Secondary School Textbook Evaluation Meetings (Noureddine Boutahar)

Mr Hamid Angoud, the Inspector of English in the region of Khemisset, held some meetings about Moroccan English textbooks used in secondary schools (9th grade). I attended a couple of them as a teacher-adviser and I sometimes felt the books were subject to violent criticism by some teachers. As a veteran teacher I have to make a few comments – or say thoughts – about these books and try to render to Caesar what is Caesar's.
However, I should first thank Si Hamid Angoud for the opportunity he gave me to meet those blooming and ambitious young teachers and have honest constructive discussions. It was an opportunity to share our thoughts, experiences, as well as our grievances and aspirations for better and quality education for future generations in Morocco. Heartfelt thanks to teacher-presenters for their well thought-out presentations. Special thanks to the teacher-participants for their valuable contributions and whose criticism mostly comes out of genuine love and admiration for their profession and out of aspiration for a better system of education in general.
I am a veteran teacher but I am not claiming expertise, however. I am veteran in terms of the number of years I spent in teaching. I started teaching in the late eighties and lived both periods: before the home-made textbook and while implementing and using the Moroccan textbook. At that time, in the eighties, we had only the syllabus –an outline of the points and topics to be taught – and we had to prepare everything from scratch: reading texts, listening texts, lesson plans, activities, homework assignments, quizzes, tests, VAs and all. It was so strenuous and exhausting and we sweated a lot because it was very hard – in the absence of the Internet – to find handy material and because we were inexperienced novice teachers groping our way through the labyrinth of the teaching profession. Now, we have our homemade Moroccan textbooks, but they are not perfect books, I have to admit. However, they have made things easier for teachers, and have made their job less demanding at least because they don’t have to start everything from the ground up. They give us all somewhere -a common ground- to start from. However, these books need good teachers because good teachers know how to evaluate and adapt textbooks. Good teachers don’t throw bad textbooks under the bus; they are troubleshooters who try to improve school textbooks using their experience, their knowledge, their know-how, and their creativity. Also, with the Internet services the sky is the limit for finding material to supplement these books and make them cater for the needs of students.
As a reminder, textbooks have, among other things, the following advantages: They serve as a scaffolding for novice teachers and offer them practical help; they provide practical guidance for both novice and seasoned teachers about what to teach and how to teach it; they make it possible for absentees to catch up; they allow class to prepare in advance and good students to work independently of the teacher or even ahead of class; and they permit external legitimate parties (parents, inspectors, principals etc) to have an eye on what is going on in class.
The bottom line is, "a textbook is just one tool, perhaps a very important tool, in your teaching arsenal." They are necessary but some adaptation and improvisation is needed to keep them afloat. That is, teachers should use them wisely and not overuse them blindly.

Moroccan Parties About-face (Noureddine Boutahar)

Most political parties, unions, associations, and all the profiteers who have been riding the Moroccan gravy train for almost a century disparaged February 20th Movement and gave it a stinkeye at the beginning. They all repudiated these youth and avoided them as if they were scabby with mange. They used the media to mock the movement and demonize it by portraying and spreading an untrue image about its members. But as soon as the king announced "to undertake a comprehensive constitutional reform" everybody did an about-face and changed their speech. What had been criticism became praise, and blame changed into acclamation. They did so 'under duress and not willingly' (Mokrahun akhaka la batal), of course.
What is worse, though, is the attitude of many associations and most political parties which now want to appropriate the movement and hijack the 'revolution'. They have appointed themselves chief negotiators on behalf of the youth and on behalf of the Moroccan people as a whole on constitutional reform. The political parties, for example, which do not represent the people mathematically in view of the low turnout of the last elections and low membership are forcing themselves into the movement's seat to steer the country into a darker and uncertain future.
The Moroccan people have abandoned these political parties as a result of their attitudes towards the people's demands and because of their involvement in the distortion of the political life in Morocco. These political parties, associations and unions are responsible for most of the political, economic, and social problems of the country. The greatest crime they committed against the Moroccan people is that the had no vision and no aspirations beyond the interests of the big heads and the few infamous elite.
It is really disappointing to see vociferous and acerbic 'heros'and 'militants' of yesterday become tamed with money, positions and jobs. It is depressing and disheartening to see yesterday's 'symbolic figures of militancy' turn now into "paper tigers" - to use Mao Tse Tung's words.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once said, “A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.” In our case, it's the fault of both because the people too have long believed the honeyed promises and speeches of these guys who want to, in Rachid Nini's terms, "abort the revolution of the people and the king". They will do their best to abort the revolution because they don't represent the people, they are far from the people, they are not interested in the people, they have no practical political agenda, and they do nothing but swim with the tide. But because they have grown older, frail and weak, they will undoubtedly be carried away by the tide of time.
Change is coming, though, beyond any shadow of doubt and tomorrow will definitely not be like yesterday because the people and the king want change, and because times have changed. All we have to do now is offer funeral prayers for the political parties, associations, and unions of yesterday. Let's also cross our fingers and hope a new and young generation of leaders will rise up from the multi-ethnic streets of Morocco to lead the country to a better future and to a democracy based on equality regardless of family name or origin.

