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Schooling the Nation: Education and Everyday Politics in Egypt
Telling the story of the Egyptian uprising through the lens of education, Hania Sobhy explores the everyday realities of citizens in the years before and after the so-called 'Arab Spring'. With vivid narratives from students and staff from Egyptian schools, Sobhy offers novel insights on the years that led to and followed the unrest of 2011. Drawing a holistic portrait of education in Egypt, she reveals the constellations of violence, neglect and marketization that pervaded schools, and shows how young people negotiated the state and national belonging. By approaching schools as key disciplinary and nation-building institutions, this book outlines the various ways in which citizenship was produced, lived, and imagined during those critical years. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
282 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 23, 2023
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October 9, 2023
So, I thought I’d try writing a full review for this book. It covers the decline of the Egyptian education system, how it attempts (and largely fails) to enforce state narratives, the use of discipline, and how students react to the system.
I chose to read it because I remember talking to Egyptians about their time in school, and largely hearing negative things, unless they attended an elite private foreign language school (English, German, or French). I also saw jokes in movies about it, like English teachers who didn’t speak English and just repeated phrases from a book.
Turns out, it was all pretty accurate.
I’m going to break this initial part down into two questions: why has education in Egypt declined and what is the reaction of students to it?
1. The Decline of Egyptian Education
So, it’s important to establish that Egypt hasn’t always had a terrible educational system. It’s never exactly been world class, but there was the bones of a decent system established under British colonialism and then brought to the masses during the presidencies of Nasser and Sadat. Access is pretty much universal, with most children attending primary and secondary school. All of this led to an educational system that was fairly standard in quality for a developing country, with the most outstanding feature being the high number of students who enrolled in university afterwards. In the last thirty years, however, the educational system has been undergoing a slow-motion collapse. The author cites a variety of scores on this- international expert assessments, cross-national exam scores, literacy rates- and all paint the same picture: Egyptian students have been getting a progressively worse education for thirty years, including on subjects like basic literacy.
The reasons are complex, but there’s one big one: dis-investment. Egypt’s population has been growing rapidly, but outlays for education have been stagnant, or, at times, decreasing. The author blames this on a switch from state socialism under Nasser and Sadat to what she terms “repressive-permissive neoliberalism” under Mubarak- the poor can do what they want and should expect no support from the state, but if they cross the line, they get crushed. I understand why she gave this a formal name, but I’m not sure it makes sense to speak of it as an ideology. To me, it seems like officials in Egypt who benefit from corruption simply do not benefit by spending more money on education- if they did, there’d be less money for them to take. Sure, they’d benefit eventually if the economy grew due to improved human capital, but their share of that would be tiny- it makes more sense to just take what they can now.
This related directly to something I noticed throughout the book, although the author didn’t explicitly say it: it’s not clear that Egypt really needs a competent educational system to keep functioning at its present state. Unemployment is extremely high (reaching to a majority of people under 30) and many people with jobs work only part time. It’s common for people to graduate university, including with “good” degrees like engineering and medicine, and then be unable to find a job. Partially, this is because the education isn’t all that good at many universities, but an even more fundamental bottleneck seems to be that there’s no real mechanism for generating jobs in Egypt- there’s too much corruption, government regulations are intentionally burdensome, and there’s little FDI. In the sense, an educational system modeled off the West, where education prepares students for plentiful jobs in a variety of sectors, looks almost like a cargo cult.
Disinvestment has a variety of effects. Classrooms are overcrowded and facilities are old. There’s little equipment for classes. And perhaps most importantly: teachers are underpaid. Massively, massively underpaid. Pay rates and purchasing power have varied, but the pay is almost the lowest in the Arab world and scarcely enough to live on. This means that very few competent people actually try to become teachers- in Egypt, the degree you can get is based off of state exam scores, and becoming a teacher requires a very low score. The education they then receive in university is frequently awful, leading to situations where teachers barely understand their subjects- English teachers who barely speak English, for example.
To compensate for their low pay, teachers have two strategies: not teaching and earning money as tutors. These go hand in hand. Many teachers simply don’t teach in school so that students are forced to pay for private lessons. Others fail students who don’t go to paid classes. Corporal punishment in Egyptian schools is also very common, so some teachers will beat and humiliate students who won’t pay for private tutoring (often because their parents can’t afford it). But even more broadly, many teachers just don’t really work. They start class late, chat, don’t come to work. This isn’t universal at all- many teachers try their hardest- but it’s fairly common. But it leads to Egypt having one of the largest education achievement gaps between the rich, who can afford tutoring, and the poor, who can’t.
The tutoring industry is truly gigantic. Poor and middle class Egyptian families spend huge sums of money on private tutors, who are virtually all public school teachers. It’s not small group work, either- it’s full-on classes, one tutor teaching dozens of kids. It’s the privatization of the educational system, but it’s not really a solution to the problem, due to a second issue: a broken incentive structure.
