Preface

Introduction

This manuscript presents a first-hand account of the development and growth of Educational Radio and Television of Iran (ERTI) as a unit of the National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT). Although the use of radio for educational purposes dates to the 1940s, and the genesis of the use of television for education can be traced back to the late 1950s, this manuscript focuses on the use of broadcasting in the 1960s and 1970s. In this period, Iran showed signs of transitioning from an economically underdeveloped country to a newly developed nation. Many professionals worked on economic development projects and social reform programs with substantial impact on the growth of the country. Also, during this time, several visionaries and trailblazers used broadcasting to improve education in the country. They served in critical positions and made important contributions to improve educational services and bring them to millions of people who were previously deprived of educational opportunity. Their valiant efforts are a part of the history of social and economic development in the mid 20th century Iran. Their triumphs and failures also provide valuable lessons to those who in the future would strive to place Iran on its rightful path for growth and development again, as it was prior to the 1979 Islamic Marxist uprising.

Contrary to its claim, this so-called revolution was the revolt of the wealthy and the privileged against the poor and the marginalized in Iran who constituted the majority of the population. A coalition of wealthy feudal landowners, and bazar merchants revolted against the economic development projects and the social reform programs that were bound to free the poor serfs in agricultural villages and bring women into the mainstream of society. In their reactionary effort they had the backing of the regressive Muslim clergy and the support of most of the privileged intellectual elite who wittingly or otherwise were at the service of the Soviet Union. In recent years there have been major attempts to rebuild social and economic structure of several countries in the Middle East. Example includes Iraq and Afghanistan in which the United States and its European partners tried to build democratic institutions, establish new economic development projects, and transfer knowledge and know how to make such effort succesful.

Generally known as nation building, as of this writing, these efforts completely failed in Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, there are more signs of hope for some social reform and economic development in the future, but nation building has not been a success in Iraq by any stretch of imagination. Each country is unique, and lessons learned in the pre-revolutionary Iran cannot be directly applied to other countries. Even within Iran, conditions in the the 21 st century is vastly different now than what they were in the 1960 and 1970s. However, a detailed account of how transfer of educational technology from several American institutions of higher education to ERTI, as presented in this manuscript, could shed considerable light on how similar efforts in the future could succeed or fail.

Background

Broadcasters in Iran used radio for educational purposes from the 1940s. Also limited educational programs appeared on television in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. However, educational use of broadcasting saw a substantial improvement between 1971 and 1978. In this span of time, leaders of NIRT embarked upon a massive effort to change the antediluvian system of education of Iran. Their purpose was to change instructional practices that were primarily focused on students memorizing information and repeating it verbatim to enhancing their cognitive, affective, and behavioral faculties so they could become independent thinkers and agents of change. This effort met initial enthusiastic acceptance among some of the teachers and students who took part in the project. However, the political environment of the late 1970s did not prove to be conducive to its further growth and development.

Segments of the urban middle class, including many among the intelligentsia, university students, grand bazar merchants, major feudal landowners, and Muslim clergy became increasingly vocal in their opposition to development projects and social reform programs. They opposed assimilating women in society and implementing land reform. They also objected to using scientific methods and technological solutions for improving education. Erroneously, they perceived these measures to be Western and alien to Iran’s indigenous traditions. They neglected the foundational achievements of Iranians in science and mathematics in centuries past that led to the amazing technological advancements of the modern time. Surprisingly, many among the educated elite who considered themselves to be historically aware, broadminded, and forward-looking joined forces with the close-minded, and reactionary traditionalists. In collaboration with the backward-looking religious extremists, they brought efforts of those professionals who aimed to improve the socio-economic conditions of the people to an end without replacing it with a viable alternative.

I am not the only one of my generation who believes that if the development projects launched in the 1950s through the 1970s had continued, despite the many obstacles for their success, Iran would have achieved steady moderate economic growth and gradual reasonable political maturity until today. Its political and economic insinuations would have resembled that of countries like South Korea which despite serious internal difficulties, and outside pressures, have strengthened their democratic practices and improved their economies over the past fifty years.

ERTI’s Exceptional Team

Radio and television producers, graphic artists and set designers, educational technologists, educational evaluators and the many broadcast engineers and technical professionals who made ERTI possible were creative, energetic, enthusiastic, and forward-looking young women and men. They embodied the skills and enthusiasm that was necessary to grow an organization that was to support and nurture training of human resources in other organizations in the country at a time of rapid economic development. They gained the admiration of millions of radio and television audiences throughout the country and were instrumental in teaching innovative instructional methods and practices to hundreds of other professionals through television programs, as well as non-broadcast training services. ERTI professionals represented a cross section of the educated middle class; some were loyal to their professional practice, while others were disillusioned and supported various leftist and Islamic movements that were seeking a new regime. In my five years of service as the Managing Director of ERTI between 1973 to 1978, however, I was proud to work with all of them, although I did not agree with those who sympathized with the revolutionary stance of the clerics or the communists.

