Page 275 - Encyclopedia Of World History

egypt—state formation 625

identified as a desirable goal. For example, in the mid- Szyliowicz, J. S. (1973). Education and modernization in the Middle East.
nineteenth century, schooling in America underwent Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Watson, K. (Ed.). (1982). Education in the third world. London: Croom
major changes. Mass education had previously been the Helm.
results of charity and the efforts of religious schools, but
as social change accelerated under industrialization and
commerce, a reform movement for free public education
emerged in the 1830s. Another example would be mod-
ernization as seen through the Meiji Restoration in Japan Egypt—State
of 1868 that sought to build a more sophisticated edu-
cational system. Formation

The Twentieth Century he formation of the ancient Egyptian state is one of
By the twentieth century, education and its social, eco- Tthe most taxing and complex subjects in Egyptology
nomic, and cultural contexts have grown in complexity. and world history; its investigation is significant as it
Education has clearly become a component of change in allows scholars to understand the origins of the social,
national policies and the allocation of public resources. economic, and political institutions that make up other
Controversies surrounding education, such as the differ- ancient and modern state systems.
ence between public and private schooling, remain and Recent research has demonstrated that the formation
are further complicated by related political and ideolog- of the state in Egypt, resulting in the world’s first territo-
ical controversies. rial state system, is the result of gradual, multilinear and
multicausal processes that took place between roughly
Jaclyn A. LaPlaca
3400 and 2700 BCE.
See also Adolescence; Childhood; Dictionaries and Ency- The evidence for these processes largely derives from
clopedias; Initiation and Rites of Passage; Libraries; archaeological data collected over more than a hundred
Missionaries years through archaeological activity in Egypt. In the past,
our understanding has been hampered by a prevalence of
mortuary data from southern (Upper) Egypt, which re-
Further Reading sulted in a much lamented bias and strong focus on this
Arnove, R. F., & Graff, H. J. (1987). National literary campaigns: His- area. Only in the last two decades of the twentieth century
torical and comparative perspectives. New York: Plenum Press. and subsequently have modern archaeological investiga-
Bown, J. (1981). A history of western education. London: Methuen.
Cleverly, J. (1991). The schooling of China. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. tions in different parts of the country, including settlement
Cremin, L. A. (1988). American education. New York: Harper & Row. sites, demonstrated that both Upper and Lower Egypt
De Ridder-Symoens, H. (1992). A history of the university in Europe. made significant contributions to the cultural, economic,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Frijhoff, W. (Ed.). (1998). What is an early modern university? Dublin, and social evolution toward the state. That research has
Ireland: Four Courts Press. generated a strong interest in and numerous projects
Kaestle, C. F. (1983). Pillars of the republic: Common schools and Amer-
ican society. New York: Hill & Wang. investigating the cultures of prehistoric and early histori-
Muller, D. K. (1987). The rise of the modern educational system. New cal Egypt, which make this subject not only one of the
York: Cambridge University Press. most contested but also most productive in Egyptology.
Rothblatt, S., & Wittrock, B. (1993). The European and American uni-
versity since 1800. New York: Cambridge University Press. Modern research on the subject has also benefited
Simmons, J. (Ed.). (1983). Better schools: International lessons for reform. from the application of anthropological and sociological
New York: Praeger.
Simon, B. (1991). Studies in the history of education. London: Lawrence theory, and as a result theories and models about the for-
& Wishart. mation of the Egyptian state abound. It is now generally