The 1868 Organic Law made every detail of Egyptian schooling a state concern

Evidence

At the same time, a comprehensive plan for institutions of elementary instruction throughout the country was drawn up, which became the Law of 10th Rajab 1284 (7th November 1868). The Organic Law, as it was called, determined the subjects to be taught in every school and those who were to teach in them, those who were to administer, the books to be used, the timetable of instruction, the clothes that students were to wear, the plan of buildings, the layout of the classroom and its furniture, the location of each school, the source of its funds, the schedule of its examinations, the registration of students, and the physical handicaps for which they should be excluded. Learning, in every detail, had very suddenly become the state’s active and extensive concern, a field of organisation, a major realm in which what is called ‘the state’ was to exist and build relations of power. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 269

Categorization

• XREF: The exhaustive, detail-level state regulation echoes Foucault’s panoptic disciplinary order and resonates with Zamyatin’s We in its totalizing administrative reach.