Educational Television in Iran

Introduction

Using radio and television for educational purposes, frequently discussed by the Consultative Program Committee, was not a new idea (see the previous chapter). As early as 1941, when Iran Radio was established, the government aimed to use it to educate and enlighten Iranians, guiding them toward a better life. With the advent of television, it became the consensus among the luminaries of the Consultative Program Committee to utilize television for educational purposes as well. The prominent use of broadcasting for education was evident to those involved in program policymaking, as it was obvious to them that the Ministry of Education (MOE), primarily responsible for providing formal education to school-age children, was unable to expand its services to all children. This inability stemmed from a shortage of competent teachers, a gap that would take decades to fill through the higher education system to meet the needs of the MOE and cover the entire school-age population. In the 1970s of the 18 million eligible school-age population, the MOE could only provide educational services to half of them. All of this was happening while 70% of the adult population was still illiterate.

Iran Radio broadcasted many hours of general educational content for children and their parents, as well as specific programs for farmers, industrial workers, members of the armed forces, and other social groups. However, programs based on the MOE curriculum to teach specific subjects in schools did not make it to the radio airwaves. In the early 1960s, Dr. Mahmudi, the CEO of TVI, succeeded in using television for direct educational purposes with programs based on the MOE curriculum.

Beginning of Educational Television in Iran

The educational use of television in Iran originated with the commercial station TVI before the government established NIRT. The motivation to use television for education was not purely scholastic; it also had political and religious aspects. During its operation, TVI program managers relied primarily on television series and movies made in Hollywood to fill their broadcast schedule. These programs were very popular due to their high production quality. In addition, a new art form and industry emerged in Iran in the 1950s to dub foreign language movies into exquisite Farsi. Motion pictures made in other countries became even more popular when the audience could hear their favorite stars speak a language they knew, eliminating the need to guess what the actors were saying in English, French, Italian, or other languages.

As the popularity of foreign-made movies grew among theatergoers and television viewers, some Majlis deputies and other political figures, along with certain members of the religious circles, objected to their pervasiveness and increasing appeal. In their eyes, presenting movies and television series made abroad, particularly on television, was a clear indicator that people were overexposed to media products alien to their culture. Moreover, Mr. Sabet, who established TVI, was of the Baha’i faith, which the entire body of Shi’a clergy did not approve at all. Thus, political and religious personalities put the owner of TVI, as well as its CEO, under heavy pressure to  increase domestically produced programs on TV1 to balance its foreign-made shows.

Under these circumstances, Dr. Mahmoudi decided to address the political, religious, and cultural demands placed on TVI by broadcasting educational programs. Recognizing the thirst for learning among the younger generation, he saw television as an appropriate medium to meet this need. Given the limited resources of TVI, the most expedient way to start educational programming was to invite outstanding teachers from MOE-managed high schools to present their lessons on TVI after school hours.

Thus, in 1962, a nascent form of educational television was born on TVI. Concurrently, Dr. Hadi Hedayati, the Minister of Education, approached Dr. Mahmoudi to assist the MOE in establishing its own independent educational television operation. Almost forgetting the political reasons for presenting high school lessons on TVI, Dr. Mahmoudi agreed to assist the Audio-Visual Department of the MOE in setting up its own television broadcasting service. In 1964, under Dr. Mahmoudi’s leadership and guidance, the MOE began broadcasting educational programs independently of TVI. Mr. Ahmad-Ali Mehrpour who was the general manager of MOE’s Audio-Visual Education Department also began to manage Educational Television (ETV).

With Dr. Mahmoudi’s guidance, ETV acquired a set of modest television broadcasting facilities from Japan. The MOE leadership housed these facilities in a new building under construction for Majlis in the center of Tehran. Construction workers built a makeshift studio and control room for ETV in this building. The MOE also installed a 1,000-watt transmitter to broadcast its programs in black and white throughout the greater Tehran area, limiting ETV’s reach to the capital city only.

