When I joined seventy intellectuals, thinkers, and education experts in formulating Egypt\u2019s Vision for Education 2030 in 2014, we were not starting from scratch. That effort was preceded by a profound experience I had in 2002, when I served as Chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the People\u2019s Assembly. Following a series of meetings and community dialogues, we developed a vision for the future of education in Egypt. It was translated into twenty-nine education policies, along with a series of projects and initiatives designed to turn that vision into reality.<\/p>\n
I made a point of documenting all of this because I have always believed\u2014and continue to believe\u2014that what is not documented effectively ceases to exist, and that the impact of ideas on societies is cumulative, even when those ideas do not find their way into practice at the time. An idea that does not become policy today may form the foundation of reform tomorrow, and a vision ignored by one generation may be rediscovered by another.<\/p>\n
Yet, as I reviewed my documents, worked on digitizing them, and compared what we had proposed with what had actually been achieved, I found myself confronting a painful truth: we do not always move forward along a continuous path toward the future. At times, we move in circles, returning to the starting point every few years, announcing the rediscovery of things we had discovered before, and starting anew what we first began decades ago.<\/p>\n
It is as though our institutional memory is short, and every new official is expected to begin history on the day they take office rather than continue from where their predecessors left off.<\/p>\n
I realized then that the crisis in education does not always stem from an absence of vision. It stems instead from a lack of continuity and from the distance between knowledge and implementation, between what we proclaim and what we practice.<\/p>\n
As I conducted this review, I found that the most difficult challenges we had called for addressing were not the construction of schools, curriculum development, or the introduction of technology, important as all these things are. Rather, they centered on two fundamental issues.<\/p>\n
The first is the teacher, around whom the entire educational system should be built, rather than treating the teacher as merely an executor of instructions issued from outside the classroom.<\/p>\n
The second is the development of the child\u2019s mind, emotional life, and character, from the moment the child enters school until graduation from university.<\/p>\n
I will leave the issue of teachers for a separate article, although it is intertwined with everything I will discuss here, and focus instead on the second issue, which I believe is more urgent today than ever before.<\/p>\n
If we want our schools and universities to graduate young people who take pride in their country\u2019s history, respect its present, and possess the hope, desire, and ability to build its future, we must abandon the belief that this can be achieved through a civics lesson, a speech during the morning assembly, or memorizing a collection of slogans and reproducing them in an examination.<\/p>\n
Belonging is not information to be memorized, nor a model answer to be written on an exam paper.<\/p>\n
Belonging is a feeling that develops, a value put into practice, and a relationship of trust that grows between people and the places where they live, the institutions with which they interact, and the people with whom they share their lives.<\/p>\n
We cannot ask children to respect the law while they see adults breaking it. We cannot teach them the value of justice if they experience discrimination at school. We cannot demand that they think freely and then punish them for disagreeing with their teachers. Nor can we lecture them about dignity while subjecting them to humiliation.<\/p>\n
How can we instill love of country in a child\u2019s heart if that child does not feel respected at school, does not feel that their voice is heard, that their efforts are valued, and that their rights are protected?<\/p>\n
School is not merely a place where children receive knowledge. It is the first miniature model of the state that they experience outside their families.<\/p>\n
There, often without realizing it, they learn what authority and justice mean, as well as freedom and responsibility, disagreement and cooperation, equality and discrimination.<\/p>\n
Children do not learn these meanings from what we say about them, but from what we do in front of them.<\/p>\n
In education, there is an important concept known as the hidden curriculum<\/em>. It refers to what students learn from a school\u2019s culture, its relationships, and the behavior of its staff, without any of it necessarily being written in a textbook.<\/p>\n A student who sees a teacher respecting differences learns tolerance. A student who participates in making a decision about their class learns democracy. A student who plays sports and accepts defeat learns to respect rules and fair competition. A student who performs on stage learns self-expression and confidence in their abilities. A student who plays music with classmates learns to listen, harmonize, and work as part of a team.<\/p>\n And a student who participates in community service learns that a country is not merely a piece of land on which we live, but a community of people with whom we share responsibility for life.<\/p>\n These are not extracurricular activities that can be discarded when time is short or curricula become overcrowded. At their core, they are tools for developing the human being.<\/p>\n Art is not a luxury. Sports are not merely recreation. Music is not a marginal activity. Volunteering is not an occasion for taking photographs.<\/p>\n These are educational means of cultivating psychological balance, social intelligence, the ability to cooperate, respect for others, and a sense of beauty and responsibility.<\/p>\n I fear that we have reduced education to academic achievement, academic achievement to examinations, examinations to grades, and grades to certificates\u2014only to wonder afterward why some of our graduates lack the skills and values society needs.<\/p>\n This brings me back to a longstanding demand that I have never abandoned: we cannot build a student\u2019s character unless school is a place where they spend a substantial part of their day.