Trajectories of Education in the Arab World

Trajectories of Education in the Arab World gives a broad yet detailed historical and geographical overview of education in Arab countries. Drawing on pre-modern and modern educational concepts, systems, and practices in the Arab world, this book examines the impact of Western cultural influence, the opportunities for reform and the sustainability of current initiatives. The contributors bring together analyses and case studies of educational standards and structures in the Arab world, from the classical Islamic period to contemporary local and international efforts to re-define the changing needs and purposes of Arab education in the contexts of modernization, multiculturalism, and globalization. Taking a thematic and chronological approach, the first section contrasts the traditional notions, approaches, and standards of education with the changes that were initiated or imposed by European influences in the nineteenth century. The chapters then focus on the role of modern state-based educational systems in constructing and preserving national identities, cultures, and citizenries and concentrates on the role of education in state-formation and the reproduction of socio-political hierarchies. The success of educational reforms and policy-making is then assessed, offering perspectives on future trends and prospects for generating institutional and organizational change. This book will be of interest to graduate and postgraduate students and scholars of education, history, Arab and Islamic history and the Middle East and North Africa.

Osama Abi-Mershed is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University, where he currently teaches classes on the medieval and modern histories of the Middle East, North Africa and the Western Mediterranean world. His current research focuses on the processes of cultural transformation in colonial Algeria.

Introduction: The Politics of Arab Educational Reforms Part 1: Historical Perspectives 1. The Principles of Instruction are the Grounds of Our Knowledge: Al-Farabi's Philosophical and al-Ghazali's spiritual approaches to learning 2. Between the Golden Age and the Renaissance: Islamic Higher Education in Eighteenth-Century Damascus 3. "If the Devil Taught French": Strategies of Language and Learning in French Mandate Beirut 4. "According to a Logic Befitting the Arab Soul": Cultural Policy and Popular Education in Morocco Since 1912 Part 2: Education and the Post-Colonial State 5. Public Institutions of Religious Education in Egypt and Tunisia: Contrasting the Post-Colonial Reforms of Al-Azhar and the Zaytuna 6. Palestinian Education in a Virtual State 7. Language-in-Education Policies in Contemporary Lebanon: Youth Perspective 8. Education as a Humanitarian Response as Applied to the Arab World, With Special Reference to the Palestinian Case Part 3: Education and Socio-Political Development: Reform, Policy and Practice 9. Naming the Imaginary:"Building an Arab Knowledge Society" and the Contested Terrain of educational Reforms for development 10. An Introduction to Qatar's Primary and Secondary Education Reform 11. Observations from the Edge of the deluge: Are we going too far too fast in our Educational Transformation in the Arab World?