In Iran, the regime’s influence on its young citizens reaches deep into the heart of their education. Asghar Bagherzadeh, Deputy Minister of Education and Culture, recently announced a mass ‘mental screening’ initiative that has raised concerns far beyond its stated intention of evaluating students’ mental health. In this article, we delve into the intricacies of this screening process, revealing how it is intertwined with ideological and political agendas, as well as its implications for the future of Iran’s youth.
Asghar Bagherzadeh, the Deputy Minister of Education and Culture of the Iranian regime, announced the ‘mental screening’ of four million students in the five months ending in October. He stated that the purpose of these screenings was to assess the ‘mental health’ of millions of children and teenagers.
Bagherzadeh claimed that the psychological screening test of students is done with the aim of ‘taking care’ of them against ‘social harm’. However, despite the claim of education to examine the mental health of children and adolescents, the questions of these tests that students and their families must answer are designed in such a way that they include the ideological and educational issues of the regime.
In an interview with ISNA news agency, the Deputy Minister of Education implicitly acknowledged this issue and said that after the students and their parents answer the questions, the counselors ‘verify’ them. After the validation process is done, students are divided into four categories: ‘healthy, vulnerable, damaged, and with psychosocial emergencies’.
Bagherzadeh further stated that the Ministry of Education is obliged to intervene and take action to ‘treat’ students with ‘psychosocial emergency conditions’. He admitted that the ministry works by implementing this project in the field of ‘increasing resilience, draining positive emotions, and promoting virtual and political literacy’ of students. This regime official claimed that the approach to education is not political and security, but ‘educational’.
Despite this claim of the Deputy Minister of Education, the Iranian regime rulers’ definition of ‘education and educational issues’, especially regarding children and teenagers, indicates that these actions can be classified in line with the political and ideological interests of the regime.
In the Fundamental Transformation of Education document, which has drawn the roadmap of the Ministry of Education based on the regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s orders, it is clearly stated that the meaning of education is ‘Islamic education’ and that educators should ‘based on the Islamic standard system’ guide students on the path to fulfilling the goals of the regime.
One of the most important ‘six fields of education’ in the Fundamental Transformation document is ‘religious, religious, and moral’ education. This field, together with five others including ‘scientific education, social and political education, Islamic culture and civilization education, and biological and physical education’, emphasizes the need to strengthen ideological issues and the ‘Islamic standard system‘.
Officials of the Ministry of Education, including Asghar Bagherzadeh, claim that the screening tests are conducted with the aim of protecting students from social harm; however, the evidence reveals that the ministry does not have any effective programs to protect children from domestic violence and harm such as addiction. In response to ISNA’s reporter about the state of addiction among students, the vice minister of education said, ‘Education has not compiled statistics on this matter, and this is one of the duties of the country’s social council.’
During the past four decades, the regime made great efforts to brainwash students and recruit them as ‘soldiers of the new Islamic civilization’ by making extensive changes in education. Fundamentally changing the content of textbooks, hiring students in schools, forming student mobilization forces (Basij-e Daneshjuyi), and turning schools into ideological and political bases are only some of these measures. Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij organization, has said many times in his speeches that our goal is to educate eight million Basij students.
However, the regime has not been successful despite these extensive efforts and huge budgets. With the start of the nationwide uprising in 2022, many students joined popular protests and turned schools into a stage of protest against the regime.
In early November 2022, when reporters asked Yousef Nouri, the Minister of Education at the time, in which centers the detained students were kept, he replied that they were sent to ‘psychological centers’ so that they would not become ‘antisocial personalities’.
Over the past year, the rulers of Iran accused a significant number of protesters, including some artists, of ‘anti-social personality disorder’ and continued this process despite the widespread protest of experts. It seems that screening students with the claim of ‘taking care of their mental health’ is actually an action aimed at directing the thoughts of children and teenagers and preventing future protests.
