Reflections on Dr. Moharram Aghazadeh’s criticism of Dr. Mohsen Renani’s notes

Reflections on Dr. Moharram Aghazadeh’s criticism of Dr. Mohsen Renani’s notes

Ahmed Shabani Baneh

“…Our schools are rusty, our books are rusty, our teachers are rusty, our brains are rusty, and the smell of rust permeates our hearts these days. What a story! Most members of the government called the president and he should ring the first bell. We are a rusty generation trying to polish children made of gold. »

This is a passage from Dr. Mohsen Renani’s notes, which were criticized by Dr. Moharram Aghazadeh. I, as a teacher who is less than 4 years away from retirement, as someone who has worked in education in Iran, although in his metaphor, it is as if teachers are no fancy figures from the beginning, but then they rust – I don’t like this – but with this description, I sympathize with Dr. Renani’s notes the most. Because:

Dr. Aghazadeh writes, “All of us educated people know how to read good poetry, and we also know how to write good poetry.” We could write several in-depth, systematic analyses of the curse of higher education if you wanted, but the curse of higher education has never shown any fruitful work.

In my opinion, this is a kind of amplification and death inside the educational balloon! Because if educated people knew how to read poetry and write good poetry, then now all these students praised by Dr. Aghazadeh in universities would either become poets or critical writers. At the same time, most teachers do not understand poetry and are unable and desperate to write a simple administrative letter to their departments. If it were not so, there would not be so many illiterate presidents, general managers, ministers of education! If it were not so, there would not be so many unmotivated students who judge their grades, speculative papers! If it were not so, these teachers who do not pay attention to the scope of their professional qualifications would not beg for the leadership and management of this department and that district on behalf of the parliament! If it were not so, all these teachers would not turn into MPs and propaganda for Omar and Zaid! If it were not so, all these engineers and doctors would not enter the political sphere and engage in corrupt political competition in the Golan Heights instead of building earthquake-resistant buildings or finding the right treatment and diagnosis of diseases!

I am amazed, Mr. Dr. Aghazadeh, that students are educated and trained for 12 years, but they are stuck in college for 4 to 6 years! I wonder again, why children, whose young age and flexibility of psychological bones are ignored in school, are trapped in the rigid and rough student period in college with this stubbornness!! Before they become “students” like those released from the single-sex prison of the school, they see themselves as opposite-sex neighbors and dream of realizing this erotic existence throughout high school. Why curse a university with system analysis, whose input and raw material are the same students, and whose glorious output is the desired noble education? I have nothing to do with personalizing the tone of Dr. Aghazadeh’s note to Dr. Reinani, because they have already addressed his (Dr. Reinani’s) desire for TV shows, etc., but I feel it is necessary to hesitate about the goals they have chosen for their writing.

Dr. Aghazadeh says: “The purpose of this article is to express the unrecognized right that Iranian teachers have been given for 40 years and even earlier. “Dear Iranian teachers are working hard to give your children the sincerity that they have in the classroom.” Why is the right unknown? By whom or what institution is this right of anonymity imposed on teachers? If the basis of the history that Dr. Aghazadeh wants is these forty years, it seems that Iranian teachers have not been trained any better than the situation we are in now! My question is, can we have Platonic expectations of what happens in teacher training centers and teacher colleges? A heavy-handed teacher will not be more important than a thinker!

Dr. Aghazad, who himself has books on teaching translation, knows that the philosophy and psychology of Western education are like the life-giving mortar of Western man, which is closely related to the essence of the human being that he is. Look for, it will definitely produce the expected output. But the problem here is that with the revolutionary mentality of the Iranian people and the educational requirements that have occupied the atmosphere of Iranian schools since 40 years ago, it is futile to sew Western teaching clothes on this person. According to Dr. Gholamreza Kashi, such a person needs a “basic narrative” school world, not a “basic logic” school world. In the narrative school of the Sanah Foundation, “the student is more immersed in the atmosphere of the predecessors, the memory and tradition of the past”. Instead of finding himself as an independent subject by relying on personal wisdom, he finds himself in the context of a historical tradition and predecessors who are older and better than him. (Javad Gholamreza Kashi, 2015: Narrative Magazine 8 and 9) Now, when students should grow up like this, is it possible to import teachers from Scandinavian countries and leave education to them?

The phrase “red slap”, of course, is an incomplete sentence, more like a poetic recitation used by Dr. Aghazad in his analysis to criticize Dr. Reinani. As Hafez Kham Tarre said, a teacher who was slapped red is better to put the teacher aside and seek other help! What is the sincerity level? A teacher in Iran is like a salaried “employee or educator” who receives a few rupees for “imparting knowledge” and nothing more. By the way, due to the lack of updating, teachers are increasingly degenerating from the eyes of students and are pushed into the socio-cultural abyss of society, witness their degeneration!

In short, in Iran, when talking about education and development, they seem to be an incongruous and strange duality. As if there is some kind of connection between them. Because the development of his homeland began with the progress of education, and here it is clearly based on the development of this unique education! The result, they say, is obvious: the unbalanced and incomplete birth of a creature called “developed education”.

September 27, 1996