{"id":14201,"date":"2026-10-13T21:36:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T18:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/?p=14201"},"modified":"2026-10-14T21:37:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:37:38","slug":"dr-hossam-badrawi-writes-for-al-ahram-belonging-cannot-be-taught-it-must-be-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/dr-hossam-badrawi-writes-for-al-ahram-belonging-cannot-be-taught-it-must-be-lived\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Hossam Badrawi Writes for Al-Ahram: Belonging Cannot Be Taught\u2026 It Must Be Lived"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why Do We Restart Education Reform Every Few Years?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When I joined seventy intellectuals, thinkers, and education experts in drafting Egypt’s Vision for Education 2030 in 2014, we were not starting from scratch.<\/p>\n

That work had been preceded by a profound experience in 2002, when I chaired the Education and Scientific Research Committee of the People’s Assembly. Through a series of meetings and public dialogues, we developed a vision for the future of education in Egypt, translated into twenty-nine education policies and a set of projects and initiatives designed to turn that vision into reality.<\/p>\n

I made a point of documenting all of it, because I believed then, and still believe, that what is not documented does not exist, and that the impact of ideas on societies is cumulative, even when they do not find their way into practice in their own time. An idea that does not become policy today may become the foundation of reform tomorrow, and a vision ignored by one generation may be reclaimed by another.<\/p>\n

Yet as I reviewed my papers, digitised them, and compared what we had proposed with what had actually been achieved, I found myself facing a painful truth: we do not always move along a continuous path towards the future. At times we move in circles, returning to the starting point every few years, announcing the discovery of what we had already discovered, and beginning anew what we began decades ago. It is as if our institutional memory is short, as if every new official is expected to begin history on the day he takes office, rather than pick up where his predecessors left off.<\/p>\n

That is when I realised that the education crisis is not always caused by an absence of vision, but by a lack of continuity and the gap between knowledge and implementation, between what we proclaim and what we practise.<\/p>\n

In the course of this review, I found that the most difficult challenges we had identified were not building schools, developing curricula, or introducing technology, important as all of these are. They concerned two fundamental issues. The first is the teacher, around whom the entire education system should be built, and who should not be reduced to someone who merely carries out instructions handed down from outside the classroom. The second is developing the child’s mind, conscience, and character, from the day he enters school until he graduates from university.<\/p>\n

I will leave the question of the teacher for a separate article, though it overlaps with everything I am about to say, and focus here on the second issue, which I believe is more urgent today than ever before.<\/p>\n

How Do We Raise a Person Who Belongs to His Country?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If we want our schools and universities to produce young people who are proud of their country’s history, respect its present, and have the hope, desire, and ability to build its future, we must stop believing this can be achieved through a civics lesson, a speech at morning assembly, or memorising a set of slogans and reproducing them in an exam.<\/p>\n

Belonging is not a fact to be memorised, nor a model answer to be written on an exam paper. Belonging is a feeling that takes shape, a value that is practised, a relationship of trust that grows between a person and the place where he lives, the institutions he deals with, and the people who share his life.<\/p>\n

We cannot ask a child to respect the law while he watches adults break it, nor teach him the value of justice if he feels discriminated against in his own school, nor demand that he think freely and then punish him for disagreeing with his teacher, nor speak to him of dignity while he is being humiliated. How can we plant love of country in a child’s heart if, at school, he does not feel that he is respected, that his voice is heard, that his effort is valued, and that his rights are protected?<\/p>\n

School is not merely a place to acquire knowledge. It is the first miniature model of the state that a child experiences outside his family. There, without realising it, he learns the meaning of authority and justice, freedom and responsibility, difference and cooperation, equality and discrimination. A child does not learn what these mean from what we say about them, but from what we do in front of him.<\/p>\n

The Hidden Curriculum That Shapes Character<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Educational theory includes an important concept called the “hidden curriculum”: what a student learns from a school’s culture, its relationships, and the conduct of those who work in it, without any of it being written in a textbook.<\/p>\n

A student who sees his teacher respect difference learns tolerance. One who takes part in a decision concerning his class learns democracy. One who plays sports and accepts defeat learns respect for rules and fair competition. One who stands on a stage learns to express himself and trust his abilities. One who plays music with his classmates learns to listen, work in harmony, and be part of a team. And one who serves his community learns that the nation is not merely land we live on, but people with whom we share the responsibilities of life.<\/p>\n

These are not extra activities to be dropped when time runs short or the curriculum becomes crowded. In essence, they are the means of shaping a human being. Art is not a luxury, sport is not simply a break from lessons, music is not a marginal activity, and volunteer work is not a photo opportunity. They are educational means of developing psychological balance, social intelligence, the capacity for cooperation, respect for others, and a sense of beauty and responsibility.<\/p>\n

I fear we have reduced education to attainment, attainment to exams, exams to grades, and grades to a certificate, and then asked ourselves: why do some of our graduates lack the skills and values society needs?<\/p>\n

No Upbringing Without Time and Shared Experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This brings me back to a long-standing demand to which I remain firmly committed: a student’s character cannot be developed unless the school is a place where he spends a substantial part of his day. We need students to attend school for no fewer than 180 days a year, with a school day of at least six hours, divided among academic learning, sports, the arts, culture, dialogue, teamwork, and community activities.<\/p>\n

I do not mean that children should sit for six hours in front of a blackboard, but that school should become a place of lived experience, where they learn as much as they practise, discover as much as they memorise, and engage as much as they listen. Nor is it enough to write these hours into regulations; what counts is not the number of hours announced, but the quality of what happens during them.<\/p>\n

Excessive reliance on private tutoring, declining school attendance, and the occasional transformation of the school into an administrative stop on the way to a certificate do not necessarily deprive the student of knowledge, but they deprive him of something perhaps more important: the social and educational experience that forms his character. A school whose students are absent cannot shape their conscience, however good its curricula.<\/p>\n

