A Guest Speaker

On Tuesday, the first presentation group brought in Dr. Mustafa Mughazy to speak with the class about growing up in Egypt and give his opinions on the book, "War in the Land of Egypt."

I found what Dr. Mughazy was saying was so interesting. When he was talking about how much studying he did while in grade school, I couldn't believe it was up to 12 hours! He said it was because education is free over there, so in order to be successful one must be competitive. He said students would skip school just to stay home and study because they would learn more that way. I couldn't believe that students start increasing the amount of study time beginning in middle school. He also talked about how the grades that students get are determined by a final exam in the last year of school. A culmination of 15 subjects are covered in this exam and determines whether the student goes on to higher education, trade school, or no further education. To have that much pressure on an exam that determines one's life forever is incredible. Dr. Mughazy also said that in order to get into medical school, one must get between 98-99% on their exam in order to attend. If someone gets 97.9%, 0.1% of a point, they are not allowed into medical school and are limited to dental or another health profession.

In Egypt, the government offers free education at all levels which is different than in the United States where K-12 is free, but post high school one must pay tuition. So here, basically however much one can pay is the type of education one gets. I did a little bit of research on the educational system in Egypt. "In 1966, illiteracy in Egypt was estimated at more than 70%; in 1995, it was 48.6% (males, 36.4%; females, 61.2%). For the year 2000, projected adult illiteracy rates stand at 44.7% (males, 33.4%; females, 56.3%)." From this article I found out there is a total of 13 universities in Egypt. I really found all this information on the educational system very interesting, mainly because of my own interest in becoming a teacher.