The shocking news of the suicide of an 11-year-old student named Seyed Mohammad Mousavizadeh in Port Dayyer, Bushehr province, in the first days of the current academic year, has caused widespread grief across the country and provoked public anger. In an interview full of anger and regret, the teenager's mother announced that her 11-year-old son had ended his life due to lack of access to a phone and laptop and the stress of being excluded from the e-learning environment. An event that can only be called a catastrophe.
The suicide of Seyed Mohammad Mousavizadeh is not the only case of such tragic incidents. In the last few months, at least 10 suicides have occurred in the western provinces of the country, most of whom were among the youth and adolescents of these provinces. From 14-year-old teenage girl, 18-year-old newlywed bride, 11-year-old Elamite girl Zeinab to 11-year-old Armin from Kermanshah, all of whom have ended their lives due to financial poverty and the pressure of unfavorable conditions.
A child commits suicide because he or she finds himself or herself deprived of school because he or she sees that he or she cannot continue school like his or her classmates in the Coronavirus conditions due to poverty. This is not a suicide that happens from time to time and on a large scale in our country, but it can be explained more in crime category. The context of the circumstances that lead an 11-year-old child to death have been created in the society, and Seyed Mohammad Mousavizadeh’s case should not be considered an exception. This painful reaction could be reproduced in other forms.
With the onset of the Coronavirus epidemic, and the government's inability to control it, the Ministry of Education introduced a software called the "Happy System" as an alternative to face-to-face training. But according to the ministry, out of about 14 and a half million students in the country, more than four million students practically dropped out of school due to poverty and the inability of their families to provide the necessary facilities to connect to the “Happy System”. As a result of the government's irresponsibility in providing the necessary infrastructure for virtual education, these students were deprived of the educational environment. These four million students are those who have not been able to access the “Happy System” even once. According to the statistics of the parliament's cultural commission, the accessibility to the “Happy System” in the whole country is about 30% and in the deprived provinces it is even less than 10%.
The emergence of the global Covid-19 crisis and the virtualization of education have deepened inequality in the distribution of educational facilities, and increased the number of dropouts. But this global crisis should not be considered the basis of educational inequality and the dropout of Iranian children and adolescents. Article 30 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic states that "the government is obliged to provide free educational facilities for the whole nation until the end of secondary school." According to this principle, not only is education free and public, but it is also the specified duty of the government to provide it. Establishing private schools, charging for public school enrollment, charging for textbooks, and even the government's failure to provide stationery have been violating this principle for years and have become a barrier to children and adolescents' right to education.
It is the legal duty of the government to provide facilities and conditions for public access to free education. The Islamic Republic, by increasing its military and propaganda expenditures, has limited the educational budget, and made free education a social aspiration. In recent years, the country's honorable and committed teachers have repeatedly gone on strike demanding the right to free education. A number of teachers' union activists are in prison. Mohammad Habibi, Ismail Abdi, Javad Lal Mohammadi, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, and several other teachers' union activists have now endured the suffering of long-term prisoners for the “crime" of resonating "the right to free education."
The Left Party of Iran (People’s Fadaian), while offering its condolences to the family of Seyed Mohammad Mousavizadeh, the country's education community and all the people of Iran who are going through difficult economic times, considers the Islamic Republic and specifically the government and the Ministry of Education culpable in this tragic death. Undoubtedly, forgetting the right to free education of more than four million children and adolescents is a shameful negligence and a cause of social crises, especially among poor social groups. The government has a duty to address it as soon as possible, provide the necessary facilities and provide free education for all children and adolescents.
Political-Executive Board of the Left Party of Iran (People’s Fadaian)
October 14, 2020
Add new comment