This article examines petitions submitted to the Egyptian state by students and parents over the span of a century. These sources reveal that Egyptians from across the economic spectrum were shifting their construction of schooling in response to changing political and educational policies and evolving conceptions of educational need. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, parents and students were increasingly appealing to discourses concerning education, girls' schooling and nationalism as a way to frame their personal pursuits as an extension of national advancement. As a result, petitioners saw education not as a matter of charity or luxury, but rather as a fundamental way to prevent "losing" a brighter future. Ultimately, this shift in the concept of educational need underwrote the development of mass educational systems of the twentieth century as a cornerstone of the relationship between even the poorest of citizens and the Egyptian state.