Tehran, March 15: Iranian youths can attend courtship classes and earn a diploma before tying the knot as part of a newly launched government scheme to cut the divorce rate.
The National Youth Organisation has unveiled an online course to educate the republic’s overwhelmingly young population on how to find Mr or Mrs Right, pop the question, and live happily ever after.
Interactive and lasting three months, the course designed by academics and clerics requires pupils seeking the diploma to sit for weekly tests.
Iran’s conservative leaders condemn dating and relationships out of wedlock and like to see men and women married off ideally in their early 20s.
But according to official estimates, the average age of marriage has risen to 29, mainly due to economic hardship.
Since rising to power five years ago, conservatives in the parliament and government have made a mantra of “facilitating marriage for young people” in Iran, where about 60 percent of the 70-million population is under 30.
Officials insist Iranians need awareness without revealing much about the content of the course.
“Marriage needs hundreds of hours of education,” Mehrdad Bazrpash, a deputy to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and head of the National Youth Organisation, said on Saturday as he inaugurated the programme in Tehran.
Ahmad Borjali, a psychologist and adviser to the initiative, said the divorce rate has gone up steadily since 2006, rising by 15.7 percent in 2009 compared with the previous year, against a 2.1-percent increase in marriages.
One in every four marriages ends in divorce in Tehran, he said, citing research by social workers.
“Educational work does not cost much,” he said in a speech. “Face-to-face education is much more important and this can be a start given the size of the country.”
Despite its lofty goals the new initiative has been met with scepticism among government critics and academics.
“Awareness is fine but the question is what kind of a family they are seeking to promote,” prominent sociologist Shahla Ezazi said.
Publicity material for the course distributed at the launch showed a very conservative approach by authorities, shunning unmarried romantic relationships and encouraging traditional match-making.
“It is wiser to have different relationships … I will hang out with a few and then choose one,” a boy is depicted as saying in a booklet mocking such lifestyles.
It was contrasted by a pious-looking young man who says “short-term illegitimate relationships harm dignity, but God has left the religiously correct path open.”
The authorities have also urged young people and their families to rein in their ambitions, avoid lavish weddings and drop materialistic goals in a bid to boost marriage.
Ahmadinejad has also vowed to create jobs and provide cheap housing to young couples.
But all that 27-year-old Mina, a dentist’s assistant, wants is to live under the same roof with her fiance of two years.
Her fiance, a civil engineer of the same age, has just been laid off.
“We know everything that there is to know about each other and we get along great,” she said. “But we have to postpone the wedding yet again.”
—Agencies