Spring 2018, CairoThematic Course
The History of Modern Education in Egypt (1805-1970)
Course details
- Cycle
- Spring 2018, Cairo
- Taught in
- Arabic / English
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Teacher: "What do you know about Logic, Morsi?" Student: "I know that if I hit another person on the head he loses all his logic. Is this logic or isn't it logic, you educated schoolteacher?" -Madrasat al-Mushaghbin (play)
About the course
Everyone agrees that the state of our education is terrible, but few know precisely how it came into being. This course is an invitation to look more closely at our education system and to scrutinize it. Specifically, we analyze concepts such as nationalism, colonialism and modernity and the ways in which they affected the emergence of modern state-run schooling. We spend some time assessing the dynamics within the classroom thus looking at education as a field of negotiation, change and evolution.
We explore how educational institutions have emerged since the mid 19th century and what alternative forms of resistance have arisen in reaction by looking at the works of leading pedagogues, philosophers and their most influential texts.
In short, the course attempts to find logic in the place that seems to lack it the most: our education system.
Who teaches it
Meet Farida Makar. She has recently joined us aboard CILAS. Farida shall coordinate the field of study Culture at CILAS. Prior to joining CILAS, Farida has conducted research on Egyptian textbooks and looked at nationalist discourses. She also contributed to the Egypt Road Map Programme at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. Farida obtained a graduate degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford University. In her Master's thesis she looked at teacher training in Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. An undergraduate at AUC, she double-majored in political science and history focusing primarily on the history of formal education in Egypt. Farida is interested in the interplay between nationalism and education, methods of self-organization, alternative education, and socio-economic rights.
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18 October 2026
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