Back to School Noureddine Boutahar

Students across Morocco are headed back to school for another school year. Their backpacks full of heavy and expensive books weighing them down. Their heads and hearts are full of false hopes, empty aspirations and sunken dreams generated by the sky rocketing unemployment among graduates and sporadic attempts of reform that usually end up in limbo and confusion. Their school year ahead is made up of a series of challenges, hurdles, and multi-faceted complex problems whose solutions are not on the near horizon. However, a detailed and in-depth analysis of the sad state of education in Morocco is beyond the scope of this post which will primarily be addressing the small drops that swell the river such as large class sizes, long school days, lack of basic materials and facilities, poor textbooks, arbitrary top-down decisions, and rife corruption.

Moroccan classrooms are typically too crowded for learning. Sometimes class size is greater than fifty students which is detrimental to the learning and teaching process especially in the early years of schooling when kids require so much of teacher time and need individual attention. Large classes, also, mean behavior problems for kids and management challenges for teachers who turn into mere babysitters. This certainly causes many students to lag behind and eventually drop out at a young age. A former education minister said that he’d rather see the kids in a crowded class than on the street. However, because of this failed policy thousands of them soon drop out as they cannot keep up with the other kids. Because of this boomerang policy Morocco ranks 4th worst educational reformer worldwide.

School refusal and hate is, also, very common among Moroccan students for various reasons such as having to do loads of homework, memorize stuff they will never need, wake up early every school day and so on. However, I for one see school day length (08-18) as one of the major reasons why our students look down on school. Our students spent most of their time and daylight hours at school; usually from dawn to dusk, nine months a year. It’s a different kind of jail with no bars but no freedom. I have spent some time in a few American schools where most high schools start at 7:30 a.m. and end at 2:30 p.m. I heard in Canada, whose ranking in education is among the top ten, the school day is even shorter – 5.5 hours a day. In these countries students have the afternoon for themselves, for extra-curricular activities, for homework and assignment, for projects, and for other activities and interests that would prepare them for adult life. Our students, on the contrary, routinely go to school in the morning, come back from school in the evening until they get extremely tired of school.

Another reason why our schools are not doing well has to do with the fact that education has become a lucrative business in this country. The weight of students’ backpacks is a perfect example of how enticing this sector is for profit-motivated businessmen who see education as another horizon for making quick money. Students’ backpacks are full of expensive school books and other school items which do nothing but provide fast and easy money to ‘The Merchants of Books’. It’s a sad and known fact that when business comes in the door, education and learning flies out the window. Too many books don’t make good students when the business mentality takes control of most aspects of education; they only drive those who cannot afford them to drop out and fall into a life of poverty, drug abuse, violence, crimes, and so on.

As for corruption, the situation is even worse, and it has taken quite a toll on Moroccan education. There have been some good-intentioned attempts to correct the failures of education but were usually nipped in the bud by corruption. Corruption in this very sensitive sector runs the gamut from bribery to embezzlement and cronyism to paid tutoring lessons by greedy teachers. Cases of entrepreneurs who have been found guilty of embezzling funds allocated to building or renovating schools and purchasing teaching materials is the talk of every street and home. Cronyism whereby some teachers can get desirable appointments and other services is a common currency in the field of education, as well. Also, the issue of “ghost teachers” is a prime example of corruption and officials’ impotence. These parasite irregular and illegal civil servants drain the already strained budget of education and expose the government’s impotence against the ruling elite who make the rules and the ultimate decisions. Other teachers are accomplices in the destruction of our system of education through the notorious shameful ‘private lessons’. These paid tutorings which pick the pockets of many poverty-stricken and middle-class families , are a disease which has plagued not only private and public schools but higher institutions as well and has, thus, eroded the educational system as a whole.

Also, the lack of basic educational resources and school facilities is a major constraint our schools are facing. Chalk and board are the only teaching materials that most Moroccan classrooms have. There are attempts, now, to equip schools with technology such as computers, internet connections, interactive whiteboards, and so on. However, it seems this is done in a hasty foolhardy manner and without a well-designed and proper planning. A perfect example of such imprudent rush is the little training teachers get which is not sufficient or adequate enough to incorporate technology into their classroom instruction. These so-called trainings are never supported by follow-ups or updates or hands-on tests or whatever to ensure competency, mastery, and continuity. Even the best and hardest working teachers need congenial and wiser training to spur them on to give the best they can. Some see the whole process only as a cash cow that earns them hard cash and others see it as a waste of time and money –especially the technophobe educators.

Another obstacle that impedes real educational progress in Morocco is arbitrary top-down decision making by individual school officials or a minority group of the ruling elite. Arabization, for example, undertaken and implemented by the then minister of Education, Azzeddine Laraki, in 1977 stopped at the 12th grade (baccalaureate). This has caused many science students to avoid going to Science Colleges and other higher institutes or to drop out because of deficiencies in French, the language of instruction there and also the language par excellence for the ruling elite. In addition to arbitrariness, irresolution, bureaucracy, and individual decisions are the main defining features of this sector which has suffered many similar unfinished reforms and wrong choices for decades. The protests and demonstrations of 1965, 1981, 1984, 1990 and multiple nationwide strikes act as an authentic witness to the failure of cosmetic makeovers which have been performed by successive helpless and façade governments since independence.

One more hurdle on the way to quality education in Morocco is the imposed top-down curriculum that focuses on quantity rather than quality. The amount of books students are asked to buy each year is a clear evidence of this orientation. Also, external parties’ (parents, inspectors, principals, officials, etc) insistence on the number of lessons covered rather than the way they are covered bears witness to the emphasis on quantity, teaching, and rote learning. Besides, most teachers usually struggle with the curriculum and find it difficult to finish the number of lessons and units in due time. Some teachers work overtime to finish, others wrap up the lessons quickly at the expense of learning, critical thinking, skills development, promotion of social and universal values and so forth.

The importance of quality education is well recognized. If you take care of education, it will take care of everything else including economic growth and prosperity as well as justice and equity. So, it’s high time those who rule from behind the curtains understand that low quality education is a weapon of mass destruction and a perennial security threat. They, also, have to stop dodging responsibility, pitting parents against teachers and teacher unions, and exhibiting a cavalier attitude towards the sufferings of kids of low and modest-income families. Hopefully, the coming government officials (under the new constitution) will have a broader outlook, a clearer vision, a stronger willingness, and more freedom to take educational reform seriously and expedite its process because it’s the best investment in the future of this country and a reliable guarantee of its durable social stability and economic progress. As Thomas Friedman said, "Countries that don’t invest in the future tend to not do well there."