The 1923 Egyptian Constitution – vision and ambivalence in the future of education in Egypt

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe 1923 Constitution prepared the legal framework for Egypt’s semi-independence from British imperial control under a newly established liberal monarchy. This Constitution carried a promise for a significant change in setting the ground for a nascent national system of mass elementary education for boys and girls that would also be free of charge and compulsory. As I discuss in this article, this vision hardly matched Egyptian socio-economic and cultural realities of the time. I explore this gap through a study of the deliberations of the Constitutional Commission that first drafted and later debated the various articles of the Constitution. I argue that the Constitutional Commission followed a consensus, in both Egypt and abroad, over the necessity of establishing a national system of mass education as a means for a broader social reform. Setting high expectations, this consensus would simultaneously enhance national education and the future setbacks that would beset its implementation.