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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 the population into adopting certain attitudes and behaviors conducive to the regimes in power. Control by the state over education was never entirely hegemonic, however, due to the persistent influence of foreign actors and Islamist movements. Egyptian education came increasingly under pressure due to a combination of the growing privatization of the education sector, which led to a new class of educational entrepreneurs, the growth of political Islam, which triggered a national security upset, and globalization and rapidly changing digital technologies, which transformed cultures and practices of learning both in and out of the classroom.
Educating Egypt traces the everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political battles of education from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of digital disruption in the twenty-first. Its overarching theme is that schooling and education, broadly defined, have consistently mirrored larger political, economic, and cultural notions about what constitutes the good society and the good citizen, even as these notions have been intensely contested. 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 views about the purpose of schooling, the role of the citizen, and the character of the collective “we” of society.
From the 1952 revolution onward, a main purpose of formal education in Egypt was to socialize the population into adopting certain attitudes and behaviors conducive to the regimes in power. Control by the state over education was never entirely hegemonic, however, due to the persistent influence of foreign actors and Islamist movements. Egyptian education came increasingly under pressure due to a combination of the growing privatization of the education sector, which led to a new class of educational entrepreneurs, the growth of political Islam, which triggered a national security upset, and globalization and rapidly changing digital technologies, which transformed cultures and practices of learning both in and out of the classroom.
Educating Egypt traces the everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political battles of education from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of digital disruption in the twenty-first. Its overarching theme is that schooling and education, broadly defined, have consistently mirrored larger political, economic, and cultural notions about what constitutes the good society and the good citizen, even as these notions have been intensely contested. 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 views about the purpose of schooling, the role of the citizen, and the character of the collective “we” of society.
- GenresEgypt
256 pages, Hardcover
Published April 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 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.
August 18, 2026
Contains some valuable commentary. The majority of the scholarship seems to be from the 1990s, while some creeps into the 2000’s and up to Covid. While this is explained in the intro, as you traverse through the book I didn’t always find it clear which of the author’s assertions related to which time period. For a country that has encountered so much rapid change, this made for some ambiguity. Coupled with this, despite being a university press publication laid out as (semi?) academic writing, a lot is written like popular narrative with sometimes (not always) rather colourful (and often damning) illustrations of Egyptian teachers and managers. The author colours her rendering of events and analysis with seemingly subjective opinion, not leaving us much room to make our own assessment. I’ve not read subjectivity like that in an academic format before - I didn’t necessarily always disagree based on what we are given, but I felt suspicious about some depictions feeling a tad more Roald Dahl than PhD. One teacher depicted felt particularly Trunchbullesque. Another teacher who criticised America’s support of Israel was labelled “rumoured to be an extremist”. Bit hard to separate narrative choices from cold hard fact sometimes, due to tone.
That said there was much to find interesting and I found identification in places.
I wonder if there are studies focusing in more depth on the last 15 years?
That said there was much to find interesting and I found identification in places.
I wonder if there are studies focusing in more depth on the last 15 years?
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 - 3 of 3 reviews