In 1962, television receivers were scarce in Tehran. To expand the audience for its televised programs, the MOE established television clubs in different neighborhoods. Some of these clubs, particularly in the less affluent southern parts of Tehran, had 100 seats. For three hours every weekday in the early evening, the best high school teachers from the MOE presented lessons on various subjects, including math and sciences, on ETV. Thousands of high school students watched lessons on algebra, basic mathematics, physics, and chemistry either in the MOE clubs or at home.

The MOE staff, however, had rudimentary knowledge of television production. They asked teachers to present their lectures live on television as they would in a classroom, without creative production values, instructive graphics, or other audiovisual effects to make the material more interesting or engaging. Despite this, placing the best teachers in front of a television camera to present lectures provided a useful source of learning for thousands of students in Tehran.

In due course, the MOE became more ambitious and began broadcasting television programs aimed at the general audience on Fridays, the Islamic Sabbath. These programs, collectively called Recess (zang-e-tafrih), consisted of low-quality feature-length movies, quiz shows, and other forms of entertainment. This mix of high school lessons and low-quality entertainment quickly became confusing to the audience. Some of the shows were deemed inappropriate for a television channel dedicated to education. Audiences, in informal comments to this author, described them as “banal” or even “vulgar.” Nevertheless, ETV continued operating in this manner until 1975. By then, NIRT had established a nationwide educational television operation with programs created by highly trained producers and educational technologists. Consequently, the MOE ceased its broadcasting operations.

The Birth of Educational Radio and Television of Iran in NIRT

NIRT leaders strongly believed in the educational role of broadcasting in Iran. They saw it as essential for both safeguarding and promoting the nation’s historic culture and preparing a skilled workforce for economic development and social reform. Therefore, one of their primary motivations for investing in two nationwide radio and television networks was to expand educational opportunities to as many people as possible, despite the country’s modest income from its wealth in the 1960s. While television production was more expensive than radio, the visual impact of television made it a more effective educational medium, justifying the additional cost.

In 1968, Dr. Mahmoudi, then serving as the Deputy Director General of NIRT, established a small unit of nine producers dedicated to creating educational programs for nationwide broadcasts. This team, which included several former teachers from the MOE, laid the groundwork for the Educational Radio and Television of Iran (ERTI) within the newly built NIRT headquarters. From the outset, they focused on producing programs for students in grades 1 through 12. However, they placed special emphasis on a new syllabus that covered the final year of elementary education and the first two years of high school, a period the MOE referred to as the Guidance Cycle.

Ambitious Vision for ERTI

NIRT leadership had an ambitious vision for ERTI. Recognizing the vast educational needs of the country, they planned a separate facility and organization for NIRT’s educational network. To emphasize ERTI’s importance, they renovated the TVI building that housed the country’s first television station and dedicated it to ERTI. The facilities in this building included two black-and-white television studios.

Earlier, NIRT had acquired two mobile units for broadcasting the Asian Games in color in Tehran. In 1974, NIRT moved one of these units to ERTI, adding color production capacity and significantly enhancing the quality of educational programs. ERTI programs, produced in this separate facility, were transported to NIRT’s main broadcast headquarters on 2-inch quad tapes and aired nationwide on two networks throughout the day. Network One reached a potential audience of 20 million out of a population of 35 million, while Network Two covered some of the major cities with a potential viewership of approximately 7 to 10 million.

By 1977, the black-and-white studios at ERTI were upgraded with color production facilities. Additionally, a newly constructed adjacent facility provided producers with a wide array of state-of-the-art production capabilities. These facilities included four radio studios, three motion picture dubbing studios, a graphics studio with photographic laboratories, a workroom for developing multimedia educational materials, three physical science laboratories, and a behavioral science laboratory. ERTI’s film production crews also benefited from the support of the NIRT film laboratory, which offered a full range of services, including color processing.

