Issue No. 612
Culture
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14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Culture |
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Plain Talk
Often described as the Eton of Egypt, even the Eton of the Middle East, Victoria College was known as the school for the elite, sons of kings, emirs, presidents, leading businessmen and the aristocracy.
From time to time we read about special dinners given by the Old Victoria Association, attended by old boys such as Omar Sharif, Youssef Chahine, Edward Said, as well as a handful of royals and former royals, from Albania, Jordan, and Sudan. There are all kinds of stories about this famous college.
Now we are, at last, to have an insight into the history of this institution. The American University in Cairo Press has just published Victoria College: A History Revealed. The word "revealed" implies that we are to be informed of a secret which has, so far, been guarded. And this is exactly what we get.
The book is jointly edited by Sahar Hammouda, associate professor at the department of English language and literature at the University of Alexandria, and Colin Clement, who worked as a teacher at Victoria College in the 1980s and who has lived in Alexandria for many years. In separate and combined chapters they cover the history of the college from its inception in 1902 until the 1956 Suez Crisis. The narrative is then taken over by Hala Halim, our colleague in the Culture section of Al-Ahram Weekly, who is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in comparative literature at UCLA.
The book offers an insight into the development of secular education in Egypt with particular emphasis on the schools that existed in Alexandria. Under Mohamed Ali the city had evolved into a vibrant port town of 10,000 inhabitants with Greek, Armenian, French and Italian communities, each of which had its own schools.
Victoria College, however, did not limit itself to the sons of British subjects, but to "provide for the upper classes in Egypt of all nationalities and creeds as a school for the education of their sons which would, so far as possible, follow the lines of an English public school".
The school was born and on 1 November 1902. An advertisement was placed in the Times and other leading English newspapers inviting applications for the post of headmaster. It announced a starting salary of LE500 per annum without housing arrangements, and estimated a bachelor's living expenses to be in the range of LE120-150 per annum.
The position required that "candidates should be laymen and have a university degree. They should be betweeen the ages of 25 and 40, and should be prepared to take an active interest in cricket, football and other games."
Hammouda remarks that "these terms were to determine the character of the school for the next 60 years. The fact that the headmaster had to be a layman meant that no religious discrimination or missionary work would be tolerated; a university degree ensured a high academic standard; comparative youth guaranteed energy in administration and hopefully a liberal and progressive attitude; and sports were instrumental in promoting an esprit de corps and healthy pupils."
The candidate who met those requirements and who became the first headmaster was Charles Lias, of King's College, Cambridge, who arrived in Alexandria on board the Equateur on 3 August 1902.
As we sail through the history of the college we learn about Mr Lias's important achievement, the replacement of the exams set by the school by those set by the Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board Examinations. These tests were to become the finals for all English schools as well as Egyptian English language schools.
In her chapter "Victoria to Victory", Hala Halim writes about the history of the college following the 1952 Revolution, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company and the tripartite aggression which resulted in the sequestration and Egyptianisation of English and French schools.
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