My Thoughts about Access Program (Noureddine Boutahar)

I am writing these thoughts at the request of Khemisset Access program students.
MATE ACCESS program is almost over and I am sad, but I am actually profoundly grateful for the opportunity given to me to teach these students because I learnt a lot from the students and from the program itself. It is my utmost delight to see these young people grow, in less than two years, from students struggling to communicate with English to students who can hold a long conversation and write long essays in English using a wider variety of vocabulary and grammatical structures.
The program allowed me to meet and make new friends (teachers, students, guest speakers, parents and others)
The program allowed me to use my ICT skills and put to practice things I learnt by my own and during my stay in the USA.
The program allowed me to improve and hone some of my teaching skills because this is a special group.
The program allowed me to widen my knowledge of American culture via the books (MEGA), the CDS, and the American guest speakers.
I learned that working with a small group is much better than working with a large group because you can tend to the needs of each individual student.
I learned that introducing Internet services in the classroom like youtube, google, blogs, and so on enhances learning, and makes teaching fun and enjoyable.
I learned that good students – like this group -- make a good teacher. It’s the serious, smart, interested, curious students who push teacher to do better and work harder.
I learned to budget my time even more efficiently. I had to juggle my school work, my Access work, my TV work, and my family chores and responsibilities.
Also, my students have repeatedly been teachers to me.For example, time and again, I prepared and planed topics for discussion, read enough about them, then I got surprised at the richness and variety of my students ideas in the classroom.
I'm sad, though, that the program is almost over because I had so much fun with these students. I hope to meet with them sometime later, to see them grow, develop, begin a career, and actively participate in and contribute to the development, welfare, and betterment of this nation.

Congrats to Egypt (Noureddine Boutahar)

Dear Egyptian friends,
Congratulations on your victory and success. You deserve your liberation and freedom. Your courage and perseverance have paid off. For Eighteen days you have been protesting peacefully, enduring weather conditions, standing thugs’ provocations, and bearing the regime’s hopeless prevarications. Now that you have pulled the regime out like a cat across the rug,enjoy your well-deserved victory.
There is a joke making the rounds here in Morocco that Husni Mubarak came out on the balcony one morning and saw the crowds shouting and screaming. He asked one of his advisers, “Who are these people? What do they want?” The guy responded, “They’ve come to say good bye, your Excellency.” “Why? Where are they going?” said Mubarak.
It is a joke reminiscent of France’s Marie Antoinette joke: “let them eat the cake”. A good joke does more than make you laugh. A good joke like this one tells a lot about the mentality of those tyrannical rulers in their ivory towers, wearing blinkers, and clinging on to their beloved chairs of leadership to the last shred of imaginary hope.
They never look back, they never make any self-criticism, and they never listen to the voice of the people. All they are interested in is how much filthy lucre they and their cohorts make. They listen only to those beating the drums for them in their tacky, hypocritical speeches, and in the media. They do the possible and the impossible to dig their heels in and their heads in the sand so as not to see the truth: poverty, sufferings, injustice, corruption, despotism and the list is dozens of problems long.
As I always say, the rulers at the top are not the only ones to blame. They are just the tip of the iceberg. There are other hands on the steering wheel who benefit (more) from the situation that you feel these rulers are helpless and dependent on those vultures feeding on their fellow citizens. These vultures are powerful individuals and families, companies, and corrupt army generals who take and never give anything to the nation.
Congratulations once again to all the Egyptians and May God help and guide you along the path to true democracy. Special congrats to my Egyptian friends: those I made in Boston, Washington, Kent State (Mohammed, Ashraf, Wael, and Ahmed); those I met in Spain; and those I know in Italy.

