Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles

by Linda Herrera

Overview

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. Egyptian 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781649031020
Publisher:	American University in Cairo Press, The
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Linda Herrera, a social anthropologist with regional expertise in North Africa and West Asia with a focus on Egypt, is a professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research deals broadly with education, citizenship, youth cultures, and geopolitics. Her books include, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet, Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East, Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (with A. Bayat), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (with C.A. Torres).

Table of Contents

Figures and Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

Educating Egypt: From Nation Building to Digital Disruption

Part 1 Schooling the Nation: Inside a Girls' Preparatory School

1 An Ethnographer's Orientation 19

2 Schooling Citizens 35

3 Educating Girls 49

4 Teachers of the Nation 67

5 Grade Fever 83

Part 2 Political Islam and Education

6 The Islamist Wave and Education Markets 99

7 Experiments in Counternationalism 113

8 Downveiling 127

Part 3 Youth in a Changing Global Order

9 Education, Empire, and Global Citizenship 135

10 Young Egyptians' Quest for Jobs and Justice 149

11 Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt 163

12 It's Time to Talk about Youth in the Middle East as "The Precariat" 183

Part 4 Conclusions and Future Directions

13 Is the School as We Know It on Its Way to Extinction? 193

Notes 201

References 215

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

"A collection of studies conducted over the last 30 years by the preeminent American scholar of education in Egypt, this book paints an evocative portrait of the educational philosophies, institutions, and practices that have so poorly equipped Egyptian young people for the world they encounter as adults."—Foreign Affairs

“[A] gem of a book in the expanding literature on the sociology of education and civic values in Egypt and the MENA region.”—Contemporary Sociology

"[E]ngages some of the most difficult issues facing Egyptian students, parents, teachers, and state officials as this critical sector struggles under the accumulated weight of failed policies promoted by both Egyptian officials and international development 'experts.'”—Laurie A. Brand, Political Science Quarterly

"[A] valuable and timely contribution to the small but expanding literature that views education as a way to understand societal structures and imaginaries and how they change."—Die Welt des Islams

"A seminal work of original, informative, insightful, and thought-provoking scholarship. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, Educating Egypt will be of particular interest to students of modern Egyptian political, educational, and cultural history."—Midwest Book Review

"What makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research. Combining ethnography and oral history with critical analysis of educational policies, laws, textbooks, and school curricula, Herrera offers a detailed, comprehensive study of educational policy in modern Egypt."—Khaled Fahmy, University of Cambridge

"This book steers a skillful route through the complexity of education in Egypt, but it does more than that. It deals with the complexity of Egyptian society in general, against the background of mass poverty, high levels of unemployment, the digital divide, the country's geopolitical location, and long standing mores with respect to gender and other social relations. These all impinge on the education of Egyptian children, youth, and especially girls as Educating Egypt's thick ethnographic descriptions show. I cannot think of any better 'foreigner' than Linda Herrera, who lived and studied in Egypt, to carry out the task of researching all of the above. This volume proves me right."—Peter Mayo, University of Malta

From the Publisher