TEACHING EGYPT: APPROACHES AND RESOURCES Barbara Petzen, TeachMideast.org

History as It Happens  Background Information  Demographics of Egypt  Economic Conditions and Political Structures in Egypt  Teaching Angles  Political Speech: Reading the Protests  Making Revolution on the International Scene/Screen  US Foreign Policy: Who are our allies, and how does Egypt affect those relationships?  Comparison of different media sources

Demographics  Pop. 80,471,869 (July 2010 est., 16 th in world)  0-14 years: 33% (male 13,308,407/female 12,711,900)  years: 62.7% (male 25,138,546/female 24,342,230)  65 years and over: 4.3% (male 1,546,774/female 1,818,778) (2010 est.)  Median age: 24

Economy  Economic reforms since 90s liberalized economy to induce more foreign investment  Remittances from 2.7 million Egyptians abroad  Per capita GDP of $6,200 is 136th in the world  Gap between rich and poor growing, many allegations of corruption  44.4% in “poverty tunnel”—cannot or can just fulfill basic calorie needs, or add basic non-food expenses  10% unemployment, 87.2 percent of the unemployed are between the ages of 15 and 29, unemployment among college graduates 10 times higher than non- graduates  Food prices going up

Communications  Landline telephones: 10.3 million  Cell phones: 55.4 million  Internet users 20.1 million  state-run TV operates 2 national and 6 regional terrestrial networks as well as a few satellite channels; about 20 private satellite channels and a large number of Arabic satellite channels

Reading the Protest  The Choices Teaching with the News lesson’s collections of protest signs allow students to examine the signs protesters have made and carried to ask the who, why and how questions:  Life magazine’s Fiery Protest slideshow Life magazine’s Fiery Protest slideshow  Powerpoint of protest signs Powerpoint  There is also a collection of blogs from and about Egypt and Tunisia at globalvoicesonline.org

Editorial Cartoons

Resources to Explore  Different Shades of Tahrir from al-Jazeera English egypt/2011/02/ html egypt/2011/02/ html  Choices’ Teaching with the News: Egypt’s Uprising  Editorial Cartoon collection from The Comics Journal’s The Hooded Utilitarian cartoons-four-reactions-to-the-egyptian-protests/ cartoons-four-reactions-to-the-egyptian-protests/  Popular culture: Rebel by Arabian Nights f/Lauren Hill lauryn-hill-rebel.html lauryn-hill-rebel.html

Exciting Stuff: Hip Hop from Tahrir