Linking Projects of Rural Communities and the Formal Education System during Pahlavi Era

Iran's modern education has always had negligible links with the local community and Part of the failure of this centralized educational system should be contributed to this shortcoming. Despite attempts to establish links between the local communities and the educational system, it seems that such efforts were never sufficient and successful. This research studies the plans which tried to link the educational system and the rural local communities during the Pahlavi era, and whether they were effective. Data is collected through library and documentary method. Findings of this study show that projects such as the "nomadic schools" and "knowledge corps" (Sepah-danesh) considerably addressed the issue to link with local communities. These projects had a major role in introducing and expanding the modern education to non-urban communities. In the absence of such projects, the official education system could hardly cover the majority of the Iranian population outside the cities during the Pahlavi era. Other projects such as "primary schools of villages" and "regionalization" never went operational to reduce the distance between the formal system and the local community, and they remained just on the paper.