Abstract

Holocaust Education in Egyptian Seconday Schools is a thesis completed by Marisa Claire Jones under the supervision of Dr. Joel Bein in at the American University in Cairo. The aim of this project was to determine how the Holocaust is taught in Egyptian secondary schools, with a focus on materials, textbooks and instructional style used in this process. To gain data and information for the thesis, background information was collected on the phenomenon of Holocaust denial and on the topic of Holocaust education in Germany, Israel and Egypt, involving the role played by political and ideological currents dominant in these societies at certain junctures in shaping the way school curriculums portray the Holocaust.

I determined through the course of textbook analysis, teacher interviews and classroom surveys that students enrolled in private schools where the curriculum, textbooks and teaching staff are partially or totally separated from the national history curriculum have a greater understanding and more open recognition of the Holocaust than children who attend public, or "national" schools, as I commonly refer to them. This may be due in large part to the inaccurate and distorted image of Jews and Jewish history depicted in the national curriculum's history, which culminates in an open denial that the Holocaust occurred. The pattern of increased Holocaust coverage in schools removed from the government's curriculum and standards was pronounced although not absolute. My research rested on the data I gathered and the interviews I conducted from six different Cairo schools, including a private Islamic school, several prestigious private schools, a German school following the German national curriculum, a school teaching the content of the Egyptian national history curriculum and from a thorough examination of the national system's history lessons as presented in two commonly-used textbooks. I followed these interviews with a survey of freshman students at the American University in Cairo which looked at the relationship between the type of secondary school they had attended and their grasp and opinions on the Holocaust.

Department

Middle East Studies Center

Degree Name

MA in Middle East Studies

Date of Award

6-1-2008

Online Submission Date

6-1-2008

First Advisor

Joel Beinin

Committee Member 1

Joel Beinin

Committee Member 2

Dan Tschirgi

Committee Member 3

Helen Rizzo

Document Type

Thesis

Extent

viii, 97 leaves :

Library of Congress Subject Heading 1

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in textbooks

Library of Congress Subject Heading 2

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)

Library of Congress Subject Heading 3

Kafka, Franz,;Coetzee, J. M.,

Rights

The American University in Cairo grants authors of theses and dissertations a maximum embargo period of two years from the date of submission, upon request. After the embargo elapses, these documents are made available publicly. If you are the author of this thesis or dissertation, and would like to request an exceptional extension of the embargo period, please write to thesisadmin@aucegypt.edu

Call Number

Thesis 2008/62

Location

uarch

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