English Review: Journal of English Education (Dec 2012)
THE DILEMMA OF MULTILINGUALISM IN IRAN
Abstract
Iran is a multilingual country with linguistic and cultural diversity. Minority languages such as Turkish, Kurdish, Baluchi and Arabic are spoken in Iran which constitutes part of the culture and ethnic identity. Iranian community is dominantly a bilingual community. Persian as an official language used as linguistic and cultural homogenization while minority languages are not used in education system. The controversy bilingual education and programs to serve language minority students is complex and puzzling for education authorities. On the other hand one of the challenges Iranian faces is how to reconcile conflicting perspectives of bilingual education regarding globalizing of English. Currently, most of parents prefer their children to learn English as it is the language of business, aviation and scientific research. In contrast according to Iran’s comprehensive scientific plan, Persian should be scientific language of the world in the near future. In this research, challenges, perspectives and solutions of bilingual education in Iran were analyzed. The results indicate that conflicting of minority, majority and international language is an important challenge and developing, promotion and expansion of Persian is a future outlook. Furthermore some suggestions and solutions to reconcile bilingual education were made.
