Today, Saturday, October 5, is World Teachers’ Day. This day was established in 1994 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). The purpose of this day is to “value teachers, appreciate them, and address their challenges globally.”
In Iran, Teacher’s Day is celebrated on May 2nd. For activist teachers, this day marks the death of Abolhassan Khanali, a 29-year-old philosophy and Arabic teacher who was killed on May 2, 1961, by a police chief’s gunfire. On that day, thousands of teachers gathered in front of the National Consultative Assembly to protest their low wages. However, the regime associates the Iranian Teacher’s Day with the assassination of Morteza Motahari, a clerical ideologue of the Islamic regime, who was killed by the Furqan group on May 1, 1979, with the news being announced the next day.
According to UNESCO statistics, one-third of teachers worldwide live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, capitalists commodify knowledge and profit enormously from the hard work of teachers. For conscious workers, World Teachers’ Day also reminds them of the injustices imposed on all the working people of society, honors their struggles against these injustices, reviews their achievements, and underscores the necessity of defending their demands.
Since the first sparks of thought are ignited and nurtured in schools, today’s world needs more than ever before, teachers who are specialized, secure, free of worries, and possessed of a noble human spirit. But is the dignity and status of teachers in Iran upheld as it should be? Are teachers, as one of the most hardworking sectors of society, given the attention they deserve to focus on enriching their knowledge without concerns about their material needs? The reality of teachers’ daily lives shows that most of them, rather than focusing on their professional development, are forced to seek second or third jobs. More than three-quarters of Iranian teachers live below the poverty line, and the remainder survive by holding multiple jobs or relying on their spouses’ incomes.
Alongside these hardworking teachers are a group of regime-aligned spies and rent-seekers who are tasked with implementing the regime’s anti-cultural and humiliating schemes in educational centers. The situation for retired teachers is even worse. After dedicating their youth and middle age to education with minimal pay and enduring hardships, they now live in extreme poverty during their old age instead of enjoying comfort and peace.
However, the struggles of this disadvantaged group go beyond merely lacking a decent standard of living. They are also forced to promote an education system deeply intertwined with superstition and reactionary beliefs. One of the great pains for honorable and activist teachers is the pervasive influence of religion in education. Iranian teachers are compelled to witness the implementation of the regime’s regressive plans in schools, such as gender segregation. These conditions wear out teachers physically and distress them mentally.
Iran’s hardworking and disadvantaged teachers are honorable individuals with just demands, deserving of the widest and most persistent support. Instead of addressing their legitimate grievances, the Islamic Republic responds with imprisonment and dismissals. Currently, dozens of activist teachers are imprisoned across Iran.
Despite the pressures and repression, the struggle of teachers for their rightful demands and the release of their colleagues continues without interruption. In recent years, the teachers’ movement in Iran has grown in scale and scope, centered on demands such as the release of imprisoned teachers, ending the privatization of education, formalizing contract, preschool, and corporate teachers employed through contracting companies, increasing salaries, paying overdue wages, and ensuring freedom of associations and unions. Arrests, dismissals, and restrictions have not intimidated the teachers nor deterred them from pursuing their demands.
We extend our congratulations on World Teachers’ Day to all activist, hardworking, and compassionate teachers. We are confident that the labor movement and the teachers’ movement, united with all the working, deprived, and oppressed people of this society, will eventually overthrow the reactionary and anti-people Islamic Republic regime from Iran’s political scene.