The American role in education in the Middle East: ideology and experiment, 1920–1940

Abstract

In a significant 1925 essay, “Western Education in Moslem Lands”, Paul Monroe addressed the emerging cultural and political forces faced by American educators in the Middle East. Monroe was widely recognised at the time as editor of the Cyclopedia of Education and director of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University. During the period between the wars, he made the Middle East a major focus of practical activity as adviser to the Near East Relief and surveyor of educational conditions (1930), director of an advisory commission to King Faisal of Iraq (1932), and president of Robert College in Istanbul (1933–1935). This article analyses the themes presented in Monroe's essay and explores how those ideas evolved when implemented in educational projects in the region. Pointing to an older missionary relationship between Western education and the semi‐colonial relatively powerless Middle East, Monroe argued that conditions were changing and proposed a redefinition of the American educator's role. In his work in Iraq and Turkey and the Near East, Monroe developed a conception that American education could provide a resource to the Middle East which the nations themselves could evaluate and draw upon as needed, and he learned the difficulties in putting such ideas into practice.