ELT as necessary evil: resisting Western cultural dominance in foreign language policy in the context of Iran

ABSTRACT

English language teaching has always been treated as a socio-cultural issue in post-revolutionary Iran. Fueled by anti-imperialist sentiment, the political authorities diagnosed Western influence as the major ailment of the society. Having to accommodate for the undeniable virtue of learning English for international communication, educationalists prescribed limited, censured doses of culture-free, localized English input to bring up a new generation immune to the Western values. The analysis of the educational goals in Iranian macro educational documents and their realization in teaching materials reveals an organized effort to resist and undo the influence of neoliberal education and provide an alternative rooted in national-religious heritage of the country. To examine whether this localized version can survive amid neoliberal forces in education and compete with its imported goods, the present article attempts to provide a bird’s eye view about the interplay of policy, culture, and political ideology in the curriculum through content analysis of the Iranian macro official documents and their manifestations in local ELT textbooks, supplemented by the researcher’s perspectives as an insider with prolonged engagement in this educational system. Hopefully, careful scrutiny of Iranian ELT program in its wider socio-cultural context contains lessons about avertable errors when proposing alternatives to neoliberal education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data sources

(All the documents were retrieved in September 2021)

A) Official policy-making documents

• Roadmap of cultural engineering. Issued by Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Retrieved from https://sccr.ir/مهندسی_فرهنگ_opt.pdf

• Comprehensive roadmap of scientific development in Iran. Issued by Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.msrt.ir/1488284345-m01.pdf

• The document of Islamicization of universities in Iran. Issued by Research center of IRI Parliament. Retrieved from https://rc.majlis.ir/fa/law/print_version/858195.

• The document of fundamental reform of secondary education in Iran. Issued by Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.medu.ir/fa/news/item/663196

• The 20-year national vision (2005–2025). IRI Government website. Retrieved from https://www.farhangi.msrt.ir/1534844046.pdf

• The national curriculum of Islamic Republic of Iran. Retrieved from https://www.roshd.ir/omoumi/سند-برنامه-درسی-ملی.pdf

B) English textbooks for Iranian high school students

• Prospect (1) student book for the 7th grade. Ministry of Education: Research and Curriculum Development Organization. Retrieved from http://chap.sch.ir/books/8129.

• Prospect (2) student book for the 8th grade. Ministry of Education: Research and Curriculum Development Organization. Retrieved from http://chap.sch.ir/books/8020.

• Prospect (3) student book for the 9th grade. Ministry of Education: Research and Curriculum Development Organization. Retrieved from http://chap.sch.ir/books/8140.

• Vision (1) student book for the 10th grade. Ministry of Education: Research and Curriculum Development Organization. Retrieved from http://chap.sch.ir/books/8049.

• Vision (2) student book for the 11th grade. Ministry of Education: Research and Curriculum Development Organization. Retrieved from http://chap.sch.ir/books/8199.

• Vision (3) student book for the 12th grade. Ministry of Education. Research and Curriculum Development Organization. Retrieved from http://chap.sch.ir/books/8084.