Although many homes still lacked television sets, there was optimism that domestic production of TV sets would lower costs, making them affordable for the growing middle class. ERTI also collaborated with the MOE to equip schools in many cities with television receivers. ERTI’s radio programs were broadcast nationwide through NIRT’s 77 transmitters, with a total power of 8,500 kilowatts, making these programs readily available to many people throughout the country.

ERTI Organization

In its early stages, ERTI had a simple organizational structure, similar to most other educational broadcasting operations worldwide. This rudimentary organization had 50 employees divided into two main units.

The Production Unit consisted of nine television producers, 15 studio crew members, and 10 set designers, graphic artists, and stagehands. This team produced educational radio and television programs in collaboration with teachers and subject matter experts from the MOE.

The Administrative Unit included nine staff members responsible for personnel affairs, accounting, and secretarial work. A part-time chief engineer, assigned to ERTI from the main NIRT Technical Unit, supervised three technicians who maintained the production equipment and assisted in guiding the technical staff as they expanded ERTI’s production capacity and upgraded its facilities to color. The remaining employees included groundskeepers and janitorial staff.

The programs produced by these ERTI professionals were 15 minutes in length. Majlis mandated that students watch these programs during their normal classroom hours under the supervision of a teacher. However, it was challenging to match classroom schedules for each subject and grade level in each school with broadcast times on a nationwide basis. To address this, each program was rebroadcast frequently on both NIRT networks from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

As a result, two distinct patterns of utilization emerged among the audience. In formal classrooms, students watched the programs when their teacher chose to turn on the television set. While many parents and grandparents, most of whom had no formal schooling, watched these programs at home alongside their children and grandchildren at various times of the day. Although no data was collected on home viewership, anecdotal evidence suggested widespread popularity of these educational broadcasts.

Effectiveness of Educational Television

Television broadcasting was a costly endeavor for Iran in the 1960s. The government had to invest considerable amounts of money in building production and dissemination infrastructure, as well as training a competent staff. A decade later, dramatically increased oil revenue allowed the country to allocate more resources to this medium. However, at the time, NIRT had to justify the relatively high cost of educational broadcasting against a long list of other economic and social development priorities. Therefore, it was crucial for NIRT leaders to answer the question: Is television an effective medium for education?

Fortunately, social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s were already investigating whether students learn from television. At Stanford University, Wilbur Schramm (1907-1987) pioneered this line of research. He led a team of communication scientists who found that children learned from all sorts of television programs during casual viewing (Schramm, 1961). Moreover, they discovered that students learned as much from instructional television programs as they did from in-person classroom teaching. Early research revealed no statistically significant difference between learning from television and traditional classroom instruction. In a comprehensive study, Schramm summarized the results of more than 400 scientifically designed and statistically treated comparisons of instructional television with classroom teaching. He concluded: “We can say confidently that students learn from it, and that they learn fast and efficiently” (Schramm, 1962, p. 66).

Television: Not a Quick Remedy

While early research showed promising results, further studies in the 1970s offered a more nuanced understanding of educational television. Solomon (1970) observed that younger learners could become passive viewers when watching television. To keep them engaged, instructors needed to provide specific instructions before viewing a lesson on television and involve students in post-viewing activities, such as asking questions about the program’s content. These activities helped students retain information for the long term.

Older students in high school and college, however, benefited more from television instruction due to their more refined study skills and time management. They also had more learning-related interactions with their peers than students in elementary grades. These findings highlighted the limitations of using television as a stand-alone educational tool, particularly for younger learners.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Iran faced a severe shortage of teachers. If a teacher’s presence was necessary to optimize the use of educational television, simply broadcasting lectures was not a quick remedy for the educational woes of the country (see the section titled “Conditions of Education” below for statistics on the severe shortage of teachers). Other researchers also questioned the role of television as a stand-alone educational medium. They argued that it could not replace formal teaching, although it could provide effective support to elementary and secondary teachers for instructing their students (Maloney, 1967).