The chickens have come home to roost. (Noureddine Boutahar)

I am taking some time out of my busy schedule to write down my thoughts about what is taking place in the Arab World these days because it is really the Arab World's watershed moment.
There are frustrated people everywhere in the world, but the Arab World has the worst-ever kind of frustration. The people in these rich countries have been put in “a boiling pot with a tight lid” for so long. The pot, however, has blown up the kitchens of Tunisian and Egyptian leaders and it is shaking that of a few others. These poor people were put there by their rulers and the West and shadow governments have been blowing on the fire, and the result is what you see today in some of these countries.
The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions’ message is clear and they are asking for something exclusively human, I guess: freedom, democracy and a better life. That’s what people are standing up for there in Egypt right now. They want their economic rights, their dignity, and the right to rule themselves. They want real reform because they’ve had enough of fake reforms and make-up. They’ve had enough of make-believe elections and parody institutions. They’ve had enough of committees “where investigations go to die”. They’ve had enough of unkept promises and eternal waiting-rooms (country) where their dreams fade and die.
People there are fed up to the back teeth with the fallacy that they are not ready for democracy yet. They are fed up of being considered under age, unsophisticated, and not mature enough for democracy.
The wind of change is blowing through the oil-rich Arab world because people are sick and tired of seeing the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Poverty, unemployment, corruption, embezzlement, inequalities and huge disparities in wages and salaries are all themes rumbling across countries awash with wealth and enormous potential. Unfortunately, the embezzlers, the corrupt, the money launderers and other criminals have no fear of the law because they are the law. You really have a lump in your throat to see these perpetrators run scot-free and go unpunished, and unquestioned.
The lull before the storm is over, and the dictators are getting only their come-uppance for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. They are reaping what they have sown. Even their patrons in the West are abandoning them and are asking them to leave. These rulers have missed out on many opportunities to make peace with their people. Now, here emerges a can-do generation which will not be satisfied with piecemeal, cosmetic reforms. Burnishing an image which has been tarnished by decades of autocracy and authoritarianism will not do the job this time. Rather, bold and far-reaching reforms are needed at all levels: political, economic, social, and judicial.
I have been talking about the tyrant rulers, but this does not mean the rulers at the top and their government officials only. There are those who aid and abet them in greedily exploiting the people and the natural resources of their countries. Sometimes you feel those rulers are helpless and are just carrying out agendas set by shadow governments, or the invisible government which in actual fact has the political and economic power. These are greedy, powerful individuals and companies both local and foreign working out plans behind the scenes to rob the people and to milk the country dry like leeches on a cow.
All freedom, peace, and democracy-loving people, let’s pray and hope that real democracy and peace come to the Arab World. Sooner the better, because chaos, anarchy, destruction, and all forms of violence are not in anyone’s interest and will not solve problems.
I also hope that life gets back to normal very soon in Egypt, that its cultural heritage will not suffer the same fate as that of Iraq, and that all my friends there (in Egypt) are safe and sound.

