Examinations staged the state hierarchy through escalating official presiders and ceremony

Evidence

Third, examinations provided a particular practice in which schooling presented the new hierarchy of the nation-state. They were events of enormous social, and structural, significance. The Law of 1867 laid down that students in the local schools were to be examined, at the end of every month by their teachers, at the end of every term by the superintendent of the school, government inspectors, and other officials, and at the end of every year by the governor of the district, the local judges, and other government advisors and officials. The same structure was laid down at each of the higher levels of schooling, with officials of the appropriate rank brought in to preside at each ascending stage of the examination process. The year-end exams were to be followed with a prize-giving ceremony, according to the law, and a procession of the students in their uniforms. At the schools of the provincial capitals, military music was to be played. At the top of the pyramid, in the government schools on Darb al-Gamamiz, annual examinations were held in the large amphitheatre within the palace, attended by the Khedive and the highest officials and dignitaries of the state. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 272

Categorization

• XREF: This is Mitchell’s core theme from chapter one — the staging/spectacle of power — applied to examinations; connects to Foucault’s disciplinary power and the earlier chapter’s discussion of how institutions arrange space and ceremony.
• ADDENDUM: Not directly one of the three articles, but the ceremonial staging of hierarchy via processions and uniforms resonates with the ‘On Sacrifice’ article’s account of how ritual spectacle stabilizes social stratification.