Research on Interaction with Media

Later, researchers focused on the role of individual learners in media-based education. Studies confirmed the importance of the mental effort each student invested in learning from communication media, including television (Clark, 1975; G.  Salomon, 1970; G. Salomon & Clark, 1977). More detailed research examined the functions of media attributes, such as image, text, and audio in the learning process. This line of research highlighted the importance of the individual’s learning aptitude when interacting with media attributes, revealing that each learner responded differently to media materials based on their unique background and abilities.

As research in educational technology expanded, it became evident that television program producers needed specific skills to design media attributes that would enhance learning effectiveness for diverse learners. Furthermore, the ways in which learners and teachers utilized each medium proved to be crucial. To optimize learning for individual students, both teachers and learners had to follow specific utilization methods (Snow & Salomon, 1968).

Two decades of intensive research revealed that teachers were just as effective when teaching on television as in a classroom. This was an important finding for Iran, which faced a severe shortage of teachers. However, to maximize the effectiveness of televised instruction, trained professionals were needed to plan, design, produce, distribute, utilize, and evaluate educational television programs. Each of these areas required specialized knowledge and training. Keeping up with new research results was also essential. At the time, articles on the effectiveness of educational media were being published at an exponential rate in professional and scholarly journals. It was crucial for the personnel of ERTI to stay informed about these new findings in order to optimize their work.

Given that Stanford University faculty were international leaders in educational broadcasting research at the time, Dr. Mahmoudi sought the expertise of Dr. Lyle Nelson and Dr. Edwin Parker for long-term planning of educational radio and television in Iran. Both Drs. Nelson and Parker were members of Dr. Schramm’s research team at Stanford and were well-positioned to assist ERTI in planning for its future. The results of Stanford University’s work are detailed in Chapter Ten.

Expanding the Organization

In 1973, the leaders of NIRT dramatically expanded the organization’s educational broadcast and non-broadcast services. This expansion included hiring new leadership and staff, as well as training both new and existing personnel. The training program aimed to equip all staff with the latest research findings in educational communication, enhancing their ability to produce effective radio and television programs and offer in-person training. As a result, ERTI grew substantially, expanding from an organization of nine television producers, two unit managers, and 39 administrative, technical, and support staff in 1973 to a workforce of 500 professionals in 1978. During this period, the dedicated and highly motivated women and men of ERTI made a lasting impact on the development of educational radio and television services in Iran.

The main purpose of expanding ERTI was to establish it as a national educational technology resource for the MOE and other institutions involved in workforce training and education. ERTI provided technical assistance to these institutions to address the persistent lack of a competent workforce. The root of this problem was a high rate of illiteracy, which in the early 1970s affected 70% of the adult population. This high illiteracy rate hindered the country’s development and made Iran’s goals for economic expansion and democratization difficult to achieve. Additionally, half of the school-age population had no access to any educational services, and learning was ineffective for the other half. Meanwhile, a growing number of high school graduates demanded access to higher education, but university seats remained very limited. During its expansion period, ERTI staff actively helped teachers in selected schools in Tehran and other cities to begin to reform their outdated teaching methods. ERTI staff also assisted faculty at a few universities to extend their teaching beyond campus. By 1978, ERTI had become a self-sufficient national resource that earned the recognition of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a regional asset.