<\/p>\n We need actual attendance for at least 180 school days a year, with a school day lasting at least six hours. These hours should be divided among academic learning, sports, the arts, culture, dialogue, teamwork, and community activities.<\/p>\n I do not mean keeping children seated in front of a blackboard for six hours. I mean making school a living environment where they learn as much through practice as through instruction, discover as much as they memorize, and interact as much as they listen.<\/p>\n Nor is it enough to write these hours into regulations. What matters is not the number of hours officially declared, but the quality of what takes place during them.<\/p>\n Excessive reliance on private tutoring, declining school attendance, and the transformation of school in some cases into little more than an administrative stop for obtaining a certificate do not necessarily deprive students of knowledge. But these practices deprive them of something that may be even more important: the social and educational experiences that shape their character.<\/p>\n A school whose students are absent cannot nurture their emotional and moral development, no matter how good its curricula may be.<\/p>\n Yet schools cannot accomplish this mission alone.<\/p>\n A child who learns in the classroom to respect women, only to see them humiliated in some television dramas; who learns the value of work, only to watch wealth acquired without effort being glorified; or who learns to accept differences, only to encounter daily messages of hatred and ridicule on social media, is living through an educational contradiction that cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n We need a connected fabric linking schools, families, the media, cinema, theater, cultural and sporting institutions, and even the state\u2019s public messages with what citizens actually experience in their daily lives.<\/p>\n I am not calling for imposing a single narrative on everyone, nor for directing art and the media through administrative orders. I am calling for recognition of our shared responsibility for shaping public awareness, and for creating a space in which freedom of artistic expression can coexist with the human values we seek to establish.<\/p>\n Genuine belonging does not arise from rote instruction, concealing shortcomings, or portraying the country as a place without flaws.<\/p>\n On the contrary, we want young people to love their country enough to recognize its problems and to have the courage to help solve them.<\/p>\n We want citizens who take pride in Egypt\u2019s history without becoming trapped in the past, respect its present without overlooking its shortcomings, and dream of its future without waiting for others to build it for them.<\/p>\n This is where credibility becomes the foundation of civic and national education.<\/p>\n We cannot ask young people to trust in the future if they cannot see fair pathways to opportunity. We cannot demand their participation if we do not give them genuine spaces for expression. And we cannot instill a sense of responsibility in them if we do not allow them to exercise it.<\/p>\n After more than twenty-five years of parliamentary experience in formulating education policies, and more than a decade since my participation in developing Egypt Vision 2030, I have come to feel that our greatest problem was never a shortage of ideas or a lack of experts.<\/p>\n We had visions, policies, initiatives, and Egyptian expertise capable of delivering results.<\/p>\n But reform does not happen simply because a document is issued. It does not begin from zero with every administrative change, and it cannot be measured by the number of projects we announce. It must be measured by what endures and what makes a tangible difference in people\u2019s lives and behavior.<\/p>\n That is why digitizing these documents and reviewing what has been achieved is not merely an attempt to preserve history. It is a way of holding ourselves accountable for the future: What did we know? What did we do? Why did we stumble? And how can we prevent the same mistakes from recurring?<\/p>\n The greatest danger facing nations is not that they make mistakes, but that they lose their memory and repeat those mistakes while believing they are embarking on a new experiment.<\/p>\n I return, then, to the question with which I began:<\/p>\n Do we want schools to graduate students who succeed in examinations, or institutions that help shape people who succeed in life\u2014people capable of thinking and creating, who respect themselves and others, and who feel responsible for their country?<\/p>\n There is no contradiction between these two goals. The problem begins when we achieve the first at the expense of the second.<\/p>\n Developing a person\u2019s emotional and moral foundations does not require a new ministerial decree or another slogan. It requires sustained commitment, daily practice, genuine role models, and schools and universities that live by the values they proclaim.<\/p>\n We have a great deal of work ahead of us, and it becomes more difficult the longer we delay beginning it.<\/p>\n Countries are not built by those who memorize the meaning of belonging, but by those who put it into practice.<\/p>\n If we want our children to learn to love Egypt, we must ensure that every day they experience something that makes Egypt worthy of that love\u2014and that makes them feel they are partners in shaping its future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I joined seventy intellectuals, thinkers, and education experts in formulating Egypt\u2019s Vision for Education 2030 in 2014, we were not starting from scratch. That effort was preceded by a profound experience I had in 2002, when I served as Chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the People\u2019s Assembly. Following a series …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[280,269,103,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-collective-activities-articles","category-al-hurriya-website","category-all-articles","category-articles-by-dr-badrawi"],"yoast_head":"\nThere Can Be No Character Education Without Time and Lived Experience<\/h2>\n
From School to Society: Who Is Responsible for Shaping Our Values?<\/h2>\n
Do We Have the Courage to Stay the Course?<\/h2>\n