From School to Society\u2026 Who Is Responsible for Shaping the Conscience?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

But the school cannot accomplish this mission alone. A child who learns in class to respect women, then sees them demeaned in some television dramas; who learns the value of work, then watches wealth without effort glorified; who learns to accept difference, then is exposed daily to hate speech and mockery on social media, lives with an educational contradiction that cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n

We need connections between schools, families, the media, cinema, theatre, and cultural and sports institutions, and indeed between what the state says and what citizens see in their daily lives. I am not calling for a single discourse imposed on everyone, nor for directing art and the media by administrative decree, but for recognising our shared responsibility for shaping public awareness and for creating a space where creative freedom meets the human values we wish to instil.<\/p>\n

True belonging does not arise from indoctrination, nor from hiding flaws, nor from portraying the nation as a place without mistakes. On the contrary, we want young people who love their country enough to see its problems, and who have the courage to take part in solving them. We want a citizen who takes pride in Egypt’s history without living in the past, who respects its present without ignoring its shortcomings, and who dreams of its future without waiting for others to build it for him.<\/p>\n

Here, credibility becomes the foundation of civic education. We cannot ask young people to trust in the future if they see no fair paths to opportunity before them, nor ask them to participate if we do not give them real space for expression, nor instil responsibility in them if we do not allow them to exercise it.<\/p>\n

Do We Have the Courage to Continue?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

More than twenty-five years after my parliamentary experience in shaping education policy, and more than ten years after my participation in Egypt Vision 2030, I feel that the greatest problem was never a shortage of ideas or an absence of experts. We had visions, policies, initiatives, and Egyptian expertise capable of delivering. But reform is not achieved by issuing a document. It does not begin from scratch with every administrative change, and it is measured not by the number of projects we announce, but by what endures of them and what is reflected in people’s lives and conduct.<\/p>\n

That is why digitising these documents and reviewing what has been achieved is not merely an attempt to preserve history; it is a reckoning with the future: What did we know? What did we do? Why did we falter? And how do we avoid repeating the same mistakes? The gravest affliction of nations is not that they err, but that they lose their memory, and so repeat their mistakes believing they are embarking on something new.<\/p>\n

And I return to the question I began with: Do we want a school that produces a student who succeeds in exams, or an institution that helps shape a person who succeeds in life, is capable of thinking and creating, respects himself and others, and feels responsible for his country? There is no conflict between the two goals; the flaw begins when we achieve the first at the expense of the second.<\/p>\n

Shaping the conscience does not depend on a ministerial decree, nor does it need a new slogan. It needs sustained will, daily practice, sincere role models, and schools and universities that live by the values they proclaim. A great deal of work lies before us, and it grows harder the longer we delay beginning it.<\/p>\n

Nations are not built by those who memorise the meaning of belonging, but by those who practise it. And if we want our children to learn to love Egypt, we must give them, every day, an experience that makes Egypt worthy of that love and makes them feel they are partners in shaping its future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He is the former head of the Gynecology Department, Faculty of Medicine Cairo University. He conducted his post graduate studies from 1979 till 1981 in the United States. He was elected as a member of the Egyptian Parliament and chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the Parliament from 2000 till 2005. As a politician, Dr. Hossam Badrawi was known for his independent stances. His integrity won the consensus of all people from various political trends. During the era of former president Hosni Mubarak he was called The Rationalist in the National Democratic Party NDP because his political calls and demands were consistent to a great extent with calls for political and democratic reform in Egypt. He was against extending the state of emergency and objected to the National Democratic Party's unilateral constitutional amendments during the January 25, 2011 revolution. 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When I joined seventy intellectuals, thinkers, and education experts in drafting Egypt’s Vision for Education 2030 in 2014, we were not starting from scratch. 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He is the former head of the Gynecology Department, Faculty of Medicine Cairo University. He conducted his post graduate studies from 1979 till 1981 in the United States. He was elected as a member of the Egyptian Parliament and chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the Parliament from 2000 till 2005. As a politician, Dr. Hossam Badrawi was known for his independent stances. His integrity won the consensus of all people from various political trends. During the era of former president Hosni Mubarak he was called The Rationalist in the National Democratic Party NDP because his political calls and demands were consistent to a great extent with calls for political and democratic reform in Egypt. He was against extending the state of emergency and objected to the National Democratic Party's unilateral constitutional amendments during the January 25, 2011 revolution. He played a very important political role when he defended, from the very first beginning of the revolution, the demonstrators' right to call for their demands. He called on the government to listen and respond to their demands. Consequently and due to Dr. Badrawi's popularity, Mubarak appointed him as the NDP Secretary General thus replacing the members of the Bureau of the Commission. During that time, Dr. Badrawi expressed his political opinion to Mubarak that he had to step down. He had to resign from the party after 5 days of his appointment on February 10 when he declared his political disagreement with the political leadership in dealing with the demonstrators who called for handing the power to the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, from the very first moment his stance was clear by rejecting a religion-based state which he considered as aiming to limit the Egyptians down to one trend. He considered deposed president Mohamed Morsi's decision to bring back the People's Assembly as a reinforcement of the US-supported dictatorship. He was among the first to denounce the incursion of Morsi's authority over the judicial authority, condemning the Brotherhood militias' blockade of the Supreme Constitutional Court. Dr. Hossam supported the Tamarod movement in its beginning and he declared that toppling the Brotherhood was a must and a pressing risk that had to be taken few months prior to the June 30 revolution and confirmed that the army would support the legitimacy given by the people","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hossambadrawi\/","https:\/\/x.com\/HossamBadrawi"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14202,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14201\/revisions\/14202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}