Students receive grades based on state exams and teachers are rated based on their results. Teachers, even conscientious ones, are therefore incentivized to teach for the exam as strongly as possible. So, logically, they focus heavily on memorization. Some sell students the exam answers and have them memorize it. Others just teach the students the scraps of English or math they need, not really trying to actual teach them skills. Many students and parents actually prefer this- their goal is to do well on the exam, not actually learn. The skills themselves aren’t valued- often logically, a student from a poor family probably won’t need algebra.
2. The Reaction of Students
Egyptian students are incredibly aware of all of this. One of the most common phrases the author heard was “There is no education.” Students show up late, skip class, work odd jobs during school, study only for the exams, cheat, and don’t pay attention in class. This gets more universal the poorer the school is. Many poor students know they’ll never go to university, and even if they do, they’ll probably never get a good job, so much of the education is pointless for them. They tend to react in gendered ways- boys start working early, and emphasize their independence and ability to provide, while girls get really into romance and marriage, planning on finding a husband young to avoid the job market.
All of this basically negates the state’s attempt to establish patriotism among the youth. Many young people experience Egypt as poverty, an uncaring state, unemployment, and unfair discipline from teachers and police. All attempts in textbooks and “mandatory” patriotic assemblies (that most people skip) to counter this fall flat. Many people want to emigrate, others casually dismiss the country and government and look up to countries like the US and China. Instead, it’s Islam that tends to incite attachment. The only time the author had a tense encounter with students was when she corrected a student’s (incorrect) belief about Islam, and angered the group she was interviewing. Many teachers are Islamists, something deliberately pushed under Sadat and Mubarak. Despite this, many students are not particularly devout personally- they watch porn, do drugs, wear revealing clothing, etc.- Islam is more of a cultural label than something to actually practice for many.
But overall, the general feeling is one of resignation. Few teachers, students, or parents truly believe the system can be improved- the problems are too deep-rooted and the central government has shown little interest in fixing them. Meanwhile, inflation and the falling pound eat away at teacher’s salaries. Corrupt officials, as said before, don’t have a reason to fix the system- they’re growing wealthy off the system as-is, and have no intention of changing anything.
Random notes:
1. The US paid to remove many negative references to Israel from Egyptian textbooks.
2. Officials with Western training often can’t make changes like switching from lectures to group assignments because teachers refuse to do them. Students aren’t interested either often- this isn’t going to help them on the test.
3. Egyptian schools seem basically powerless- one couldn’t get people to stop burning trash in front of it every few days.
I chose to read it because I remember talking to Egyptians about their time in school, and largely hearing negative things, unless they attended an elite private foreign language school (English, German, or French). I also saw jokes in movies about it, like English teachers who didn’t speak English and just repeated phrases from a book.
Turns out, it was all pretty accurate.
I’m going to break this initial part down into two questions: why has education in Egypt declined and what is the reaction of students to it?
1. The Decline of Egyptian Education
So, it’s important to establish that Egypt hasn’t always had a terrible educational system. It’s never exactly been world class, but there was the bones of a decent system established under British colonialism and then brought to the masses during the presidencies of Nasser and Sadat. Access is pretty much universal, with most children attending primary and secondary school. All of this led to an educational system that was fairly standard in quality for a developing country, with the most outstanding feature being the high number of students who enrolled in university afterwards. In the last thirty years, however, the educational system has been undergoing a slow-motion collapse. The author cites a variety of scores on this- international expert assessments, cross-national exam scores, literacy rates- and all paint the same picture: Egyptian students have been getting a progressively worse education for thirty years, including on subjects like basic literacy.
The reasons are complex, but there’s one big one: dis-investment. Egypt’s population has been growing rapidly, but outlays for education have been stagnant, or, at times, decreasing. The author blames this on a switch from state socialism under Nasser and Sadat to what she terms “repressive-permissive neoliberalism” under Mubarak- the poor can do what they want and should expect no support from the state, but if they cross the line, they get crushed. I understand why she gave this a formal name, but I’m not sure it makes sense to speak of it as an ideology. To me, it seems like officials in Egypt who benefit from corruption simply do not benefit by spending more money on education- if they did, there’d be less money for them to take. Sure, they’d benefit eventually if the economy grew due to improved human capital, but their share of that would be tiny- it makes more sense to just take what they can now.
This related directly to something I noticed throughout the book, although the author didn’t explicitly say it: it’s not clear that Egypt really needs a competent educational system to keep functioning at its present state. Unemployment is extremely high (reaching to a majority of people under 30) and many people with jobs work only part time. It’s common for people to graduate university, including with “good” degrees like engineering and medicine, and then be unable to find a job. Partially, this is because the education isn’t all that good at many universities, but an even more fundamental bottleneck seems to be that there’s no real mechanism for generating jobs in Egypt- there’s too much corruption, government regulations are intentionally burdensome, and there’s little FDI. In the sense, an educational system modeled off the West, where education prepares students for plentiful jobs in a variety of sectors, looks almost like a cargo cult.
