The term education in Egypt shifted from cultivation to disciplinary coordination of individuals

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents the semantic shift of tarbiya from horticultural cultivation to disciplinary drill — a key lexical clue to how colonial-modern education was reframed.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s discipline and the ‘useful knowledge’ transmission described in the following paragraphs — the same ethos as Brougham’s Society. — connects to: Higher education now produces skills instead of ideals or emancipation. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 359