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The Classroom as a Battleground: Teachers as State-Builders

By Narendra Pachkhédé

             “The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality” 

— Mahmoud Darwish

In the dusty classrooms of Gaza during the 1920s, an unassuming act of defiance unfolded—a quiet yet profound rebellion that spoke to the paradoxes of colonial rule, the audacity of educators, and the fragile scaffolding of state-building in the modern Middle East. Bahiya Farah, Headmistress of Gaza Girls’ School, stood firmly against the authority of the British Mandate. When inspectors arrived to assess her teaching, she barred them from entering her classroom. Her resistance was neither loud nor theatrical but deliberate, calculated, and undeniably bold.

At first glance, Farah’s refusal could be dismissed as a small, personal rebellion, an individual’s assertion of control within the confined space of her classroom. Yet, as Hilary Falb Kalisman’s Teachers as State-Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East demonstrates, Farah’s defiance epitomized the larger role educators played in shaping, critiquing, and resisting the emerging state systems under British Mandate rule. Teachers like Farah were more than civil servants; they were architects of a nascent order, navigating the blurred lines between colonial authority, nationalist aspirations, and pan-Arab solidarity. Their classrooms became battlegrounds where ideologies of empire, nationalism, and regional unity collided. Kalisman’s study deftly moves between the personal and the political, from the lives of individual educators to the sweeping forces of history in the Mandates of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan. Her central argument is as intricate as the lives she documents: educators were both state-builders and state-subverters. Their work extended the reach of nascent governments, but their transnational movements and ideological commitments frequently undermined the very borders these governments sought to solidify. 

Take the life of Akram Zu’aytir as an example that offers a compelling case study of the contradictions educators navigated. Born in Palestine, educated in Beirut, and employed across Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, Zu’aytir’s career embodied a “transgressive” existence. He was a fiery nationalist who openly criticized British rule, yet he simultaneously held a high-ranking position in the Jordanian government. His life reveals the limitations of traditional historical approaches focusing on national narratives or education systems confined to singular territories. 

Farah’s and Zu’aytir’s stories, filled with courage and resilience, inspire us to rethink the roles of educators in history. Kalisman challenges us to see the past not as a collection of isolated stories but as an interconnected web of people, ideas, and events transcending political borders. This interconnectedness, as Kalisman’s work reveals, is crucial to understanding the complexities of historical events and the roles of educators within them.

Through narratives like Farah’s and Zu’aytir’s, Kalisman reexamines education’s role in the political transformations of the Middle East. Far from being a monolithic instrument of state control, education emerges as a contested, dynamic space. Teachers were not passive conduits of state ideologies; they were active, transnational actors, wielding considerable agency even as the systems they helped build marginalized them over time. This agency, as Kalisman’s research demonstrates, is a powerful force that shaped the political landscape of the Middle East.

Teachers as State-Builders culminate Kalisman’s previous research on education, transnationalism, and colonialism in the Middle East. Her earlier work on agricultural education and social mobility and figures like Husayn Ruhi laid the groundwork for this book’s exploration of educators’ roles as both state-builders and subverters. The thematic continuity is evident in her sustained focus on the unintended consequences of colonial schooling and her examination of how educators navigated the tensions between their professional roles and political commitments.

The Paradox of Power

A paradox is central to Kalisman’s thesis: teachers were indispensable to the British Mandates’ state-building projects, yet their actions often undermined the states they helped construct. The Mandates’ scarcity of literate individuals made educators critical to the functioning of the emerging state apparatus. Their expertise enabled them to foster social cohesion and extend government authority into local communities. However, their professional lives and ideological commitments frequently crossed borders—both literal and conceptual—destabilizing the coherence of the very state systems they supported.

Educators navigated the intersections of Ottoman and British governance, pan-Arab solidarity, and emergent nationalisms. They often balanced loyalty to the state with resistance to its policies, embodying a dual role as builders and disruptors of state power. As Kalisman points out, this duality was not incidental but foundational to the fragile political landscapes of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan. The paradox of their role reflected the broader tensions of colonial rule and state formation in the region.

Kalisman begins her narrative in the late Ottoman period to unpack this paradox. The Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century sought to modernize the empire, with education as a key pillar of reform. These reforms, which aimed to bring the Ottoman Empire in line with European standards, led to the establishment of new schools that trained civil servants and created a professional class of teachers who moved across the empire in search of opportunities. This mobility was both a necessity and a defining feature of the period. Schools beyond the primary level were concentrated in urban centres like Istanbul, Damascus, and Beirut, compelling students and teachers from smaller towns to travel.

This movement created networks of educated elites sharing experiences, languages, and aspirations transcending local contexts. Figures like Omar Saleh al-Barghouti and Mustafa al-Tall exemplified this cosmopolitan ethos, functioning as regional actors shaping the intellectual and political currents of the Arab world. These networks persisted into the British Mandate era, carrying forward Ottoman habits, practices, and ideals yet resisting colonial rule’s new territorial logic.

