Title:
EGYPT’S LEGACY OF DEPENDENCY AND EDUCATIONAL UNDERDEVELOPMENT

Authors:
Wafaa Gad Abdo ,Egypt

Abstract:
Egyptian education has undergone various transformations through the centuries, which have affected it deeply. Yet Egypt’s history of prolonged dependency on foreign powers provides an interesting context that may help explain its resulting state of educational backwardness due to internally embedded causes. This article aims to study the relationship between Egypt’s history of dependency and its educational backwardness with a particular focus on the legacy of Ottoman rule, which greatly impacted the development of Egyptian education, a consequence that Egypt has had to grapple with throughout its independence ever since. The study concluded that a crucial element of Egypt’s subjugated experience lies in its timing with the dawning of Europe’s intellectual renaissance and industrial development. This was a time when the Ottoman Empire depended on institutionalised religious education to guarantee its authority and internal political stability. Such regulatory policies were an obstacle for Egypt’s educational development and made it incapable of achieving any intellectual progress. Furthermore, this experience led to a continued future of educational dependency on Europe, represented in borrowing as the only means toward attempting its own renaissance and development from that time onward.