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AIU School at Tehran, Iran

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AIU Schools The Alliance Israélite Universelle, founded in Paris in 1860, became a major force in modern Jewish education through its goal of fighting for Jewish rights and emancipation. In the heyday of the AIU in the early 1900s, it operated 183 schools with 43,700 students in an area that stretched from Iran to Morocco. In addition to providing a modern French primary and secondary education, many schools had apprenticeship programs to teach agricultural, artisanal, and commercial skills. The schools also emphasized modern Jewish learning: religion, Jewish history, and Hebrew. In most cases, the AIU received a request from the local community to establish a school; while the communities were expected to pay for the school’s upkeep, this was not always possible, and in many schools the majority of the students did not pay tuition. The AIU is active in Jewish education to this day, but most of its schools are now located in France, Canada, and Israel. 

Women's Education AIU schools were the first mass education system for girls in the Middle East. Initially the curricula at girls’ schools differed from the boys’ schools (featuring sewing, embroidery, and knitting) but by the end of the 19th century the curricula became more similar, driven by a trend of coeducational schools. The AIU heavily emphasized moral education for girls, hoping to instill principles that the students would eventually pass on to their children. 

Tehran, Iran

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