New Leadership for ERTI

To accelerate and steer the expansion process, in 1973, Mr. Ghotbi appointed a new leadership team to manage ERTI. He selected this author as the managing director of ERTI. By then, I had completed my doctoral studies in educational technology and instructional system design at Syracuse University. I also held a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Mr. Ghotbi also appointed Mr. Firouz Rahmanzadeh (1945-2008) as the deputy managing director of ERTI. Mr. Rahmanzadeh and I were fellow students at SFSU. He had held a prominent position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which aligned with his studies in SFSU’s Department of International Relations. However, ERTI needed someone with exceptional diplomatic and communication skills to oversee coordination with the MOE and other organizations that collaborated with ERTI. Additionally, as ERTI grew, Mr. Rahmanzadeh’s managerial expertise was crucial for supervising the day-to-day operations of ERTI, especially with the increasing number of American advisors assigned to train the staff at ERTI, assist in its reorganization, and help conceptualize its strategic planning for the future. (See Chapter Five for staff training, and Chapter Ten for short-term and long-term planning). Mr. Rahmanzadeh’s contributions to managing all aspects of NIRT’s activities were indispensable. He established many new detailed policies and procedures that a growing organization needed to manage its daily affairs. He held daily meetings with individual staff members or small groups to listen to their issues and quickly resolve their problems. He played a major role in conceptualizing the functions of ERTI and planning for the organization both in the short term and long term. The excellent synergy and rapport that Mr. Rahmanzadeh and I shared allowed us to grow ERTI from a small unit of NIRT into an internationally known and respected organization. By 1978, ERTI was able to offer human resource development services to various organizations using state-of-the-art technologies. In the rest of this book, I refer to Mr. Rahmanzadeh and myself as the leadership of ERTI.

Mr. Ghotbi also appointed Mr. Aliasghar Azadan, a recent graduate of the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at San Diego State University, as ERTI’s new Production Unit manager. Mr. Azadan quickly established his leadership and became a tremendous resource for his staff, introducing imaginative new production methods to represent abstract subject matters. These methods included:

• Visualizing mathematical concepts with graphics and animated sequences
• Presenting important historical events through dramatic sketches
• Supporting social sciences lectures with documentary footage
• Using film and video segments, both local and international, to present scientific concepts

Adding these production values transformed educational television from the familiar format of a talking head to an attractive and stimulating source of learning. Casual positive feedback from viewers indicated that they noticed and appreciated these remarkable changes, finding the new instructional presentations striking and inspiring.

Further additions to ERTI’s personnel included Mr. Ebrahim Rasouli as Administration Unit manager. In his quiet style, he proved to be a remarkable team player, collaborating with Mr. Azadan to provide the producers and their crews with the administrative support they needed. Additionally, as more funds were allocated to ERTI, the integrity of Mr. Kaveh Dejkam, the new Accounting Unit manager, became indispensable for managing the hundreds of thousands of rials (the Iranian currency) spent on a wide variety of projects to upgrade physical infrastructure, train staff, and increase the production of radio and television programs. (At the time, 70 rials was the equivalent of U.S. $1.)

The expansion process also included hiring dozens of teachers from the MOE and training them to implement research-based production of educational products and services. These hirings and appointments ushered in a new era of professionalism and excitement at ERTI. It also sent a message to the entire staff of NIRT that Mr. Ghotbi and Dr. Mahmoudi were embarking on a new era to enable ERTI to fulfill its educational mission throughout the country.

ERTI’s Exceptional Team

ERTI staff were creative, energetic, enthusiastic, and forward-looking young women and men. They included unit managers, radio and television producers, graphic artists, set designers, educational technologists, educational evaluators, researchers, and broadcast engineers and technicians. They embodied the skills and enthusiasm necessary to develop their very young but rapidly growing organization. They quickly gained the admiration of their counterparts in the MOE and institutions of higher education they served, as well as thousands of television viewers throughout the country. Their success in teaching innovative instructional methods and practices to hundreds of other professionals through television programs and in-person training sessions became exemplary. The rapid growth of ERTI would not have been possible without their enthusiastic dedication to their work.

High-Level Support of NIRT Leadership for ERTI

During my tenure, I had the pleasure of meeting many professionals in the field of educational communication throughout the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in Europe and the United States at various conferences and meetings. These colleagues unanimously agreed that for educational broadcasting to succeed in any developing country, the highest level of support in their respective organizations was essential. Therefore, the political, organizational, and financial backing that NIRT leaders provided to ERTI leadership and staff was indispensable for the rapid growth and success of the organization within just five years. Managers of comparable organizations in other Asia-Pacific countries often did not enjoy the same level of support from their government leaders. My counterparts in these countries were in awe of the high level of support that ERTI was receiving. The commitment that Mr. Ghotbi and Dr. Mahmoudi demonstrated to ensure ERTI’s success was rare among broadcast executives in developing countries at the time.

