Prof. Reda Hegazy, President of Al Ryada University
Translated from Arabic. Read the original.
Professor Reda Hegazy
The Egyptian teacher who rose to the top of the education system and became one of those who carried the torch, taking on the responsibility of improving the quality of education
and from better education comes a better quality of life for Egyptians
Reda Hegazy, the chemistry teacher from Dekernes – Dakahlia Governorate to the New Administrative Capital and to the highest offices; yet he never forgot that he is the Egyptian teacher who worked hard, and he remembers his own teachers …he remembers sitting and listening to his teacher, and everyone's teacher, Dr Hussein El-Dereeny, a man the writer of this article could not presume to sit with and be heard by …scholars who met and created
and he never forgot that people have a share in his knowledge …I heard him say ” there are no zeros in the human sciences
and the mind must delight if learning is to happen
Not everyone who sits in a teaching chair is called a teacher, and not everyone who sits in a minister's chair is called a minister,
but Dr Reda Hegazy combined the two, with the competence of one who knows, the gravity of a scholar and the gentleness of a human being. You find him firm and kind at once; he takes decisions, understands their policy, and stands beside the teacher as a friend.
In the classroom he was a heart beating with knowledge, seeing in the student a human being whom education must prepare for the future.
He teaches with his eyes before his words, and he knows how a student comes to produce knowledge; he has always believed that success is not measured in marks but in the ability to make a difference in life. The difference that makes the difference
From the day he took the minister's chair his face did not change… his features did not alter; his telephone was open to everyone and his mind was searching for a great place for education in Egypt. He remained the same teacher, but in a larger classroom, one that holds millions of the nation's children in its schools.
In his decisions you could hear the echo of the classrooms, and in every paper he signed he called to mind the face of a student, the voice of a teacher, the worry of a parent. He believed that education is not run from closed offices but from the pulse of the people.
He is the minister who never forgot for a day that he was and remains a teacher, and the teacher who never gave up his dream of making education a mission for national renewal, not a job for a living.
The voice of wonder and the wonder of the moment …
When he speaks about school you glimpse in his eyes the wonder of the child that never left him, and when he speaks about the teacher you hear in his voice the gratitude of the pupil who still sits in the front row, alert to life. He does not see education as papers and examinations but as a great human journey in which minds are made and spirits refined.
From here, education reform was for him not only an administrative project but a national project for building people,
the person who thinks… and dreams… and loves their country with an aware mind and a sincere heart
Peace be upon a teacher who remained human, upon a minister who remained honest, and upon a man who believed that the greatest achievement anyone leaves behind is a human being who learned from him how to be better. 
