Cartoon by Ali Miraee

How Iran’s Police-Education Deal Threatens Student Rights

SAMANEH GHADARKHAN

IranWire: When Iran’s Ministry of Education signed a deal with the Islamic Republic’s police force, the historical parallels were impossible to ignore.

Critics quickly compared it to 1930s Nazi Germany, when schools were turned into tools for spreading ideology instead of places for real learning.

The parallels go beyond Nazi Germany. The agreement also recalls “militarized schools” under Latin American dictatorships, where police and military forces entered classrooms to crush critical thinking and silence both students and teachers.

These historical precedents cast a long shadow over this controversial new arrangement, which establishes a formal relationship between Iran’s educational institutions and police forces.

The agreement has drawn immediate criticism from legal experts, teachers’ rights activists, and civil society organizations who see it as the latest step in a troubling trend of securitizing education in Iran.

Moein Khazaeli, a well-known legal expert, has called for the agreement to be quickly canceled by Iran’s Administrative Justice Court.

According to Khazaeli, the agreement violates both domestic Iranian law and international conventions, particularly the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Articles 28 and 29 of this convention establish every child’s right to education in a safe environment free from violence and intimidation.

The agreement also contradicts Article 12, which affirms children’s right to participate in decisions affecting their lives and environment.

“Children’s voices have been ignored in this agreement,” Khazaeli said, adding that having the police involved - especially with their history of violence - poses a psychological threat and harms the safe learning environment students deserve.

While the agreement is ostensibly framed as a measure to maintain order in schools, teachers’ rights activist Sattar Rahmani believes its true purpose lies elsewhere.

“This agreement is designed more to suppress teachers than to protect students,” he said, suggesting that the government is particularly targeting educators who express critical views on political, social, and cultural issues.

Rahmani said the agreement’s focus on “social order” is just a cover for suppressing protests and enforcing the government’s ideology through the police.

He believes the government sees students as a potential threat to the regime and is taking steps to prevent future protests.

The agreement is seen as part of a broader effort to turn Iran’s education system from a place for fostering critical thinking into a tool for control and obedience to authority.

Previous efforts, like the “Amin Plan” under former President Hassan Rouhani, involved using 4,000 seminary students as teachers in public schools.

The plan was expanded under President Ebrahim Raisi, increasing the number of religious seminary students in schools.

Sattar Rahmani described a pattern of repressive actions, including refusing to register female students who don’t follow government-approved hijab rules, chemical attacks on schools, and raids by special forces on educational institutions.

“We have entered another stage where they intend to place education completely under the control of security institutions,” Rahmani warns.

He added, “This means nothing but the minister of education’s helplessness in managing this institution, and he is asking for help from an anti-riot organization to run education.”

Teachers in Iran say the agreement came from reports by provincial education directors to the Ministry of Education, which noted increasing unrest and protests among students.

“Provincial education directors have actually become the regime’s think tank,” one teacher explains.

The reports from local directors described an “unfavorable atmosphere” in schools and “fatigue” among security forces and educational trainers tasked with maintaining ideological compliance.

The reports warned that “more students are protesting” and that “today’s students will become future protesters in universities,” leading to a decision to involve security forces more directly.

The Ministry of Education subsequently invited “intelligence forces to assist schools in different cities,” the teacher revealed.

One particularly controversial aspect of the agreement involves police participation in developing school textbooks, a move that critics see as direct interference by security institutions in educational content.

Khazaeli said this responsibility should belong to child rights experts, educational psychologists, and social science specialists - not to law enforcement officials who lack the proper training.

“School is a place for learning, growth, and psychological security,” he said, “not a field of influence for institutions familiar with the language of force and rigid discipline.”

The legal expert added that Iran’s police aren’t trained to work properly with children and don’t understand child development or educational methods.

The agreement raises additional concerns due to the involvement of Ahmad Reza Radan, whose name appears on lists of human rights violators.

Critics ask whether making an official deal with such a man harms the credibility of Iran’s education system and goes against international standards.