Egyptian education officially redefined tarbiya as coordination and drilled performance rather than growth

Evidence

Thus Tahtawi now distinguished between two senses of the term education (tarbiya). The first was what he called ‘the tarbiya of the human species’, using the word in its older sense as the cultivation, breeding or production of some particular thing. In this case it referred to ‘the tarbiya of the human being as such, that is, making the body and the mental faculties grow’. The second sense was ‘the tarbiya of individual human beings, which means the tarbiya of communities and nations’. It was the second meaning that was new and that came to count. The official government textbook on education published in 1903 began with the clear statement that ‘the tarbiya of things does not mean making them increase in size’. Rather, tarbiya referred to the discipline and exercise of individuals, which would coordinate them to perform as a unit. ‘It means putting them in readiness and strengthening them to perform their function as required, in the most efficient manner. There is no way to educate and strengthen something, except by training and drilling it in the performance of its function, until it can accomplish it with smoothness, speed, and precision.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 305 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The power of working upon the individual offered by modern schooling, as I suggested in the previous chapter, was to be the hallmark and the method of politics itself. Politics was a process to be conceived according to the same processes as schooling, and was to work in the same way upon both body and mind. This new notion of’politics’ appears in Egyptian writings from the 1860s, first of all as something to be taught and practised in the new schools, where it would provide what Rifaa al-Tahtawi called ‘a general governing power’. — <cite>Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 334</cite> (#complicates`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The term education in Egypt shifted from cultivation to disciplinary coordination of individuals — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 305; Egyptian reformers conceived schooling, assembly, and press as one disciplinary apparatus; Colonial-era Egyptian elites saw schooling, assembly, and press as one disciplinary apparatus — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 306 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The term education in Egypt shifted from cultivation to disciplinary coordination of individuals #corroborates (0.95) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 305
• Modern Egyptian politics was first conceived as an extension of schooling #complicates (0.72) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 334