Head of the Literacy Movement Organization admitted that 60 per cent of illiterates in Iran were women.
Ali Bagherzadeh, who was speaking in a meeting at the Alephba Studio of the Ministry of Education, also revealed that education is not mandatory in Iran. (The state-run Salamatnews.com, April 25, 2018)
Education is mandatory and free in most countries of the world for 6-14 age group and UNESCO has underlined the need for mandatory education for children.
Bagherzadeh also confessed that the criterion for literacy in Iran is the sole ability of reading, writing and counting, whereas in other countries, this criterion has been improved to include much more. Still, he shamelessly claimed that the growth of literacy in Iran had been 2.85 times more than the world’s average rate!
Based on the census done in 2016 in Iran, Bagherzadeh said the number of illiterates in the 10-49 age group was 2.3 million, 60 per cent of whom are women. In another big lie, he claimed that this is better that the world rate of 64 per cent for women’s illiteracy.
Clearly, when education is neither free, nor mandatory in Iran and the criterion for literacy is way behind international standards, such comparisons are a desperate bid by officials of a tyrannical and oppressive regime to improve their repulsive image.