Jonathan Vincent’s Reviews > Schooling the Nation: Education and Everyday Politics in Egypt > Status Update
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 152 of 284
More exam questions:
Love of the homeland is part of religious faith and should be translated into words and deeds. Write expressing your noble feelings and describing what youth should do to serve their homeland.
— Oct 06, 2023 05:54AM
Love of the homeland is part of religious faith and should be translated into words and deeds. Write expressing your noble feelings and describing what youth should do to serve their homeland.
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Jonathan Vincent’s Previous Updates
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 152 of 284
Final exam essay questions in Egypt:
Egypt, God's quiver on Earth, has unified its people and sacrificed its youth and money to fight off the barbaric attacks of the Tartars and the Europeans, and still has prominence in defending it's nation and unifying it. Write about the role Egypt takes in the defense of the Arab nation and achieving it's unity.
— Oct 06, 2023 05:52AM
Egypt, God's quiver on Earth, has unified its people and sacrificed its youth and money to fight off the barbaric attacks of the Tartars and the Europeans, and still has prominence in defending it's nation and unifying it. Write about the role Egypt takes in the defense of the Arab nation and achieving it's unity.
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 146 of 284
The few pages devoted to Coptic Christian History in history textbooks ends with an assignment to pupils to "write ten lines to the Danish cartoonist who insulted the Prophet."
— Oct 06, 2023 05:04AM
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 135 of 284
So apparently Egyptian history textbooks make explicit that following a revolution, the role of the people is to "go back to work." Like they can participate in overthrowing the old regime, but constructing the new one is for the elites only.
It's almost like an insurance mechanism- any revolution will just leave similar groups in power. Strange that it's made so clear though.
— Oct 05, 2023 07:25AM
It's almost like an insurance mechanism- any revolution will just leave similar groups in power. Strange that it's made so clear though.
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 121 of 284
So something I've been thinking a lot about recently is that the progressive West seems to be generally "winning" culturally worldwide, and this book has another example of it: lower class schoolgirls in Egypt take deliberately sexual pictures in tight fitting clothes to show friends to seem more "upper class" which really I think means more Western. The author says this is overriding conservative Islamic ideals
— Oct 05, 2023 06:27AM
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 116 of 284
He describes a new way of student violence... such as smuggling soft weapons like blades and knives into schools.
Soft?? 🤨🤨🤨🤨
— Oct 05, 2023 06:11AM
Soft?? 🤨🤨🤨🤨
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 114 of 284
Not a quote, but an interesting observation: feminist groups in Egypt have a hard time motivating poor female students to focus on education because un- and underemployment are high, wages are low, and sexual harassment is ubiquitous. Marriage is simply a better option, and education isn't required for that.
— Oct 05, 2023 06:07AM
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 113 of 284
Rebellion in schools revolves around displays of traditional gender roles. Boys focus on the "real world" of employment and responsibility while girls accentuate their feminity by exaggerating maturity and focusing on romance, marriage, and child-rearing.
Both of these serve to trap poor class students in poverty by pushing them into low-wage jobs and early marriages.
— Oct 05, 2023 06:05AM
Both of these serve to trap poor class students in poverty by pushing them into low-wage jobs and early marriages.
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 52 of 284
These conditions have led to increased inequality and diminishing returns to education. Education has been substantially devalued in the face of a rapidly increasing supply of educated individuals and limited expansion in the demand for educated labor.
— Sep 24, 2023 04:36AM
Jonathan Vincent
is on page 2 of 284
"Under British colonialism, Egyptian schools were critical arenas for the struggle of independence, and in the postcolonial era were considered powerful vehicles for socializing the youth into state socialism and Arab nationalism."
This helped solidify something for me that I've been thinking about with Russia. In the USSR, schools were necessary to impart the ideology of the state...
— Sep 20, 2023 01:45PM
This helped solidify something for me that I've been thinking about with Russia. In the USSR, schools were necessary to impart the ideology of the state...
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Emilie
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Oct 06, 2023 06:13AM
The fact this isn’t an American exam question is what’s wrong with the world
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No honestly, a lot of the stuff I'm reading about how mainstream Egyptian society deals with religion, religious minorities, the state, etc. Is just like American Evangelical Christians except like 5 times stronger and with less self awareness. Like 10 percent of Egypt is Christian, and their relations with the rest of the country is... rocky, to say the least. And textbooks in Egypt go on and on about how much they love equality and how all religions are equal (as long as they're monotheistic) but then the textbooks are full of quotes from the Quran and talk about Islam being the source of all morality and that to be an Egyptian is to embrace the proper Islamic values. I don't think they see the contradiction there either, which is pure Evangelical- well of course we respect other religions, but I don't see why it's a problem for schools to assign readings from the Bible and organize Christian prayers, how could you be against that, the Bible is where goodness and morality stems from, and children need to hear about Jesus, of course.
Like I've had multiple Evangelicals be surprised when I told them that Jews don't talk about Jesus ever, because they don't really get what else you could have a religion about. They just don't realize what it's like to be a minority and they blithely assume their beliefs (which are the correct ones of course) are universal and uncontroversial.
But yeah, this reads like an American exam question from the late 1800s
Is very interesting how in Spain a lot of the time a strong national sense is also linked to very religious families, not only because well... Dictatorship, nationalism and religion, but I feel like it also conveys a very strong sense of patriotism as THE ultimate secular religion
Someone’s read his leftist theory *eyroll*
Interesting! The author makes the point that the opposite has occurred in Egypt. Basically there's so much state propaganda while the state is failing so catastrophically that people feel a lot of disdain for the state/country. It's religion they retain respect for. I wouldn't be surprised if something like what Spain had was the goal, but they just failed at it because the Egyptian government generally sucks.
