Education minister says students can wear hijab but are no longer allowed to use face veils

The Egyptian government has announced a ban on the wearing of the face-covering niqab in schools from the beginning of the next term on 30 September.

Education Minister Reda Hegazy made the announcement on Monday, adding that students would still have the right to choose whether to wear a headscarf, but insisted it must not cover their faces.

He also said that the child’s guardian should be aware of their choice, and that it must have been made without any outside pressure.

  • Fondots@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    1 year ago

    Not sure what the situation is in Egypt, but seems like that would be a great way to get these people to pull their daughters out of regular schools and start homeschooling them, giving them the absolute bare minimum education they can get away with, and further cut them off from the world.

    And possibly a few would go full psycho and do some honor killing bullshit “I’ll be damned if I let my daughter out of the house with her face uncovered, I’d rather kill her”

    • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      I am not aware how this is in Egypt, but I grew up in Jordan and in the early 2000’s people were still sending their boys to private nice schools and their girls to crappy public schools and sometimes pull them out before they could get the national diploma (called tawjihi). I also know for a fact that a lot of the women I worked with in the same workplace were only allowed to do so because they wear hijab and it’s a teaching job with a gender-segregated teacher’s room. It’s sad, it’s heartbreaking, it should never happen, but when something like their dress code is banned from their workplace, then you’re just setting life for them on Difficult. They are vulnerable and are in more need of direct intervention and help than they are in need of a change of law.

      • Fondots@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        According to Wikipedia the status isn’t quite clear in Egypt.

        Information seems kind of sparse at least on the English language parts of the internet that I can easily search but the gist I was able to get (not that I’m super confident in this being correct) is that children need to be enrolled in a school between the ages of 4 and 14, but some schools allow homeschooling as long as they take the required exams in school. And of course some parents just do what they want to anyway regardless of the law.

        Based on that, I could imagine some parents begrudgingly allowing their daughters to go to school up until they turn 14 and then not allowing them to continue beyond that due to this change when otherwise they might have.

        • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I found this in Arabic that explains it quite well. In some situations, parents are able to home school their children: if schools are bad and students don’t perform as well (or lose their “morals”), if they need assisted learning, or if they are high school students they can take some school courses online and only attend the exams (such as doing the IGCSE). Also seems like there are some institutions that help parents home school children.

          https://nooun.net/اولادنا/different-options-to-educate-your-children#i-3

          We had a building guard in the apartment who was an Egyptian national had a daughter and a son and refused to send his daughter to school even though it was illegal in Jordan to not do so. However, most likely due to shitty beliefs + bad economy + Jordanian law for foreigners means that his daughter never made it to school and was just “married off” as soon as possible. My parents pleaded with him right and left but he would not budge. Reporting it to the authorities would most likely mean the girl would have been mistreated. I’m in no way saying this is a normal thing in Egyptian society based on this one perdon, but I’m trying to say that it happens a lot with a certain demographic and those kids need our help as adults around them.

        • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I found this in Arabic that explains it quite well. In some situations, parents are able to home school their children: if schools are bad and students don’t perform as well (or lose their “morals”), if they need assisted learning, or if they are high school students they can take some school courses online and only attend the exams (such as doing the IGCSE). Also seems like there are some institutions that help parents home school children.

          https://nooun.net/اولادنا/different-options-to-educate-your-children#i-3

          We had a building guard in the apartment block where my parents lived who was an Egyptian national and had a daughter and a son and refused to send his daughter to school even though it was illegal in Jordan to not do so. However, most likely due to shitty beliefs + bad economy + Jordanian law for foreigners means that his daughter never made it to school and was just “married off” as soon as possible. My parents pleaded with him right and left but he would not budge. Reporting it to the authorities would most likely mean the girl would have been mistreated. I’m in no way saying this is a normal thing in Egyptian society based on this one perdon, but I’m trying to say that it happens a lot with a certain demographic and those kids need our help as adults around them.

      • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I think it might still happen even if it’s illegal. They can do it at schools that don’t care about attendance or say that the children have some kind of learning disability or mental problem preventing them from coming to school. As long as they go to exams, I’m assuming it can happen.

        • yetAnotherUser@feddit.deEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Looking at the other comment, the status of homeschooling seems somewhat ambiguous.

          However, in my country where children must attend school until they’re 18, what you described doesn’t work. No child is exempt from this rule, save for those with extremely severe learning disabilities. And schools are extremely strict when it comes to non-attendence of minors. For instance, after 10 missing days each further missing day must be accompanied by a doctor’s notice (or other proof if it’s unrelated to health, such as attending a funeral of a family member during school hours). If there is no valid reason why the child was missing for so long, the parents will either receive a fine in the low thousands of dollars or a criminal investigation will be started.