In the mid-20th century, countries in the Middle East struggled to establish a post-independence identity. Educational reformers and government officials tried to create national cohesion through expanded schooling, closing the gap between elites educated in private Francophone or Anglophone schools, and the masses of ordinary Egyptians. Taha Hussein (1889-1973) became a towering figure of educational reform in Egyptian 20th-century history. Despite being blind and coming from a poor, rural family, he achieved a high degree of education and power. With an advanced degree from the Sorbonne, Hussein served as academic advisor to the Minister of Education and then as Minister of Education (1950-1952).

Hussein provided a conceptual framework for the development of a centralized national education system focused on schooling for all. He held that schools should be secular, promoting democracy, defending national economies, and maintaining a country's political independence.

Taha Hussein's commitment to spreading literacy is embodied in this motto. When Gamal Abdel Nasser's socialist regime took over in 1962, free education became a way to correct the disparities created by colonialism. Taha Hussein's legacy remains in Egypt until today, particularly because he achieved a high degree of education and erudition despite being blind and coming from a poor, rural family. The Taha Hussein Library at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina provides technological resources to the blind and visually impaired.

Despite efforts to resist, by the end of the 19th century, almost all of the Middle East had fallen under the control of European powers. Whether in the form of a protectorate or colony, European powers made changes to the indigenous educational system that impacted children.

Europeans offered European-style education to a very small elite group of Middle Eastern students and this education was intended to shape the children into abiding colonial subjects by teaching them that their civilization was backwards. These government schools created under the Europeans charged tuition that most families could not afford. The majority of children were deemed unfit for modern education and colonialists circulated the idea that Middle Eastern parents did not value education.

Expansion of educational opportunities for non-elite classes was also gradual in Europe, the timeline of legislation similar to policies in lands under colonial rule or protectorates. Efforts to provide basic literacy and prepare students for specific types of career training also followed a pattern of using religious institutions as a base of expansion, adding training in reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects to enhance the skill set of future workers and identify talented youth for further training in specialized schools. Such children would receive scholarships or stipends to attend boarding schools organized under military-like discipline. Examples of such institutions were the Muhammad Ali's schools of engineering, military science, and medicine.

The following selection relates to education in Egypt under the British protectorate. The single most common feature of most Egyptian childhoods during the British protectorate was participation in the labor force, particularly the cotton industry on which the Egyptian economy was almost exclusively based. During the protectorate, the demand for labor of children and the acquisition of literacy were inversely related.

Many villages circulated petitions demanding the colonizers provide them with schools, but colonial administrators did not fund widespread education efforts. The British justified a lack of investment in indigenous education by saying it was not desired by parents who were too “dead” to know the value of education, as the following selection indicates. The British also attempted to pit the minority Christian Egyptian parents against Muslim Egyptian parents in their efforts to keep the Egyptian population uneducated.

The anecdote is a lesson to a child who is probably at the adolescent stage of life, and very concerned with how peers and others view him. The experience of the father and son pair shows the futility of trying to act on fickle public opinion. It also plays upon ambiguities in the relationship of care and respect between parent and child at the stage of adolescence, when the parent is aging and the child takes on more responsibility to look out for the parent, in addition to bearing responsibility for behavior that reflects favorably upon the family.

Goha is a popular comic hero in Muslim regions of Africa and Asia, found under various names including Juha and Abu Nuwas in the jokes of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Goha is a good-natured member of the learned class of ulama' and imams (a group often satirized for their foibles), whose stories reflect Islamic values and folk wisdom. He often rides a donkey, is sometimes a rural and sometimes an urban figure who displays both poor and middle class attributes. He is an Everyman, underdog, and hero, both learned and stupid, who provides a mirror of the life and the concerns of ordinary people. The photograph is a still image from a children's television program in Afghanistan that is designed to build literacy among children in areas underserved by schools, and as a supplement to schooling. By tapping into cultural familiarity with the iconic Goha figure, the program seeks to gain acceptance for innovative ways of delivering educational content.

The photograph at the top shows two children gazing into the soft light of a fanoos [fan-NOOS], or traditional Ramadan lantern. In the photograph below, Ramadan lanterns are hung outside a shop in a section of medieval Cairo. As far as is known, the tradition originated in Egypt, perhaps as long ago as pharaonic times, when it may have announced the Nile flood. The tradition in its current form may date to the Fatimid period (969-1171 CE). It isn’t clear when the custom became associated with the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, when Muslims keep the fast from dawn to sunset. Indeed, lanterns and lamps of various kinds, of many hues and degrees of brightness, and even both real and imaginary, have always been special to Egypt. For centuries before the coming of electricity, Cairo itself was noted for its spectacular use of lanterns to illuminate the city, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.

The tradition of the colorful lanterns is coupled with the song, which children sing as they process through the streets of Egyptian, and especially Cairene neighborhoods announcing the coming of Ramadan, and collecting coins and sweets. The words of the song that are not translated are obscure, perhaps referring to fire or light (wahawi, ya wahawi). "You have gone, O Sha'ban" refers to the lunar month before Ramadan, and "the daughter of the Sultan is wearing her caftan" means she is dressed in a loose, often embroidered garment worn when going out and on holidays. "Give us this season's gift" is a plea for the small presents children would receive from adults for going out in procession to announce the coming of Ramadan.