Farewell, JD Salinger

The death this week of JD Salinger is a sad moment for literature and for all those, like me, who read, loved and appreciated his books. The legendary American author of “The Catcher in the Rye" made a very powerful impression on me when I read his book as an adult for pleasure -Many had to read the book as part of a required book reading list in high school in America and at University in Morocco. I read and reread the “Catcher” and enjoyed it not because it features sexual innuendo and language but because the writer spoke profoundly and frankly to ordinary people. The book is a trageycomedy; hilarious and sad all the way to the end. I never got bored as I did with James Joyce’s Ulysses, for example, because the book spoke out-loud my innermost thoughts at countless occasions: Its antihero, Holden Caulfield, and I share our contempt for “phonies” and our sympathy with innocence and kids who are feeling lost, and lost to despair. We also share our concern over the ever-lasting and ever-so-unfair struggle between the good and the evil - or more exactly between the innocent and the corrupt.
Though I don’t like Holden Caulfield’s sexual encounters, his sexual insecurities, and confused immaturity being spoken out ‘publicly’, I agree with the writer’s use of slang, swearing, casual dilogs etc. Quite a few writers use such authentic teen language to speak to young readers. Let’s not forget, also, that all around us, Holden’s sexual encounters are nothing and chaste compared to what we see in the street, on TV, on the internet (and, to a lesser extent, to what many read in Mohammed Choukri’s - famous Moroccan writer - ‘For Bread Alone’.)
Here is an excerpt I have always loved because it not only makes one laugh but makes one think as well as is the case with George Carlin's black humor:
Anyway, he [Ossenburger] gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing after him. The first football game of the year, he came up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive – that's a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, he made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down on his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God – talk to Him and all – wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.
The only good part of his speech was right in the middle of it. He was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hot-shot and all, then all of a sudden this guy sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Marsalla, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Marsalla. He damn near blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like he didn't even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore.
He didn't say anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but he wasn't in the right mood. Anyway, that's where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the new dorms.” (The Catcher in the Rye: Chapter 3.)
The book is a treasure trove of thoughts and attitudes. You will be sorely missed, JD Salinger, but you will always be remembered as an American icon who abhorred fame and celebrity. .

2010 New Year's Resolutions

For all their differences, people usually agree on one thing: the previous year was a very bad year, and the new one looks better. All they zoom in on are the dark places and the difficult times they had. However, the future, too, has "two roads diverged in the a yellow wood." It's human to see the grass as being greener ahead. It's human to see the New Year as a time to turn over a new leaf and to look ahead with optimism. Part of the New Year ritual is an attempt to start afresh and prepare a list of resolutions for the coming year. “An arbitrary date on the calendar doesn’t have to have any influence on me,” I often say in my internal monologue. Then, I always give in and jump on the bandwagon and create my own New Year resolution list. This is how it came out this time:

First, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink and I don’t like junk food. So, I have no bad eating habit to stamp out (thank God). I appreciate and I am grateful for God's blessings. So my resolution is to keep up eating salad and avoiding too much meat and thanking God for giving me more health than illness.

Second, I am a workaholic and I like it. I wonder if it is something I have to fix. And fixing it means sitting at pavement café tables scrutinizing every passer-by or staying at home and watching all boring TV programs. So, my second resolution is to keep up the hard work and learn something new in the year ahead, especially in the field of computer technology – I love technology.

Third, I am thin – not slim – and have no extra kilos to shed. So, no need for long distance jogging. Maybe a few errands for my wife to the grocer’s on the corner and looking for my car in the parking lot – I am absent-minded at times - are enough to keep me fit.

Fourth, many people promise themselves to enjoy life more and pledge to scoot from their hectic schedules and lifestyles. But my grandmother – my first teacher – kept hammering me with a proverb that her parents had kept hammering her with: “A young idler is an old beggar.” If you don't work when you’re young, you won't have any money when you're old. So, my fourth resolution is: work hard while you’re still young and while you can, and rest when you’re old – or dead.

Fifth, people think time with the family comes before work. I don’t agree. Life is not an endless treadmill of chores. Let’s be more realistic: these chores are what makes this short life sweet and worth living. I need to work to get paid to bring bread to the table. No work means no money, no food, no clothes, no education for my kids, and no life. So, my fifth resolution is: I’ll try my best to balance my work and family responsibilities as much as I can. Because I love my family, I love working to provide for them.

All in all, Happy New Year 2010. I miss each and every one of you. I miss America; the land of order and law. The land of opportunities and freedom. I love Morocco and I hope its political leaders who have failed to live up to their election promises to set a list of resolutions to improve it economically, politically and socially.

My last wish though is I hope this New Year 2010 brings lots of good things our way all. Amen