The support of NIRT was not limited to providing adequate funding and administrative backing during ERTI’s years of expansion. They wholeheartedly embraced systems philosophy, methodology, and technology in managing ERTI to solve educational problems. The systems approach to management required analyzing and strengthening the relationship between staff in different units to optimize their performance. This approach was new to Iranian institutions and had not been tried on a nationwide scale before. Nonetheless, Mr. Ghotbi and Dr. Mahmoudi fervently supported ERTI professionals in employing this methodology.

They encouraged ERTI staff to experiment with state-of-the-art concepts in systems theory, methodology, and technology to grow ERTI into an effective educational organization. The overarching aim was to reach every eligible child and adult, even in the remotest part of the country, with effective educational radio and television programs. Initially, however, ERTI’s role was limited to supporting the MOE. (For a detailed explanation of the application of systems approach in ERTI, see Chapter Three).

The Ministry of Education

Government planners and legislators who funded ERTI designated its primary role as supporting the teachers and administrators of the MOE. The main purpose of ERTI was to enhance the activities of classroom teachers and improve their effectiveness. Thus, its success depended on how well it could collaborate with the MOE. Established in 1893, the MOE was in the heart of historic Tehran on Ekbatan Avenue, housed in a traditional brick building. The conventional architecture of its headquarters reflected its managerial and educational style of preserving the status-quo. In contrast, NIRT’s new headquarters was in fashionable northern Tehran. The campus consisted of a thirteen-story steel and concrete main structure and several other service buildings, with façades adorned in traditional bricks. This blend of modern and traditional elements was a symbolic representation of NIRT’s challenge to promote the new while preserving the familiar.

Those who worked in these two organizations were miles apart geographically and culturally. NIRT, a fledgling organization, was developing a culture of innovation rooted in the most advanced broadcasting technologies and management practices of the mid to late 20^th century. In contrast, MOE’s organizational ethos had ossified over the past 70 years. Its administrative personnel were resistant to accepting innovative ideas, continuing to operate at the same dawdling pace as they had for decades.

From its inception, the MOE had to prioritize quantitative growth over improving the quality of instruction due to the country’s woefully inadequate educational services. Qualitatively, the teaching and learning methods were the same as in maktabs, or religious schools controlled by clergy. Similar to maktabs, learning in MOE-managed schools was limited to literal memorization and rote recall of textbook information. Quantitatively, in seven decades of existence, this slow but ever-expanding bureaucracy succeeded in providing formal schooling for only half of the school-age population. Even this inadequate provision placed students in crowded classrooms within substandard buildings, most of which were not designed as schoolhouses.

Conditions of Education

In 1973, when ERTI began its rapid expansion to assist the MOE, Iran’s population was estimated to be 35 million, with 50% under 20 years of age. This youthfulness was due to a 3% annual growth rate. In the 1973/1974 academic year, the 7- to 18-year-old population numbered 11,956,000, but total school enrollment was only 5,436,000. This left 54.5% of the school-age population, or 6,523,000 children, without any educational services (The Ministry of Education, 1974).

From the perspective of MOE managers, these enrollment numbers seemed impressive compared to half a century earlier when the central government first began focusing on education. For example, in 1925, elementary school enrollments (grades 1-6) were only 10,600 (Szyliowiez, 1973, p. 329). Four and a half decades later, in 1974, elementary enrollments (grades 1-5) in both formal and Education Corps schools had reached 3,651,000. While this growth was remarkable for a country plagued with war, disease, and famine during the first half of the 20^th century, it was still inadequate relative to the size of its population.

