fellow Americans—Why do they hate us? What do they think of our policies?—were not my first priority, though. My focus was to understand Egyptian concerns; to learn how Egyptians were facing up to universal questions about access to high-quality education, women’s evolving social roles, and career development; and to find out how their deeply held religious beliefs affect their interaction with the world at large.
At the root of Egypt’s dismal unemployment statistics are the nation’s weakness in the production and dissemination of knowledge and the government’s inadequate commitment to science and technology. Yet there is tremendous energy and enthusiasm for learning among Egyptian students. Every young person I spoke with acknowledged the need for job-related computer skills and for better access to information in a country where libraries are only now becoming more widely accessible.
The Ministry of Education likewise recognizes the need for computer skills, and so it has provided every public school in Egypt with at least one computer, and occasionally more than one. But school enrollments usually number in the hundreds, and the presence of one or two computers normally restricts usage to demonstrations by teachers at the front of the class.