The 2011 uprising is a watershed event in contemporary Egyptian history in terms of the unprecedented scale of mass protest and the historic changes that followed it. This chapter asks what changed in relation to the production of lived and imagined citizenship in schools in the tumultuous months and years following the uprising. It outlines changes in the wider political, economic and social context and maps key changes in the educational sphere, presenting novel analysis on trends in teacher salaries and public spending on education. In analyzing the research with students, teachers and stakeholders from 2016 to 2018, it updates the discussion on the themes that are methodologically and conceptually developed across Chapters 1–6 in terms of informal privatization, permissiveness and violent punishment, and maps key changes to textbooks, rituals and student narratives relating to citizenship and belonging. In particular, it highlights trends of student contestation of violent and humiliating treatment and debates around the introduction of new pro-army song in school rituals and divergent textbook treatments of the Revolution and the legitimizing narratives of the regime.

In Chapter 2, Egypt enters the Arab Spring with relative strength in national unity and state capacities. However, during the country’s democratic transition, its military took advantage of conflicts between Islamists and secularists in order to stage a coup and reassert its historical dominance of Egypt’s political economy. Both Islamist and secular-oriented political parties were at fault in failing to forge the “twin tolerations” necessary for a political pact or democratic bargain in Egypt. Witnessing the victory of Islamists in transitional elections, secularists turned to the streets and the military to overturn electoral outcomes. For their part, after winning Egypt’s post-Mubarak founding elections, President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood made decisions and appointments that raised questions about their commitment to democracy and their willingness to share power at the most delicate point of a democratic transition, the period that includes constitution writing.