Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: The student and the sheikh By Naguib Mahfouz Mahfouz: It makes me happy to know that President Mubarak has kindly intervened in the case of Alaa, the student who had been barred from school because she wrote what she thought, not the material she had learned by rote from her teachers. We all know that our education system doesn't encourage creativity among students, but is based on memorisation of textbooks. And yet we've never heard before of such arbitrary measures against students speaking their own mind. They may be given lower grades or even flunked, but never barred from school for an entire year. That was unheard of. The student spoke out on an issue of public interest -- that of the development of the desert -- and her opinion should have been acceptable in a society that talks endlessly about its commitment to democracy and freedom of expression. The decision to bar Alaa from school was an indictment of the entire education system, a sign that the system is flawed in a serious manner. Salmawy: How were things in your time? Mahfouz: I was a student in the Fouad I School, and remember that my favourite class was that of essay writing. My Arabic teacher, Sheikh Aggag, used to talk to us about patriotism and Saad Zaghloul quite freely and without fearing reprisal from the government, the monarchy, or British occupation forces. Salmawy: What did you write in your essays? Mahfouz: I used to write about a lot of things in that same vein, and I don't recall that Sheikh Aggag ever told me off. Salmawy: What did he think of your writing? Mahfouz: He liked my style. The only thing he didn't like was that I used to copy the new style that was fashionable then, the style of Taha Hussein and Abbas Al-Aqqad. This used to irritate him to no end. He used to say that I had my own literary style but was being corrupted by the new writers. Sheikh Aggag was a bit old- fashioned when it came to writing. He liked the old school writers, such as Al-Manfaluti. But when it came to patriotism, he was just as revolutionary as any of us. He used to talk to us in class about the confrontations between Saad Zaghloul and (British educational adviser) Douglas Dunlop, and how Zaghloul always had the last word. I used to write about this in my essays and Sheikh Aggag would be pleased with them and read them out in class, although they were quite inflammatory in their content. Then the new writers kept corrupting me and he kept trying in vain to put me back on the right track. All of this went on inside the class, and never once did Sheikh Aggag think of referring any of us to the principal or objected to our writing about politics. What we wrote was our own business. As for language and structure, this was his own domain, and he would often correct us and tell us off. The general climate in the country was quite favourable then. We had a strong nationalist movement and freedom of expression that encouraged us to speak up without fear of punishment. This was the education system that produced the prominent writers, politicians and patriots of our time. What has happened to us? And how did our education system turn into something that discourages talent, free thinking, and freedom of expression? I hope that the president's intervention will be prelude for an overdue revision of the education system. We need to radically change this system for the sake of the country and its future.