Historic Impediment to the Growth of Education

Historically, the low performance of the MOE was due to the chaotic conditions in Iran during the first two decades of the 20^th century. During this period, the last Qajar dynasty kings badly mismanaged the country. In the early 1900s, Iran “entered the new century with a disintegrating central authority and a financially bankrupt central government” (Arjomand, 1988, p. 33). Between 1914 and 1919, during the First World War, British, Russian, and Ottoman armies invaded neutral Iran, further debilitating its already weak economy. During this time, Britain consolidated its control over Iran’s vast oil reserves in the southern province of Khuzestan along the Persian Gulf, depriving the central government of badly needed income to provide essential services to the people (Majd, 2013; Ulrichsen, 2014). Moreover, the devastating flu epidemic of 1917-1919 killed half of the population, reducing it from an estimated 18 million to 9 million. In these disastrous conditions, the central state had no effective governing capability, especially in provinces where tribal chiefs were in control and contested the already feeble power of the Qajar kings. These circumstances severely curtailed the activities of the MOE until Reza Shah managed to centralize state power by establishing the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. It was only in the early 1930s that the Majlis began to pay particular attention to education by allocating more financial resources to the MOE and passing legislation to improve its operations.

Disaster struck Iran again in 1941 when Britain and Russia invaded its territory. Russian troops advanced as far south as Qazvin, threatening Tehran. While American armed forces were also present in Iran, their mission was non-combatant: transporting war material provided by the United States from the Persian Gulf to the Russian border. In contrast, the aims of Russia and Britain were to subjugate the government of Iran. During this dark time, Britain forced Reza Shah to leave the country in 1941. British diplomats in Tehran ensured that the central government became as ineffective as it had been before Reza Shah’s reign. Furthermore, Russia imposed unfavorable economic and security conditions on Iran and established the communist Tudeh Party to weaken the central government and annex the northern provinces of Iran to the Soviet Union. (Tudeh means mass in Farsi.)

These calamitous conditions once again severely limited expenditure on education, leaving most Iranians, who were living under extremely harsh conditions, illiterate. It was not until 1955 that the MOE began to recover from the chaotic wartime period. But, even by the 1970s, only 30% of the adult population was literate. While the literate could read and write, many could not use their literacy in an economically and socially meaningful way. In the parlance of the time, except for the highly educated elite, most Iranians who could read and write were functionally illiterate. A primary reason for this undesirable situation was the inadequate number of teachers in the MOE.

Instructional Staff of the MOE

In 1974, when the expansion of ERTI was in its early stages, only 173,947 teachers were providing educational services to 11,956,00 students from kindergarten to the 12^th grade. For the 4,148,000 preschool children, only 41,000 or 2% were enrolled in a school, served by a mere 947 qualified teachers. In ordinary elementary schools (grades 1-5), 96,000 teachers were responsible for 3,143,000 students, while an additional 19,000 Knowledge Corps officers taught students in rural areas at this level. For the 960,000 students in Guidance Cycle schools (grades 6-8), there were only 33,000 teachers. Meanwhile, 25,000 teachers were tasked with instructing 838,000 high school students. These numbers meant that most classes were overcrowded, particularly in high schools where class sizes of 70 or more were not uncommon (Ministry of Education 1974).

Supporting the MOE under these conditions was a formidable task. Quantitative limitations of the MOE notwithstanding, the primary challenge was transforming the learning culture of the MOE from memorizing textbooks verbatim to one based on comprehension, analysis, and synthesis. Although the MOE received some technical assistance from UNESCO to revise and improve its instructional methods, the pace of change in schools was extremely slow. Consequently, the ERTI leadership, unit managers, and consultants became convinced that they had to dramatically increase their direct support of the MOE.

Before implementing this decision, however, ERTI needed to expand its organizational structure. This reorganization aimed to add new functions necessary to provide adequate help to the MOE and other institutions wishing to collaborate with ERTI. The details of this reorganization and its new functions are explained in the next chapter. Additionally, it was crucial to take a systems approach to conceptualizing the new functions of the organization. The role of this systems approach is also discussed in detail in the next chapter.