Al-Azhar’s pedagogy was decentralized peer learning rather than supervised disciplinary schooling

Evidence

On one hand, this style of learning was remarkably flexible and free of coercion, when compared to the modern disciplinary schooling typified by the Lancaster system. Learning occurred as a relationship that, as in every craft, might be found between any individuals at almost any point. Beginners learned from one another, according to their differing aptitudes, as much as from those who were masters; and even masters continued to learn from those who possessed other skills, who had mastered other texts. The method was one of argumentation and dispute, not lecturing. The individual was to be deferent where appropriate, but never passive. Whatever punishments may have been inflicted on unruly students, no system of discipline ever kept individuals under continuous supervision or surveillance, or obliged them to study with one particular teacher, or to remain in place, or to continue at a certain task for a certain period. Whatever their weaknesses, these methods made the teaching mosque of al-Azhar the oldest continuing centre of scholarship and law anywhere in the world. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 293

Categorization

• XREF: The Lancaster system contrast evokes the disciplinary schooling literature, and connects to Mitchell’s broader argument about colonial pedagogy; also parallels the master-craft learning model in Milgrom and other pre-modern knowledge transmission.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the ‘Grafting and Growth’ piece in that learning here is organic, networked, and non-hierarchical like a root system rather than the linear-discipline model of modern schooling.