Document Type : Research Article
Authors
1 PhD of history, Official Curator of the Treasury of National Jewells, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, Iran
2 Assistant professor of history, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran,
Abstract
The advent of the industrial revolution and the change in the scientific and technical bases of production made technical and professional education and its prerequisite, i.e., literacy, an unavoidablele necessity. The communist revolution in Russia and its widespread propaganda about the rights of workers, including the right to education, turned this issue into a fundamental one in the field of politics and society, not only in industrialized countries, but also new countries including Iran encountered the industrial modernization. Therefore, the first Pahlavi government reluctantly gave in to the education of workers. The present essay seeks to answer the question what policies did the governments of the Pahlavi implement for the education of workers from the beginning to 1953? The findings of present study which are based on Archival records, library materials and newspaper show that the inherent need of new industries for formal education on the one hand, and the need to counter communist propaganda and prevent the recruitment of workers by internal leftist groups on the other hand, left no other way than formal literacy for the first Pahlavi government and Finally in the relatively open political atmosphere of the 20s led to the enactment of the first official law on labors education and literacy.
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Extended Abstract
The Explanation of Educational Condition and Enactment of the First Law on Workers' Education during Pahlavi Era in Iran (1925-1953)
Explaining the issue of education and making different strata and lower classes of society literate is always considered as one of the main topics in the genre of social history. Although, during the last few decades, research on the history of education and educational issues of different classes in Iran - such as children and women - has gradually been written, the issue of education and training of workers, unlike other issues related to them in Iran, has been neglected.
Before the establishment of the first Pahlavi dynasty (1304 AH/1925 AD) and the development of industrialization policies in the country by Reza Shah, the issue of the right to education of workers in Iran, except for vague references, was not paid much attention and no official law was passed in this regard. Although some intellectuals of the Qajar era, under the influence of socialist ideas in the West, demanded similar rights for Iranian workers for the first time, these efforts remained only in theory and did not take on a practical aspect and led to just a few limited measures.
After the establishment of the first Pahlavi dynasty (1925) and the expansion of the government's economic policies including the industrialization of the country, industries and machine factories began to expand, and as a result, the first group of industrial workers came to the existence in Iran. The emergence of factories and the growing number of workers, the division of labor and the complexity of working with machines gradually made it necessary to train Iranian workers at basic and advanced levels. At the end, the first Pahlavi government, by approving the "Regulation of Factories and Industrial Institutions" in 1936, obliged employers and workers to provide workers with compulsory literacy according to Article 24 of this law. Although employers and workers often sought to escape from lessons and training, the enactment of this law can be considered as a positive step towards building the infrastructure of workers' education in Iran.
Reza Shah's reign did not last long to witness the consolidation of reforms in the field of workers' education. His fall opened up the political space and led to the overcome of the left-wing parties (1942-1948) especially the Tudeh one in Iran. The left-wing parties and associations, which sought to raise the level of knowledge and political awareness of the workers, took advantage of the opportunity and launched wide-ranging campaigns in the community in order to raise the level of awareness on the one hand and on the other hand, by putting pressure on the ruling governments, they would prepare the ground for the approval of the Workers' Training Law in Iran.
The thesis of the present article, written based on the combined-descriptive, causal and rational method and using the documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Records Organization of Iran and the journals of this period, is that For the first time, the first Pahlavi government, contrary to its anti-leftist policies, under the pressure of international forums and in order to improve the level of technical knowledge of workers, forced to implement the policy of education of the workers in Iran. Since the necessary infrastructures and platforms for the training of workers were prepared in this period, the parties were able to use the open space after the fall of Reza Shah and implement their reforms through propaganda.
Finally, due to the widespread need for workers' education and literacy and the pressure of the left-wing parties on the current governments, the Department of Labor and Advertising issued a regulation in two chapters and 20 articles "in order to educate and strengthen the physical and moral education as well as technical education of workers" and approved by the Council of Ministers in the meeting of July 14, 1947. But this law was revised a few years later, in 1952, due to its defects. A year later, the recent law was also revised and new articles were added to it which became the basis for the training of workers in Iran.
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