How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

by David Goldman

The Iranian mother of seven children in the 1960s or 1970s had a primary school education, if any. By the mid-1980s, illiterate Iranian women had nearly five children. Women with a primary school education had an average of three and a half. Those with a high school diploma had slightly over two. But university-educated Iranian women had a fertility rate of just 1.3, about the same as the lowest levels registered in Western Europe. As more Iranian women went through the school system, the researchers conclude, fewer had children. The fertility rate for each education level also declined steadily, and the overall fertility rate imploded. The few remaining illiterate women in Iran—mainly in the restive eastern province of Baluchistan—still have seven children, and the minority of Iranian women with only a primary school education still have four children. But, no thanks to the Islamist regime, Iran’s women are the best educated in the Muslim world. Iran’s secular government under the late Shah put enormous efforts into education during the 1970s and 1980s, with the goal of eliminating adult illiteracy by 1985. A “Literacy Corps” allowed young men with a high school diploma to teach reading to illiterate children as an alternative to military service, and two hundred thousand volunteered. 6 Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution slowed but could not stop the literacy movement set in motion by the deposed Shah.