The High-Level Support of NIRT Leadership for ERTI

Dr. Reza Ghotbi 1 , Director General of National Iranian Radio and Television, and Dr. Kambiz Mohit Mahmoudi, NIRT’s Deputy Director General supported ERTI’s adoption of systems method of management, and the systemic process of educational development. Their professional, financial, and organizational assistance were indispensable in the successful efforts of ERTI management and staff. Although the systems approach to instructional technology was very new in Iran and had not been tried at a nationwide scale before, they did not hesitate to offer their enthusiastic support to professionals who worked in ERTI to experiment with this state-of-the-art concept and method. In international conferences that I attended at the time, my counterparts in other countries were envious of the highest level of support that ERTI was receiving. Although professional literature was emphatic that for educational broadcasting to succeed in any developing country the highest level of political and financial backing was of utmost necessity, such assistance was lacking in many other developing countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The support and care of Dr. Ghotbi and Dr. Mahmoudi for ERTI to succeed was rare at the international level. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Ghotbi and Dr. Mahmoudi, who trusted me with managing ERTI when I was noticeably young.

Time Frame of Authoring the Manuscript

This volume might well have been authored in the 1980s, right after the dissolution of ERTI. However, its publication several decades ago would have been disregarded as irrelevant amid the pervasive negative critique directed at economic development initiatives and social reform programs implemented in Iran prior to the Islamic Marxist uprising of 1979. At the time, a broad spectrum of political analysts, social scientists, journalists, historians, and experts in communication and development held the conviction that Iran’s attempt in economic and social development was misguided; one that was not in line with its traditional culture. They also believed that ayatollah Khomeini’s so-called “third way” would engender a novel social order that would transcend the obsolete paradigms of Western capitalism and Eastern communism. A prime example was Michel Foucault, who was among French philosophers who heralded the advent of postmodern society. He believed that the Islamic Republic was poised to offer unprecedented solutions to the inadequacies of modernism!

Now after nearly five decades since the onset of the Islamic Republic in Iran it is evident that Khomeini’s “third way” constituted not a visionary blueprint but a conspicuous illusion. The Islamic Republic has severely thwarted material growth of Iran by the total mismanagement of its resources. It has also imposed severe constraints on spiritual well-being of its people by its rampant corrupt practices. In the Islamic Republic corruption is not a malady. It is the dominant modus operandi. It is the primary method by which the Muslim clergy manage their aggressive policies towards the people of Iran, and their perceived enemies abroad. In nearly its five decades of existence, The Islamic Republic has offered the people of Iran little beyond the ravages of two wars so far, and the promise of another war at the time of this writing. It has brought widespread inflation, pervasive under employment, and acute deficiencies in fundamental public services such as provision of water and electricity. It also has damaged the environment of the country to an extent that in certain instances, such as the disappearance of Lake Uremia it might be irreversible. Today, with passage of time, the development efforts of Iran prior to the advent of the Islamic Republic do not look irrelevant anymore. In fact, knowledge related to the development efforts during the growth of Iran from the mide-1950s throughout most of the 1970s may become relevant again in the future when Iranians give themselves a chance to reinstate their normal course of progress once again. Although I wrote this manuscript in the second decade of the 21st century, it reflects the zeitgeist of the 1950s through the 1970s. The manuscript is based on the professional and scholarly literature of the time, as well as official documents of ERTI, and personal notes during my service in NIRT.

For example, discussion of educational technology in this volume reflects the status of the field in the mid-20th century. Today, practice of educational technology has evolved into novel areas, some of which were not even conceivable in the 1960s and 1970s. Also, since the 1960s systems thinking, which constitutes a main theme in this manuscript, has permeated many contemporary management practices. However, today organizations large and small have adopted practices that are based on principles of complex adaptive and self-regulating systems. Implementation of such systems were not technically feasible in the 1960s and 1970s, whereas now artificial intelligence applications as an example of a complex adaptive and self-regulating system is at the fingertip of every student who has access to the Internet. Lastly, the discussion of political events in this manuscript is based on the available information at the time of my service in NIRT. Since the events of 1979 in Iran, many scholars have commented in substantial volumes on the reasons behind the dramatic change in the direction of the country in the past 46 years. Our understanding of the events, both internal Iranian developments, and external foreign interventions, is now vastly different than what it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Particularly, some aspects of direct intervention by the United States and its European allies, as well as Canada, to increase the chances of ayatollah Khomeini to dominate the political scene in Iran are just beginning to emerge. Therefore, I have strived to write this manuscript as if though I wrote it right after the demise of ERTI in 1978 and not with the understanding that we have of the events of the time today. I hope the readers would keep this in mind when studying the manuscript.

Sources and Documents

The information presented here are from original source materials, such as, annual reports of ERTI, reports of the Ministry of Education (MOE) regarding implementation of educational television, long term plans of the Plan and Budget Organization and correspondences between ERTI and MOE. Sources also included the many books, journal articles, government reports, dissertations, and theses in academic libraries. I am also indebted to Dr. Mahmoudi who provided me the opportunity to formally interview him several times and hold innumerable informal conversations with him over the years. I consider him the living encyclopedia of television broadcasting in Iran.

The perspective and analysis that I offer, however, is personal, as I was remarkably close to the events presented here. Thus, this manuscript provides a first-hand description of a project in human resource development via educational radio and television from the perspective of one of its most active participants and proponents. But more importantly, it offers the detailed story of successes and failures of ERTI staff and an in-depth explanation of antecedent events that led to their victories and defeats. I hope current and future generations of Iranians who are active in developing their country, despite all the immense obstacles that the Islamic Republic has put in their path, would benefit from reading about the triumphs and failures of ERTI.

Farhad Saba

San Diego, California 2025