Educational discourses of the first new schools in Iran during the Qajar period

The emergence of new schools is one of the unique events in contemporary Iranian history. Various analyzes have focused on explaining the formation of a school in Iran. But these analyzes have some kind of reducibility and simplification in explaining this historical event. This paper attempts to present a more general narrative of the emergence of a school in Iran through discourse analysis and the examination of historical evidence and documents. An examination of historical evidence suggests that diverse forces have contributed to the formation of new schools in Iran and that it is impossible to reduce the establishment of a school to a political-social force. The claim of this article is that three discourses of civil education, peasant education and Muslim education were formed around the first new schools in Iran. Each of these discourses attempted to monitor and control the management and activities of schools, and there was a kind of discursive battle around the new schools. Understanding the discourses shaped for the first time around school education can provide an in-depth insight into how the school is formed for those interested in educational studies.