On the Cultural Censorship of English Textbooks in Iran: Possible or Impossible, Necessary or Unnecessary

The issue of culture in teaching and learning English has been controversial, in particular, in some Islamic countries like Iran. This study is an attempt to explore the attitudes of fifteen Iranian experienced instructors of English towards the censorship of cultural aspects of English in English Textbooks via semi-structured interviewing. Each participant was asked 13 questions aimed at eliciting their attitudes towards teaching cultural aspects of English in their classrooms. Furthermore, the study investigated the effects of teacher-related variables such as political background, viz being inclined to the right- or left wing or being a moderate, to see if that could influence how English instructors might look at the possibility and necessity of cultural censorship of English textbooks. The results suggest that there is a meaningful difference between the politically reformist and modernist on one hand, and the fundamentalist English instructors on the other hand in terms of their overall attitude towards teaching culture and its censorship. On the other hand, all the participants in the study seem to believe that there needs to be a profound change in how the issue of culture is dealt in English classes. Finally, the study cashing in on the results attained argues that it is neither linguistically possible nor pedagogically necessary to censor English textbooks. To this end, golden mean appears to lie in what Kumaravadivelu calls ‘raising cultural consciousness’: neither expurgating nor empathising but empowering learners to ‘elicit a synthesis’.