Resistance in the Mandate Era

The British inherited the Ottoman education system but sought to reshape it to serve colonial objectives. Education, for the British, was a double-edged sword. It could foster compliance and stabilize colonial rule, but it also carried the potential to ignite nationalist and anti-colonial sentiment. The British adopted austerity-driven policies to mitigate this risk, underinvesting in schools, curricula, and teacher training. This created a scarcity of resources and opportunities, paradoxically empowering educators like Bahiya Farah. With their high-demand skills, teachers gained an unusual degree of autonomy that allowed them to challenge colonial policies. Farah’s refusal to admit inspectors into her classroom was not merely a personal act of defiance—it exemplified how classrooms under the Mandates became sites of ideological contestation. Teachers introduced anti-colonial ideas, fostered pan-Arab solidarity, and critiqued British policies, often subtly but effectively. Figures like Hamdi Husaini openly criticized colonial rule while maintaining positions within the education system, navigating the fine line between complicity and resistance.

Akram Zu’aytir’s career further underscores the transnational nature of this resistance. His life defied the artificial boundaries imposed by colonial powers, reflecting the fluid movement of people and ideas across the region. Institutions like the American University of Beirut (AUB) fostered these connections. AUB served as a hub of intellectual exchange where students and educators debated issues of nationalism, colonialism, and pan-Arab identity. Graduates carried these ideals into their classrooms, nurturing a regional consciousness that resisted the fragmentation imposed by the Mandates.

Kalisman’s work underscores the enduring significance of educators in shaping the modern Middle East. Her critical examination of the British Mandates reveals how education was a tool of state power and a site of resistance. This duality continues to resonate in contemporary debates about the role of education in fostering social change, national identity, and regional solidarity. The uniqueness of Kalisman’s methodology also lies in her ability to weave together the socioeconomic and ideological dimensions of education. Her exploration of the scarcity of schools and the privileged status of educators during the Mandate era underscores the paradoxical nature of their influence as she demonstrates educators as both instruments of state control and agents of anti-colonial resistance.

The Decline of the Educator-Elite

By the mid-20th century, the golden age of transnational educators began to fade. Two forces contributed to this decline: the rise of mass education and the political upheavals of the 1940s and 1950s. Mass education democratized access to schooling, eroding the elite status of educators. Once central figures in shaping national and regional ideologies, teachers increasingly became bureaucratic functionaries in standardized systems.

Simultaneously, political events like the Nakba in Palestine and the rise of military regimes in Iraq and Jordan reshaped the region. The pan-Arab ideals championed by educators like Zu’aytir gave way to state-centered nationalisms. Teachers who had once been at the forefront of intellectual and political movements were now sidelined by authoritarian regimes seeking to centralize power and suppress dissent.

Yet, despite these challenges, the legacy of educators like Bahiya Farah endures. Their work laid the foundation for modern state institutions while fostering a sense of regional solidarity that transcended borders. They were not mere implementers of state policies but active participants in shaping the Middle East’s social, political, and intellectual life.

Teachers as State-Builders

Hilary Falb Kalisman’s Teachers as State-Builders distinguishes itself through its innovative methodology, which bridges microhistorical narratives with broader transnational frameworks. Her approach is rooted in a “transversal” perspective, emphasizing the interconnectedness of individuals, institutions, and ideologies across temporal and geographical boundaries. This methodology allows Kalisman to highlight the unintended consequences of colonial-era schooling. By showing how educators crossed borders—physically and ideologically—she challenges the assumption that state schooling inherently aligns with state borders or nationalist ideologies. For example, Kalisman’s analysis of how British austerity policies inadvertently empowered educators to critique colonial rule demonstrates the complexity of these historical dynamics. Such insights enrich our understanding of colonialism, state formation, and resistance, offering a nuanced alternative to deterministic narratives.

The uniqueness of Kalisman’s methodology also lies in her ability to weave together the socioeconomic and ideological dimensions of education. Her exploration of the scarcity of schools and the privileged status of educators during the Mandate era underscores the paradoxical nature of their influence. However, this book departs from her earlier studies by adopting a more expansive, transnational lens. While her prior research often centred on specific individuals or institutions, Teachers as State-Builders situate these stories within a broader regional and historical context. By doing so, Kalisman deepens our understanding of education’s role in the Middle East and contributes to broader debates on colonialism, nationalism, and state formation. 

If Ghassan Kanafani offers Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948-1966, teachers like Akram Zu’aytir offer the pedagogy of resistance. Just as Bahiya Farah’s quiet defiance in a Gaza classroom remains a powerful reminder of the transformative potential of education, her story, like many educators chronicled in Kalisman’s book, challenges us to reconsider the boundaries of history and the actors who shape it. In doing so, Teachers as State-Builders invite us to see education not as a static institution but as a dynamic, contested space where the future is negotiated.

Hilary Falb Kalisman, Teachers as State-Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022). Pp. 288

Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.

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