| Summary/Abstract |
The advent of “modern” education in Iran and its acceptance by political and cultural elites dates to the Qajar era. But the elitist nature of state reforms prevented modern education from spreading throughout society until the Pahlavi era. Especially during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, modern education reached most segments of the population, including religious families from the middle classes. This research is based on Persian-language documents and informed by the English-language historiography. The article finds that the Islamic Education Society (Jāmeʿeh-ye taʿlimat-e eslāmi) propagated religious modernism through a national network of private schools beginning in the 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s private cultural foundations used the Islamic Education Society’s model to establish the Alavi, Kamāl, and Refāh schools in Tehran. The network that supported them was a reflection of the revolutionary movement and a vehicle for its organization by the 1970s.
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