Going international : the politics of educational reform in Egypt

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, the French thinker Ernest Renan (1823-1892), used the expression ‘Latin Averroïsm’ to describe and qualify western philosophical doctrines of the thirteenth century that came to know the Aristotelian legacy through Muslim scholars and philosophers. In his seminal work, Thinking in the Middle Ages [Penser au Moyen Âge], the philosopher Alain de Libera, adds that ‘Latin Averroïsm’ constituted a kind of intellectual movement around the Sorbonne and contributed significantly to the shaping of the role of the Sorbonne’s intellectuals. Indicatively, in its time, what has come to be known as ‘Latin Averroïsm’ was rather known as ‘Arabism’. De Libera insists that this was not an East versus West encounter, or a unilateral transfer of knowledge. It rather illustrates the fact that intellectuals in Medieval societies in Europe and the Muslim world were sharing debates across religious divides, around questions of faith and reason (de Libera, 1991. See also Le Goff, 1985).1 More recently, Benjamen Fortna locates late Ottoman educational experiences in a global context, showing similarities to France, Czarist Russia, China, and Japan (Fortna, 2002). It was around the 1820s that the ruler of an Ottoman province— Egypt—sent groups of students to learn abroad. He also opened the door to foreign experts and scientists. A recent chapter in what seems to be a continuous dynamic was recently written when a conference was held in Cairo to discuss and praise the role of foreign academia in the Egyptian university.2 Such a transfer of knowledge and scientists is closely related to European colonialism and to cosmopolitanism, with their paradoxical and complex relationship. This interaction was not limited to East/West encounters and did not concern only secular knowledge and modern institutions. If ‘international students’ are considered to be one of the main features of higher education internationalization, one should mention earlier forms. Indeed, prestigious institutions devoted to the study of religious sciences, such as the millennial Al-Azhar mosque in Egypt (founded in 972), were quite used to ‘international students’ hailing from as far as Java or Senegal. Such student mobility needs to be considered within the framework of an ‘Islamic universalism’. We assume that knowledge and its dissemination was always shared and transmitted across borders, gaining new dimensions and interpretations, with every move over space and time. Learners and masters also moved across borders, carrying books, tools and ideas. They were able to argue, to agree, to disagree and to communicate. In this respect, revising early forms of globalization, either imperial or colonial, leads to reconsidering internationalization of knowledge as a new phenomena. However, one should note that the invention of nation-states has definitely affected the relationship between qualification and occupation, and hence the transfer of knowledge: ‘Latin Averroïsm’, or ‘Arabism’ as it was known, did not need accreditation, and neither did Indonesian Azhari scholars need to qualify for the job market. This does not mean that early forms of knowledge were free from all types of legitimation. However, the modern conception of degrees and qualifications, which is closely related to a specific political power, has its effects on knowledge transfer in contemporary times. This historical backdrop raises several questions about the ongoing internationalization of education and higher education. What is new about it? Does privatization constitute the bedrock for internationalization? Is it the expression of the allegedly universal shift from Phase 1, autonomous knowledge for the sake of knowledge, to Phase 2, ‘knowledge for the market’ (Gibbons et al., 1994)? Is such a shift, whose description has been popularized by Michael Gibbons, and whose implementation has been endorsed by international organizations, a simple and innocent description, or is a doctrinal prescription? Who ‘should learn to pay’, to quote the title of Colclough’s (1991) visionary article … and to learn what? Is it always relevant to constitute ‘global educational policies’ as an autonomous research area, disconnected from ongoing forms of exchange? Who is able and willing to compete on the international level? How far can education go in claiming to be an ‘international social system’, where the interplay between knowledge and power takes place within and beyond nation states? What does the internationalization of education and higher education mean outside the US and ‘fortress Europe’? Assuming that the educational question addresses political, cultural, as well as social resources, how should one conceive its internationalization? How are global agendas translated into indigenous languages? How should we analyze the translation of presumably global norms into local practices? The Egyptian case provides some insights into these questions. Egypt has a highly centralized educational system, and historically, education was central to the project of nation-state building. Social as well as technological progress, social and gender equity, as well as citizenship could only be achieved through education. An Egyptian model was diffused among some other Arab countries. Today such a model is depicted as being on the verge of collapse, its high degree of success bearing the seeds of its own failure. As in other countries of the world, new goals are defined and implemented for Egypt, paraded under the banner of the ‘knowledge society’, often relying on foreign agencies and credit. Such reforms generate resistance, adaptation, as well as clients and neo-experts (Mazawi, 2007). In what follows, we will propose the hypothesis that one of the strategies adopted to play the internationalization game is the adoption of a common language. We will first examine Egyptian educational reform projects inspired by a global agenda, and how these serve as a vehicle for new discourses, notions and concepts. We will then examine, more specifically, the Egyptian debate about the ranking of universities. Finally, we will address the issues of evaluation and quality assessment and their dissemination through ‘new’ institutions as well as ‘old’ techniques of power.