Iranian Blogger on Kindergarten Repression
By: Solmaz Sharif
Iranian children are now banned from singing and dancing in kindergarten.
In an interview with Fars News Agency on April 3, 2012, the head of the Welfare Organization for Tehran, Valiollah Nasr, announced: “The authorities will deal severely with kindergartens that have an immoral syllabus which teach children to sing and dance.”
Nasr added, “Their programs should be in line with Islamic values,” but refrained from defining which “Islamic values” they contradict.
The news quickly spread throughout Iranian social media and the blogosphere. Iranian blogger Masud Mashhadi wrote:
“God forbid my youngest daughter hears music from somewhere...She immediately starts to dance. She loves dancing and watches all the episodes of the dance competition TV show on one of the Persian satellite TV channels [mostly broadcast from Los Angeles]. She even recently told me that she decided to join this program and compete with others; she is only five years-old.
“Once, I asked her ‘Do you want to become a doctor or a dancer in the future?’ She immediately replied: ‘Both!’ Now, how can she love her kindergarten if she can’t dance there?”
According to a BBC Persian report, Iranian officials believe that satellite TV channels are a negative influence on Iranian children as parents began uploading homemade YouTube videos of their daughters singing and dancing. The report cites that the government hopes to solve this “problem” by banning singing and dancing in kindergartens.
