ABSTRACT
This study is an attempt to describe, analyse, and clarify some controversies which arise in attempting to understand quality and equality in Iranian education, and in particular policies in response to problems whose solutions were remote, given the peculiar conditions of Iranian history, culture, and politics. The prospects of achieving a major amelioration, which both enlarged quantity and heightened quality, were vitiated by the formal struggle to expand primary education and extend higher education, struggles which have, on the whole, not been effective. In that sense, it is argued, the explosion of population in recent decades, which shows no sign of abating, prevailed against an increase in either quality or equality of education. Although the growth of population must be considered as one of the decisive factors which inhibited extensions in the quality and equality of education, many other factors also must be taken into consideration, including financial constraints, literacy problems, persistent gender differences, uneven development (especially between rural and urban areas), and war. Equally, the persistence of tensions between the potency of traditional forms of culture and governance, and a desire for some of the material wealth associated with the West (Wallerstein 1978, Mazrui 1980), which are at times held to have led to a renascent nationalism and particularism among Arab nations, are a further feature of the Iranian context, which has since 1979 been grounded upon a “resurrection” (Mazrui 1980, 7) of the Islamic vision.
