An Introduction To the History of Education in Modern Egypt

by J. Heyworth-Dunne

503 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1968

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

J. Heyworth-Dunne’s An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt stretches the term “introduction” somewhat, as it is an incredibly lengthy and massively detailed attempt to chronicle its eponymous topic. It was the first of a planned four-volume series on Egyptian culture that never materialized, but it nonetheless presents an impressive, even overwhelming, amount of information about a place, time, and subject that was dismissed normally by contemporary historians. It is perhaps rivaled as a primary resource for historians of pre-British Egypt by only Edward Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians and, like Lane’s magnum opus, is written from a desire to counter prevailing notions of the time that Egyptian society was backwards or corrupt simply because it was not western. Yet although it is written from a position of admiration of the culture, it is an unequal love that does not fail to position Britain, implicitly and explicitly, as a superior civilization and reads in many parts like a textbook case of what Edward Said would call Orientalist literature. As is the case with Lane’s work from 100 years prior, therefore, the key word in the title is modern, with modernity existing as a teleological product of a superior civilization that could not have developed on its own in Egypt without western intervention. A western education system that can sustain an educated general population, in Heyworth-Dunne’s argument, is an essential cornerstone for the advancement of a society. Egypt is dismissed ultimately as unable to “progress” on its own volition and the author ends up reiterating the same criticisms as his contemporaries, albeit with more sympathy and less fervor.

Like Lane’s Manners, Heyworth-Dunne’s text is far more descriptive than analytical, but lacks Manners’ personal, sometimes emotional, attachment to the subject and influence on the prose, as well as its enticing narrative structure. This makes An Introduction even less amiable to retention and very easy to skim through, since the majority reads like a long list of facts and details connected in prose form. It is framed by an explicit, if simple, narrative, however, and thus his trajectory is easier to summarize than Lane’s. Heyworth-Dunne’s overarching objective is to outline Egypt’s educational structures prior to the British occupation (education after 1882 was the subject of the planned second volume), and he begins taking the classic Orientalist approach of dismissing everything in Egypt that came before Napoleon’s invasion as theological and ineffective. He sees the Egyptian system prior to 1798 as inconsequential ultimately, implicitly rejecting the notion that it might have had any meaningful influence on future developments, except perhaps to hinder them. While he is too forgiving to blame this on the “backwardness” of the society, he still manages to eliminate the value of Islamic educational structures by implying that they are simply a cultural quirk that must be accepted for what they are and, ultimately, ignored.

The author’s criticism of the reign of Muhammad Ali essentially follows the same notion, as he accuses the Egyptian ruler of implementing “modern” systems only superficially and for the benefit of the military rather than the population at large. He therefore offered little pushback to the resistance of traditional religious institutions in rejecting educational change. A lengthy analysis of the policies of Muhammad Ali’s successors comes to the conclusion that they ultimately did not fare better in instilling “modernity” into their subjects or engaging an effective battle against the religious conservatives who resisted “progress”. Thus the narrative concludes with the notion that the British intervention was necessary for numerous reasons, but that Egypt could never have “advanced” without the presence of western tutelage in establishing a modern educational system.

Overall, there is not much more to summarize about An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt and, although it is technically a secondary source, its value today is chiefly as a primary one. Even though Heyworth-Dunne perceives Egypt’s independent attempts to institute western education as a failure, one he blames in large part on Islam, his outlook is optimistic (if patronizingly), as he sees the Muhammad Ali dynasty’s efforts as, if not necessary to the successful implementation of western education that would arrive with the British, then at least a significant boon in that direction. Thus it is in the details, the rigorous coverage of the scope of Egyptian education during the era and its minutiae, that a historian will likely find this work most useful, if they can explore this tome with a critical eye and repurpose its resources towards a less biased perspective on the nation’s history.