29 May 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
Eight years ago my colleagues and I set out to see what school life was like for 11-13 year olds around the world. I went to Iran, and spent several days with girls at a Tehran school. The building was a large house, once home to a wealthy Iranian family — I speculated they were possibly living in exile since, or forced into smaller accommodation, or perhaps the father was imprisoned or killed, if they had a son he may have been sent to the frontline during the Iran-Iraq war, or been lucky enough to flee the country if he was under 13 — the age of conscription. These houses were taken over by the revolutionary guard in 1979 and 1980 and such scenarios were common.
The school day began in the school courtyard — once the garden — the girls standing in rows in their black uniforms, for assembly. A large swimming pool stood empty along the left hand wall and the inside walls were covered in the regime’s flags. I stood to the side as the girls repeated the morning prayers and anti-West chants coming from a loudspeaker. I watched their faces, finding the same playful expressions of my own school assembly days. The focus may have been different but the distracted anticipation towards the day, best friends by our sides, was the same.
I saw many unfamiliar and disconcerting things while visiting the school, most notably a point system that was at play: The family living room remained furnished with a majestic Persian carpet but the room now served as the school’s prayer room. Girls removed their shoes at the door and entered at their own chosen time during different free periods throughout the day. For each visit to the prayer room they were awarded individual points, accumulated to be able to participate in fun school activities. But what I left the school with, was a sense of proximity to the outside world. The girls’ favourite stories were the Harry Potter books — in translation in the school library — their idea of beauty was Jennifer Lopez, the questions they asked me were those of girls at the cusp of puberty. Trends and fashion seep through even the most austere structures.
Earlier this month Jack Kirby wrote in Guardian Weekly about how the regime controls usage of the English language and the Western culture it provides access to, in Iranian schools and the rest of society.
Now a recent documentary gives us fresh insight into the daily lives of teenage girls in an Iranian school — from surface constraints and pupils being suspended for plucking their eyebrows, to a more important rare glimpse at the girls’ thoughts and ideas. Director Nahid Rezai was herself a pupil at the school 25 years ago and goes back to introduce herself to the pupils there, reflecting on her dreams and aspirations then, and asking the girls where they would like to be 20 years from now. More a series of vox pops commenting on every aspect of life, the film is exceptional viewing for anyone interested in the individual psyches of young women in Iran today. Watch it in five 10 minute parts here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLTNZJNP_MY
26 Oct 2010 | Uncategorized
If you ever imagined that, over time, British journalism would inevitably adjust to the society it serves by becoming less white and less middle class, now is probably the time to abandon that idea.
For a few exciting years it looked as though improvement might be on the way, but sharp increases in university fees will surely put paid to that. Like it or not, for at least another generation your news and current affairs will continue to come to you through that white, middle-class filter.
The window of hope that is now closing was opened by the universities, which over the past 20 years quietly took over responsibility for most journalism education after the big news organisations, national and regional, cut down or shut down their training schemes to save money.
At first the media studies departments did the teaching, but now universities teach journalism as a subject in its own right, often at both undergraduate and MA levels. This transformation has been almost entirely state-funded, which means the news industry pulled off the clever trick of nationalising its own training.
But if this change has given employers a free, trained talent pool (they ask for their applicants to be “newsroom-ready”, like so many supermarket chickens), it has also had the potential to bring valuable long-term change to the industry.
For one thing, universities teach students to think about journalism as well as do it; they teach about the ethics, responsibilities, history, politics and social function of the job – never high priorities when the industry was training its own. Call me an idealist, but I think that could only improve the news culture in this country.
For another, the universities have operated open, transparent recruitment and admissions policies which gave applicants from ethnic minorities and from poorer backgrounds a far better chance than before of getting an education in journalism.
There are drawbacks. Experience of the workplace is important in journalism education, as was recognised in the old sandwich courses. Universities can’t provide that themselves, or at least they can’t provide enough of it, and the result is the journalism work experience phenomenon, a powerful filter that halts the progress of many who can’t afford to work for several months for no pay.
None the less, university journalism departments have been quietly turning out able, independent-minded, thoughtful graduates who, though they are by no means a perfect reflection of the society they live in, collectively reflect it far, far better than the industry itself does. In other words, more people from poor backgrounds, more people from the ethnic minorities, more disabled people, more women…
The idealist in me fondly imagines this generation, over time, moving through the system and helping to change the way that British society sees and understands itself.
But a big hike in university fees, combined with other effects of the reforms proposed by the government and Lord Browne, will cut this precious experiment short.
Of all the professions, journalism is surely among the most vulnerable when it comes to the kind of touch cost-benefit analysis that school leavers and parents will have to do in a world of higher fees. Undeniably, the news industry is in existential crisis: yes, it offers thrilling new possibilities, but it is distinctly short on security.
In this environment, whatever Vince Cable and Nick Clegg may say, poorer students — by which I mean students who are not middle class — are more likely to back away than risk the big debts that will accompany a journalism degree.
The next generation of journalists, therefore, will probably have just the same social profile as the generation currently supplying us with news, even though the country around us will have changed.
It reminds me of those generals in the Crimean War whose mindset equipped them to fight only in the way that Wellington had fought Napoleon 40 years earlier. They made a terrible hash of it.
Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University London.
27 Sep 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
The Education Ministry has banned a history textbook that includes both the Israeli and Palestinian narrative of the Middle East conflict. The principal of a high school in Sderot was summoned to the ministry after his school was found to be using the book, entitled Learning the Historical Narrative of the Other. The school’s history syllabus, which aims to encourage understanding between the two peoples, was rejected by the head of the ministry’s pedagogic secretariat, Zvi Zamaret.
