An Investigation of Educational Perspectives of Mirza Malkum Khan Nazem al-Dowleh

Mirza Malkum Khan Nazem al-Dowleh is one of the prominent intellectuals whose numerous political, cultural, and educational writings have played a significant role in social awakening of Iranians. Whether he served with loyalty or betrayed his country has been a subject for debate. These various and even opposing judgments have somewhat been influenced by the dominant attitudes of the public towards emergence of new thinking paradigms. Malkum Khan has written a lot investigating the causes of Iranian's adversities and the possible solutions. An outstanding aspect of his brilliant ideas was his care for cultural and educational issues. In his writings, he recognized public literacy and promotion of sciences as the bases for Western progress. On the other hand, he recognized illiteracy as the reason for the retardation in the Islamic regions. To him, alphabetic and orthographic problems lied at the root of illiteracy. The present two-fold study aims at examining the educational perspectives of Malkum Khan and his critical ideologies, i.e. reforming the alphabet and customizing the educational system.