, requiring school age children and illiterate adults under age 40 to attend education and literacy courses. The constitution does not touch on issues of educational practice other than to establish the importance of intellectual freedom and equality based on Islamic revolutionary principles. Because of the doctrine of velayet-I faqih, there is no separation between the Qur'an and the ideological and legal foundations of the educational system. Furthermore, interpretation of what Islamic revolutionary principle is comes from the religious leader, the Ayatullah. The aims of the educational system envisioned by the Ayatullah Khumayni were made apparent in 1980 when he called for the formation of a Council for Cultural Revolution, requiring that education be in keeping with Islamic culture and that educators be committed to the ideals of the revolution.

This effort began the Islamization of Iranian education. The first step was to stop the secularization of the system and to purge those academics that did not embrace revolutionary principle. Efforts to forcibly de-secularize the university system led to several violent clashes, the suspension of higher education for three years, the closing of 200 institutes of higher learning, and a radical decrease in enrollment for those institutions that re-opened in 1983. Enrollment at the University of Tehran, for example, dropped from 17,000 to 4,500 students, and the percentage of women's enrollment in institutions of higher learning plunged from 40 percent in 1980 to 10 percent in 1983. The emphasis on revolutionary commitment over expertise also led to a lowering of overall educational quality and a reduction in the emphasis placed on the necessity for sufficient skilled manpower needed to achieve economic goals.

Like the Pahlavi regime, the ulama saw the purpose of education as a means of supporting the ideology of the government. At the primary and secondary level "Islamization" and "Westoxification" mainly focused on changing textbooks to those that transmitted acceptable ideological beliefs and social behaviors. Particularly in the humanities, textbooks were purged of all ideas that were thought to promote western values and were rewritten to promote the concept of a New Islamic citizen in terms of political beliefs, cultural values, and role models.

A national literacy campaign was central to the government's plans for cultural Islamization, and one of Khumayni's first acts after the revolution was to establish the Literacy Movement of Iran. The regime also placed great emphasis on primary education and teacher training as a means of propagating revolutionary ideals. Especially in the early 1980s, a commitment to Islamic revolutionary principles was more important than competency at nearly all levels of instruction, especially within the Literary Movement Organization (LMO).