Ali
Mohammadian's gesture, copied by his entire class of 23 pupils, stops bullying
and attracts praise from all over country
theguardian.com,
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, 28 January 2014
Ali Mohammadian and his pupils, who shaved their heads in solidarity with a bullied pupil. Photograph: Bahman Shahbazi for Tasnim News |
When
Iranian schoolteacher Ali Mohammadian noticed that one of his students was
bullied after going bald as a result of a mysterious illness, he decided to
show solidarity and shave his own hair. In no time, his entire class shaved
their heads and the bullying stopped.
Now,
Mohammadian who teaches at Sheikh Shaltoot's elementary school in Marivan, a
Kurdish city in the west of Iran, has become a national hero. President Hassan
Rouhani has praised him, the government has offered financial support for the
pupil's medical treatment and his story has reached the four corners of his
country.
"I'm
so happy that this has touched many hearts and people reacted enormously
positive," the 45-year-old teacher told the Guardian by phone from
Marivan. "Everyone in the school now wants to shave their head."
Earlier
this month, Mohammadian posted a picture of himself with eight-year-old Mahan
Rahimi on Facebook. "Our heads are sensitive to hair," he wrote on
the social network in support of his student. "Mahan had become isolated
after going bald, smile had disappeared from his face and I was concerned about
his class performance. That's why I thought about shaving my head to get him
back on track," he said.
Mohammadian's
Facebook post soon caught the eyes of hundreds of Iranian web users. "When
I logged in to my Facebook the next day, I couldn't believe the number of
people who had liked it and shared it," he said.
Iranian
media, including national TV, interviewed him and Iran's education minister,
Ali Asghar Fani, soon invited both to Tehran for a formal thank-you. The
governor of the Kurdistan province, Abdolmohammad Zahedi, also conveyed the
president's message to him.
In a matter
of days, Mohammadian's 23 other students in the class were inspired by their
teacher's action and insisted that they, too, wanted to shave their heads.
"I told them to wait until the winter's cold weather was over but when we
came back from Tehran, they had all shaved," he said. "This Saturday
morning I stepped into the class and everyone had gone bald."
Doctors at
the Razi hospital in Tehran told the state television that Mahan had problems
in his immune system but they were investigating the exact nature of his
disease. According to the teacher, medics in Tehran have also sent samples to
Germany for a possible diagnosis. "Mahan's classmates have since become
supportive of him and a smile is back on his face," said the teacher.
Mohammadian
has 23 years of teaching experience and has two daughters and a son. "In
places like Syria and Iraq or Sudan, children are being killed every day and in
places like Pakistan and India child labour is widespread. I'm extremely
worried about the horrific ordeals those children face on a daily basis."
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