Me: When does school start again?
Kid: In September.
Me: Will it be mostly the same people who were in your class last year?
Kid: No some people have left.
Mother: [Interjecting] Actually there’s a rather suspicious number of people who have switched to the Cairo American College (the biggest American school in Cairo.)
Me: How come?
Mother: Because Hosni Mubarak’s grandson is going there.
Me: Alaa’s son?
Mother: Yes.
Me: And people are moving to CAC to make sure their children get to know him?
Mother: Looks like it.
Me: [Perplexed] So basically it means that these people, the country’s elite, still think that in 15-20 years time it might still be an advantage to be close to the Mubarak family?
Mother: Well, yes — look at the elite today, they all went to school with each other.
Me: [Excitedly] But that probably means they think Gamal Mubarak will be the next president!
Mother: Well…
The talk of the town
A conversation I had last night about Cairo’s private schools:
Not that it necessarily means anything about the regime, maybe the Mubarak’s will create a dynasty maybe they won’t. But one thing you can be sure of is that human beings are natural suck-ups to whoever holds the power and money today. Look at Haykal, he’s made a career out of it.
Funny. But CAC has long been popular with Cairo elites, hasn’t it?
Yes, but it seems people are moving their kids so they can be with Alaa’s son!
Funny, I thought that people should be doing the exact opposite of this… Not only does this mean that we are looking forward to more generations of suck-ups, it also means that more and more people are getting an American education rather than improving our Arabic education so that it becomes possible to keep our language while at the same time having a good second language and thinking skills that can be applied to OUR needs not America’s.
Hmm, seems that the Cairo elite are rather slow in picking up on the first family news. Ala’a switched his son from Modern English School to CAC over a year ago…..much to the relief of parents at MES serious about their kids’ education.
Alaa's son died anyways, so moving to CAC won't make any difference
Did not know that… did it happen recently?