Disinvestment has a variety of effects. Classrooms are overcrowded and facilities are old. There’s little equipment for classes. And perhaps most importantly: teachers are underpaid. Massively, massively underpaid. Pay rates and purchasing power have varied, but the pay is almost the lowest in the Arab world and scarcely enough to live on. This means that very few competent people actually try to become teachers- in Egypt, the degree you can get is based off of state exam scores, and becoming a teacher requires a very low score. The education they then receive in university is frequently awful, leading to situations where teachers barely understand their subjects- English teachers who barely speak English, for example.
To compensate for their low pay, teachers have two strategies: not teaching and earning money as tutors. These go hand in hand. Many teachers simply don’t teach in school so that students are forced to pay for private lessons. Others fail students who don’t go to paid classes. Corporal punishment in Egyptian schools is also very common, so some teachers will beat and humiliate students who won’t pay for private tutoring (often because their parents can’t afford it). But even more broadly, many teachers just don’t really work. They start class late, chat, don’t come to work. This isn’t universal at all- many teachers try their hardest- but it’s fairly common. But it leads to Egypt having one of the largest education achievement gaps between the rich, who can afford tutoring, and the poor, who can’t.
The tutoring industry is truly gigantic. Poor and middle class Egyptian families spend huge sums of money on private tutors, who are virtually all public school teachers. It’s not small group work, either- it’s full-on classes, one tutor teaching dozens of kids. It’s the privatization of the educational system, but it’s not really a solution to the problem, due to a second issue: a broken incentive structure.
Students receive grades based on state exams and teachers are rated based on their results. Teachers, even conscientious ones, are therefore incentivized to teach for the exam as strongly as possible. So, logically, they focus heavily on memorization. Some sell students the exam answers and have them memorize it. Others just teach the students the scraps of English or math they need, not really trying to actual teach them skills. Many students and parents actually prefer this- their goal is to do well on the exam, not actually learn. The skills themselves aren’t valued- often logically, a student from a poor family probably won’t need algebra.
2. The Reaction of Students
Egyptian students are incredibly aware of all of this. One of the most common phrases the author heard was “There is no education.” Students show up late, skip class, work odd jobs during school, study only for the exams, cheat, and don’t pay attention in class. This gets more universal the poorer the school is. Many poor students know they’ll never go to university, and even if they do, they’ll probably never get a good job, so much of the education is pointless for them. They tend to react in gendered ways- boys start working early, and emphasize their independence and ability to provide, while girls get really into romance and marriage, planning on finding a husband young to avoid the job market.
All of this basically negates the state’s attempt to establish patriotism among the youth. Many young people experience Egypt as poverty, an uncaring state, unemployment, and unfair discipline from teachers and police. All attempts in textbooks and “mandatory” patriotic assemblies (that most people skip) to counter this fall flat. Many people want to emigrate, others casually dismiss the country and government and look up to countries like the US and China. Instead, it’s Islam that tends to incite attachment. The only time the author had a tense encounter with students was when she corrected a student’s (incorrect) belief about Islam, and angered the group she was interviewing. Many teachers are Islamists, something deliberately pushed under Sadat and Mubarak. Despite this, many students are not particularly devout personally- they watch porn, do drugs, wear revealing clothing, etc.- Islam is more of a cultural label than something to actually practice for many.
But overall, the general feeling is one of resignation. Few teachers, students, or parents truly believe the system can be improved- the problems are too deep-rooted and the central government has shown little interest in fixing them. Meanwhile, inflation and the falling pound eat away at teacher’s salaries. Corrupt officials, as said before, don’t have a reason to fix the system- they’re growing wealthy off the system as-is, and have no intention of changing anything.
Random notes:
1. The US paid to remove many negative references to Israel from Egyptian textbooks.
2. Officials with Western training often can’t make changes like switching from lectures to group assignments because teachers refuse to do them. Students aren’t interested either often- this isn’t going to help them on the test.
3. Egyptian schools seem basically powerless- one couldn’t get people to stop burning trash in front of it every few days.
April 28, 2025
Hania Sobhy's exploration of the Egyptian uprising through the lens of education offers an insightful perspective on the social and political shifts in the years surrounding the 2011 unrest. By incorporating firsthand narratives from students and teachers, she paints a vivid picture of life in Egypt before and after the Arab Spring. If you're seeking help with your academic writing, https://canadianwritings.com/ can provide expert support for all your needs. Canadianwritings offers high-quality academic assistance, ensuring your work stands out. Sobhy’s approach to understanding how education shaped citizenship during this period is an essential contribution to the discourse on national identity and change.
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