New discourse of education and the emergence of modern schooling in Qajar dynasty

It is possible to cast studies on the formation of new schools in Iran into three categories: modernization, state-oriented, and anti-colonialist approaches. All these analyses, in general, are flawed, mainly due to reductionism, simplification of causes, or subject-oriented analysis. In these researches, historical complexities and details, usually, to be lacked, and in turn, a simplified explanation is rendered as the main factor of the emergence of new school in Iran. In looking for a more complicated narrative, we try to illustrate some effective forces through which the birth of new school has made possible. Although we never deny the importance of historical factors which are at the center of previous investigations, we content that new birth requires focus on a more broad discursive transformation in which the necessity for new education, not only by the state but also by the other part of society, is distinguished. Therefore, the birth of new school, in contest with the long-lasting religious and traditional Maktabs, cannot be analyzed by appealing to a final historical subject like the intelligentsia, Qajar state or Christian missioners, but historical necessities and new arrangement of historical forces. Cultivation of state (or Shah), mobilization of army and technologies, and finally, education of the nation, are three important elements in the course of this discourse. Based on a conjunctural analysis, in this article, we tried to shed light on the issue.