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Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles
The everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political battles that have shaped Egyptian education, from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of digital disruption in the twenty-first
From the 1952 revolution onward, a main purpose of formal education in Egypt was to socialize children and youth into adopting certain attitudes and behaviors conducive to the regimes in power. Control by the state over education was never entirely hegemonic. National education came increasingly under pressure due to a combination of the growing privatization of the education sector, the growth of political Islam, and rapidly changing digital technologies.
Educating Egypt traces the everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political and economic contests over education from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of global change and digital disruption in the twenty-first. Its overarching theme is that schooling and education, broadly defined, have consistently mirrored larger debates about what constitutes the model citizen and the educated person. Drawing on three decades of ethnographic research inside Egyptian schools and among Egyptian youth, Linda Herrera asks what happens when education actors harbor fundamentally different ideas about the purpose, provision, and meaning of education. Her research shows that, far from serving as a unifying social force, education is in reality an ongoing battleground of interests, ideas, and visions of the good society.
From the 1952 revolution onward, a main purpose of formal education in Egypt was to socialize children and youth into adopting certain attitudes and behaviors conducive to the regimes in power. Control by the state over education was never entirely hegemonic. National education came increasingly under pressure due to a combination of the growing privatization of the education sector, the growth of political Islam, and rapidly changing digital technologies.
Educating Egypt traces the everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political and economic contests over education from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of global change and digital disruption in the twenty-first. Its overarching theme is that schooling and education, broadly defined, have consistently mirrored larger debates about what constitutes the model citizen and the educated person. Drawing on three decades of ethnographic research inside Egyptian schools and among Egyptian youth, Linda Herrera asks what happens when education actors harbor fundamentally different ideas about the purpose, provision, and meaning of education. Her research shows that, far from serving as a unifying social force, education is in reality an ongoing battleground of interests, ideas, and visions of the good society.
- GenresEgypt
242 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 4, 2022
A rich account on education policies in Egypt since the 1990s. The book is based on fieldwork conducted by the author in different time periods (ethnographic research 1990-1991, interviews 2006 and 2007, and then concludes by bringing more recent issues such as digital transformation and hybrid education in light of the pandemic in 2020.
I like how the book is interdisciplinary. It is structured chronologically, giving the reader a historical account, and at the same time uses anthropological and political approaches to unpack complex topics like identity, nationalism, and counter-nationalism.
A must-read if you are interested in education and how schools are sites for political socialization, making them the foundation of nation-building.
April 28, 2023
one of the most deeply researched books on modern egypt, education being entangled with a wide range of aspects of egyptian life :)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews