Date de publication:
Lundi 03 Mars 2014 - 10:16
Publié ici :
03 Mars 2014Mis à jour le :
23 Juin 2017Mots-clefs:
- vie politique
- éducation
- blogs
- travail
- blog
- Maroc
Zone géographique:
- Moyen-Orient
Arduous Journeys on Roads Not [Yet] Taken. Language, Neoliberal Work Skills, and the Exhausted Educational Dream
The passionate controversy over Noureddine Ayouche’s proposal to replace fuṣḥā with the Moroccan vernaculars (especially Moroccan Arabic, dārija) as languages of instruction in pre-school and early primary school classes indicates that questions over classroom language are never solely pedagogical. Rather, they are intimately imbricated in broader political dynamics, among which the evolution of the Moroccan nation-state during the period of mature neoliberalism, and the turbulent and unequal transition of Morocco into global market work skills. Interestingly, the same controversy opens up a space in which to reflect on the nature of deliberation in the country and the processes through which decisions about the future of the current generation will be made.
On the 4th and 5th October 2013, businessman and founder of the non-governmental organization Zakoura Education for the reintegration of previously unschooled children into public education Noureddine Ayouche held a workshop titled “The Pathway to Success [Le chemin de la réussite].” Intended to explore the prospects for the reform of the Moroccan educational landscape, the workshop rode on the back of King Mohammed VI’s address to the nation on the 20th August 2013 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the consolidation of the Moroccan anti-colonial struggle. The King’s address was focused on the widely acknowledged educational crisis in the country (“Why is it that so many of our young people cannot fulfil their legitimate professional, material, and social aspirations?”) and confirmed that the “path” to the pivotal transformation of the educational landscape “is still arduous and long” [al-tarīq la yazālu shāqan wa tawīlan].This monarchical attention to educational matters was more than rhetorical; in fact, it marked the beginning of relevant policies such as the re-activation of the royally appointed High Council of Education [Majlis al-A‘ala lil-Ta‘alīm]. The revamped council had been responsible for implementing the Educational Emergency Plan of 2008, a plan that would respond to the World Bank’s relegation of Morocco to the bottom of the MENA region’s educational ranking–a region that was itself assessed as performing worse than the rest of the developing world. The World Bank report in question bore the emblematic title “The Road not Traveled: Educational Reform in the Middle East and North Africa”.A recent evaluation of this Education Emergency Plan, which the World Bank has funded through two $100 million dollar loans, claimed that despite relative progress in access to education, gender parity, and literacy rates, the Moroccan public educational system had “a long way to go on quality.” It is very likely that this flurry of activity around education banked on international consensus that both national and transnational agendas since the mid 20th century have left much to be desired in the educational experience of the developing world – which is, incidentally, also the postcolonial world. This consensus was reiterated during the inauguration of the UN Global Education First Initiative in July 2013. Through the cultural diplomacy of the Pakistani youth activist Malala Yousafzai, the UN renewed its commitment to educational provision, delicately superseding another large scale campaign that has by now run out of steam: the Education for All campaign that UNESCO launched in 1990.
The twofold discourse of ‘halfway progress’, expressed in the spatial metaphor of challenging journeys ahead, and ‘educational fatigue’, evident in the repetitive declarations of crisis and frustrated hopes, reverberates fairly unchanged across many settings of the so-called global south. Is this discourse then the leading paradigm on developing nations in the era of mature neoliberalism? The controversy engendered by Noureddine Ayouche’s propositions on language policy gives us a chance to re-politicize this neutralized discourse and, by doing so, go against the grain of hegemonic understandings of what education systems are about at this point in time. This gesture of re-politicization entails scrutinizing the structural and historical set up of public education in Morocco through the lens of language politics–which the recent controversy brought back into public forums after a long period of official(y imposed?) silence. Language politics push us to unpack the concept of ‘work skill’ and analyse the demands of the current job market in ways that educational research has at best misrepresented and at worst altogether sidelined. Since language politics is never solely about language, this locally specific examination of the contemporary experience and possible futures of Moroccan public school graduates has to go beyond speculations on the efficiency of the language of instruction, or the pedestrian recognition of the importance of foreign language proficiency. Instead, language politics partake in a broader conversation on the nature of decision-making in the country over all domains of collective social experience. In brief: who and through what process should decide on the language of formal schooling? This article’s suggestion is that the handling of such matters is revealing of the manner in which a professedly burgeoning Moroccan democracy honours its commitment to genuine representation and public consensus.
(...)
Par Charis Boutieri
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