Content area
This dissertation presents a comparative study of Turkish and Egyptian education between 1910 and 1952, focusing on the dissemination of state-supported conceptions of nationalism, regime loyalty, civic virtue, and the social order appropriate to modernizing societies. I do this by pursuing in an integrated fashion two connected tracks. In Part I, I inquire into the educational and professional background of Turkish and Egyptian pedagogues, along with examining the pre-1923 trends in educational thought in the two countries. In Part II, I then examine the evolution in Turkey and Egypt of the attitudes of pedagogues, teachers, and state educational officials to (a) the proper kind of polity and nation, (b) foreign pedagogical and political models, (c) interactions among students, teachers, schools, and homes as a reflection of prescribed societal conduct, (d) the necessary socio-economic order and schools' contribution to it, (e) religion in education and society, and (f) the substance of women's education and the latters' role in society. As such, Part II illuminates the intellectual and discursively prescriptive world of Turkish and Egyptian educators on all levels, allowing us rare insight into how this important socio-political stratum viewed their polities, and the role of the teaching corps within them.
In Part III, I investigate how Turkish and Egyptian governments wished to politically socialize emerging citizens, through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the evolving curriculum for pre-collegiate students. Focusing on evolving curricula and texts from 1915 through 1950–52, I examine the central messages in primary school subjects such as history, civics, language, and ethics. I also consider synergies among subjects, along with the contribution of ‘minor’ subjects such as physical education and art. On this basis I then proceed to track alterations and reinforcements of curricular messages in secondary school materials from the mid 1930s to the late 1940s. Finally, I address the impact on pedagogical and curricular priorities of broad domestic socio political changes and reorientations in the global environment at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s in both countries.