Children are typically very excited about the coming of Ramadan, because it is a festive time that lasts an entire month. Even though abstaining from food and drink daily from dawn to sunset is a hardship, many children are anxious to participate as much as they can, fasting part of the day or just a few days. Some manage to fast the whole month by the age of ten or so. After sunset each day, in contrast, special, abundant food, friends and family, and evening activities, including visits to the mosque (Arabic, masjid) take place. Ramadan culminates in the major festival called Eid al-Fitr at the end of the month. Children traditionally receive new shoes and clothing, money, sweets and toys as a reward for just trying, or accomplishing the fast.

Italian noblewomen presented soft, absorbent, linen towels with indigo woven borders to birthing mothers during the 14th century and later. The cultural context of the towels is illustrated in Italian paintings of the period depicting childbirth customs such as presentation and use of the towels. For example, this fresco by Paolo di Giovanni Fei, Birth of the Virgin Mary (1380) displays several uses for the towels. Women used these soft, fringed cloths as head coverings, tablecloths, and for wrapping household items. The towels were originally imported from Egypt, a center for linen and indigo dye production and weaving. Weavers finished the white body of the towels with fringe and woven border designs featuring Arabic inscriptions called tiraz. Tiraz bands alternated with geometric, plant, or animal designs. Like other luxury textiles from the East, imported Egyptian towels were copied by Italian weavers, eventually becoming a specialty of Perugia and other weaving centers. In place of the tiraz, pseudo-Arabic and then Latin lettering with Christian motifs appeared in the European border designs.

This public building of Mamluk Cairo in Egypt has two functions. Its lower level housed a sabil, or fountain, for dispensing water to thirsty travelers and denizens of the city, and its upper level was a public primary school for the teaching of Qur'an, called a kuttab. Kuttab schools taught basic literacy skills such as arithmetic and grammar along with recitation of the Qur'an needed to perform Islamic prayers. The building was open to air and light on three façades. The sabil featured copper grillwork windows through which cups of water could be passed by an attendant inside, or passers-by could enter the cool interior with decorative tiles.

Pupils entered the building and climbed a stone stairway to the kuttab. They entered the rectangular schoolroom to sit on woven mats while the teacher likely sat on the raised platform that surrounded the room on three sides. A balcony projects slightly over the street, shaded by a large wooden awning. Delicate, turned-wooden pillars form 15 arches connected by balustrades and carved wooden screens called mashrabiyya. Clay water jugs cooled the drinking water in the breeze created by the mashrabiyya, a typical Middle Eastern architectural feature. The schoolroom walls were open to the street but screened from the sun and activity, making it an inviting, pleasant place to learn. Passers-by could take pleasure in hearing the children recite the Qu'an in unison. The construction of this significant building in 1748 CE is credited to Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda, Overseer of Awqaf (Charitable Endowments), who was associated with many Cairo monuments of the period.

These two infant tunics, found south of Cairo by archaeologists, date to the period after the Arab conquest of Egypt. The first tunic, measuring 45 centimeters long and 47 cm wide (17.7 x 18.5 inches), was made of a single length of hand-woven brown wool folded in half at the shoulders and sewn on the sides, leaving openings for the arms and vents at the hand-stitched hem for mobility. A stripe of orange was woven across the shoulders and an applied band was sewn onto the neck opening. The tunic features rows of cream and red woolen pile loops for warmth. The tunic was buried with the loops facing out, but the pile was likely worn on the inside during life. The second tunic, 46 cm (18.1 inches) by 48 cm (18.9 inches), was also made from a single length of cloth folded in two. A neck finishing was cut from the same cloth and sewn onto the tunic with white linen thread, along with a band of red wool with geometric patterning. This tunic may have been recycled from an adult garment, or heavily repaired. Approximately 11 different shades of wool thread were darned into the base fabric in rectangular patterns, restoring a worn object or making a plain one colorful. Magnified detail available online for tunic 1 and tunic 2.

Archaeologist W. M. Flinders Petrie found this child's sock, dated to the 2nd century C.E., in a cemetery at Oxyrhyncus, a Greek monastic centre on the banks of the Nile in Egypt. The sock is made of wool yarn in a technique called "sprang," or loop knitting, in which short pieces of yarn were looped in a circular pattern using a needle. The sock features a separate section for the large toe and was likely worn with a thong sandal made of woven rushes with leather strap and sole. This example is unusual both for the skill of its Egyptian maker and the elaborate multi-colored, striped pattern. It is rare for such common objects to be preserved in the archaeological record because they were subject to wear in life and disintegration after burial. Egypt's dry climate and the care taken with burials have preserved them. The technique of loop knitting was widespread in the ancient world, and has been identified in well-preserved textile examples from Peru, Denmark, and Greece. The technique sometimes involved use of a frame, and was used to make hairnets, hoods, and fishnets as well.