The Ruralization of the City: How Education and Social Order Shaped Urban Transformation in Damascus #6

Jawdhat al-Hashimi High School, originally known as the Tajhiziyya School, stands prominently in Damascus, reflecting its historical significance as the first official secondary institution in the city.

Before diving into the core of this article, it’s important to recall the findings of previous articles: Syrian cities witnessed the rise of a new beneficiary class composed of the traditional land-owning elite and those aligned with European privileges. This hybrid elite combined knowledge, trade, and political power—but it struggled with structural and self-imposed obstacles in transitioning to republican institutions and guiding urban transformation. Our last article showed how centralized authority and taxation deprived the peri-urban communities of Damascus of essential municipal services, including political voice, thus reinforcing inherited social structures of favoritism and patronage.

In this article, we explore three additional dimensions that help deepen our understanding of these transformation challenges:

1. The politicization of spatial geography, which fractured national identity narratives.

2. The failure and deviation of the educational process, which contributed to the rise of an informal and parallel social order.

3. The consequences of not developing a civic (or “socialist”) welfare system—highlighting the lasting conflict between a conservative stream clinging to tradition without addressing global competitiveness, and a progressive stream that dismissed the need for modernization prerequisites.

With the suppression of local municipal voices, communities lost their natural channels to articulate their interests. Power thus turned into a game controlled by dominant elites, who exploited this vacuum to entrench their influence. The distinction between the urban bourgeoisie and the “peasant” population in the post-independence era became more than economic or social—it was a tool of exclusion, exploited by both sides in shaping a political imagination that continues to haunt the Syrian republic to this day.

Elitism and the Urban-Educated Divide

In the independence period, elitism was marked by two main traits: urban origin and education. The elite were recognized as "urban" and "educated," while others were labeled “peasants,” even if they had moved to the city or if the city itself had expanded toward them (as occurred with Damascus’ outward growth).

One revealing incident: a top-ranking student from the recently incorporated Qaboun district was denied a scholarship to study medicine in the U.S., despite being the highest scorer, on grounds that he was the “son of a peasant.” The scholarship went to the second-ranked student. That “peasant's son” later joined the military academy and became head of Military Intelligence Branch 2 during Hafez al-Assad’s “Corrective Movement.”

The opposite also occurred: after the 1963 Ba'athist coup, a young man from a traditional Damascene family was rejected from the air force academy, despite his ideal physique, on grounds that he was part of the “decadent bourgeoisie.” Thus, even though Damascus’s historic wall has long vanished under layers of soil, it continues to exist—no longer as a physical barrier, but as a deeply embedded mechanism for social and political classification.

Education as a Tool for Social and Spatial Transformation

The most significant instrument of elite distinction was education. In early 20th-century Syria, access to schooling required significant financial resources—only those benefitting from land redistribution or European privileges could afford it. Even as schools like Jawdhat al-Hashimi High School and the Syrian University (est. 1923) slowly expanded access, education remained a key axis of political and social differentiation.

While post-independence Syria saw a gradual expansion of educational access, the system remained a sorting machine, reproducing privilege: the urban elite benefited most, while rural and peripheral areas stayed underserved. According to French educator Célestin Freinet, modern education is not simply a knowledge transfer tool—it is meant to integrate the people into republican structures. Critics of his model note that true education should not merely fill students with data, but function as a filter that produces a bureaucracy loyal to the state’s institutional character.

The Missing Link: Vocational and Technical Education

Despite ambitious developmental visions, the early Syrian republic failed to build a modern technical and vocational education system. After WWII, the country experienced an industrial boom, particularly around Damascus, benefiting from global economic expansion and republican aspirations. Yet this industrial growth lacked educational support.

Traditional vocational training remained tied to the "Sheikh al-Kar" model—knowledge was passed informally in workshops rather than schools. Families were reluctant to share trade secrets, and formal education focused mainly on medicine (as part of a global capitalist policy linking health to demographic growth) and law (to support expanding civil and military bureaucracy).

One obstacle to vocational education was the gatekeeping behavior of European agents—khawajat—who monopolized knowledge. These were often Armenians who played a pivotal role in transferring industrial skills to Syrians. Their relationship with local artisans created a model of apprenticeship where the khawaja taught the craft, and the apprentice eventually became a master.

Vocational Learning as a Market Deposit

As a result, technical education developed outside the state's formal framework. It functioned more as a deposit held by the market, passed through informal means, not via institutional integration. In later articles, we’ll examine how this educational marginalization contributed to Syria’s failure to create planned industrial suburbs and why Assad’s later rhetoric praising technical education (as a key to Europe’s success) never translated into policy.

Instead, training often occurred in traditional workshops or through short courses in Beirut, Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia. The resulting disconnect alienated these industrial outskirts from the formal economic sphere. This was a major reason behind the failure to develop organized industrial suburbs around Damascus.

The Absence of a Welfare System and Its Consequences

Syria’s first republic paved roads and built factories without establishing a social safety net. Unlike France’s Third Republic, which laid the groundwork for the welfare state through labor laws and insurance programs, Syria’s economic foundation remained agrarian and rent-based. With no progressive taxation or functional bureaucracy, social justice was deferred.

In contrast, France gradually expanded its state’s social role, even before the 1945 social security law. That allowed it to develop a stable middle class and a collective sense of citizenship anchored in protection and rights.

Syria, by comparison, left the peasant marginalized, the worker unorganized, and the city detached from its hinterland. This created space for future military-populist interventions, which raised the banner of social justice without possessing the institutional tools to implement it.

State Theater and the Farce of Modernity

The early republic’s elites did not comprehend this institutional shortfall. They obsessed over surface-level reforms. General Husni al-Za’im, for instance, tried to “impose modernity” from above through symbolic measures—expelling traditional notables, banning the tarboush, and promoting the European hat (bernetta). In response, Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro wryly remarked:

“Mr. President, when a new drug is invented in the West, it’s first tested on animals. Only when it works is it approved for humans. So bring us some donkeys and put the bernetta on them. If they become smart and civilized, then I’ll wear it too.”

The real problem was not in hats but in the failure to build strong foundations for a social modernity that arises from within, not imposed from above. Education was weak, the development vision incomplete, and the elite themselves were not equipped to lead a historical transformation.

Consequences

• Kinship over Citizenship: Without a welfare system, people relied on family ties as a safety net for housing, work, and crisis aid.

• Wasta and Favoritism: In the absence of public protection, access to services became dependent on loyalty networks and patronage.

• Labor and Peasant Unrest: Poor wealth distribution led to recurring protests demanding improved living standards.

• Widening Inequality: The state failed to ensure equitable access to services, reinforcing urban elite privilege.

• Rural Migration: Driven by economic desperation, rural populations flocked to the city, settling in informal neighborhoods that lacked basic services.

Conclusion

The weaknesses of education and social protection in Syria’s first republic weren’t mere technical failures. They revealed a deeper structural inability to build a system that could transcend inherited class and spatial inequalities. Instead of functioning as engines of social leveling, education and housing became tools for elite consolidation and exclusion. Without a welfare framework, clientelism and kinship filled the void, undermining prospects for a coherent civil society or a modern republic.

These shortcomings left their mark on the cityscape: marginalized suburbs, inherited inequalities, and a hybrid urban identity—neither fully modern nor traditionally rural.

In the next article, we shift to a political-economic analysis, moving from these social dynamics to examine the structural forces that shaped the economic foundations of the republic. This will pave the way toward understanding the radical turn toward nationalizations in the following chapter.