Curriculum, Teacher Training, Private Sector, and Non-Formal Ed

Salaam aleikum, everyone! It’s a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning, and we’ve got a rare pocket of time between now and the next activity. You know you’re at Harvard when…. You return from a night out in downtown Rabat, and your last thoughts before falling asleep are issues like language policy and “pedagogy of integration.”  As such, I thought I would take a moment to sum up some of the memorable thoughts and ideas from yesterday that have survived the whirlwind of handshakes, mint tea, sugared pastries, and cigarette smoke and lingered into this morning.

1. Department of Curriculum Reform: As luck would have it, the first session we attended yesterday also happened to be the topic in which I had the most vested interest. I spent the better part of the last two months intensely researching multicultural education and curriculum in the United States, and some of the ongoing debates in Morocco center around very parallel themes (defining national identity, the challenges of second language learners, role of civic education, etc). Aside from the relevance of the topic, however, I also really enjoyed the way the director organized the meeting. As Meaghan described below, he wanted to give us a thorough, comprehensive overview of Moroccan education. What we didn’t expect was an historical lesson that started back in 600 AD, pre-Arab invasion. Wow. We went there. But you know what? I didn’t even mind. Hearing about the ancient schools and classical disciplines was nothing short of a *#%! pleasure.
   
   I’m going to indulge myself with a brief tangent here. Confession time, I believe I am in the minority of HGSE students that doesn’t hate lectures. During my undergrad, some of my most memorable and enjoyable classes were large, 100+ student lectures in which I could simply sit back and listen to a preeminent scholar talk about a topic that they were passionate about. I am convinced that a talented professor can make any topic interesting and engaging, as some of my favorite classes were required courses that I didn’t even want to take, such as History of Science or US Government. That was how I felt while Mr. Shafiki (sp?) spun a rich tale about the great Arabic traditions of education (incidentally, we learned later that he had been a university professor for 20 years, which showed in his ability to keep a captive audience that didn’t even speak the language). So often, the media portrays a very negative image of Arab or Islamic education – presenting them as terrorist training camps or backwards schools. Nonetheless, back in the day, the Arabs were just as influential as Greek and Roman civilization in fields like mathematics, science, and medicine. I’m going to give a quick shout-out to Professors Michael Harney and Bruce Hunt who taught me about Averroes and Avicen, both ancient scholars who spent time in Morocco.
   
   
   Fast forward to 2012, in the diverse world of IEP, we have seen several examples of madrassas or Koranic schools being the exemplars of education in countries like India and Bangladehs. This complicates our Western perception of liberal, secular education as intrinsically superior. Even in the US, we have a great history of Catholic, Jesuit, and Jewish schools and universities. Furthermore, in public schools, the curriculum is still predominantly centered around WASPish values. Just some food for thought, to supplement the actual food for sustenance that Morocco is so generously gorging us with.
   In sum, this session was awesome. By far, the topic which triggered the most discussion was the question of language policy. Undoubtedly, it is one of the most contentious and difficult issues facing Moroccan education right now. In fact, it is one of the reasons this session ran late. Meaghan has given a detailed summary of the conversation below, but since the issue is so fraught, I am going to wait to gather some alternative perspectives before blogging about it. Get cised.
2. Policy of teacher training and regional training centers: After lunch, we headed to the Central Unit for Management Training to hear about teacher training, the topic of my second-most vested interest (lucky me!). We only scheduled an hour with this unit, and between interpretation and translation, this session flew by. Luckily, we learned from our first session, and did some anticipatory educational pre-gaming in the kiddie bus, agreeing on our bullet points and key questions ahead of time. One of the issues we were most curious about was the system of teacher placements, in which the Ministry assigns teachers to particular school sites. According to Rita, this system has a profound effect on teacher motivation, since it often places teachers in cities away from their homes and families. Naturally, it will also affect quality since teachers may be unfamiliar with the language or culture of an unfamiliar region.
   
   
   According to the program director, Morocco is currently moving towards a decentralized system, in which more administrative power and authority will be phased into regional training centers. Although the current system will remain in place as a stop-gap measure, over time, the hope is for training and recruitment to occur on more localized levels. Incidentally, decentralization was one of the most recent topics discussed in A-801, and I sense the general consensus is that we still haven’t made up our minds about it. On one hand, homegrown initiatives and community-level control are desirable. On the other hand, there are two harsh realities to consider. 1) There is a shortage of quality teachers and teacher training institutions in rural areas 2) Given the choice, most teachers (but not all) would select an urban placement over a remote rural one. This raises a dilemma: how do we place the best people in the areas of the highest need? This question is a difficult one. For instance, organizations like Peace Corps and Medicos sin Fronteras place volunteers according to regions of presumed greatest need. In the case of teachers specifically, Teach for America has received a lot of press, both positive and negative, regarding its methods of placing teachers in school districts. It’s a complex, multidimensional problem, and we’re still trying to sort out possible solutions.
   
   

   

   Elbows on the table are acceptable when you're intellectually riveted!

3. Private Sector in Education: Meaghan can give you the play-by-play, but this segment seemed to raise the most hackles on both sides, especially since Rita had such strong feelings about it. In both pre- and post- discussions, I felt that it was very difficult for most of the team to separate our own personal feelings about private schools from the equation, since most of us were educated in a public system, and we are very sympathetic to the ideal of education as a social good. For that reason, it was very difficult for us to come up with convincing, compelling hypotheses as to why this alternate system emerged in Morocco at all.  Despite the slick rhetorical dodges and embedded meanings, the director did make the point that private schools continue exist according to market assumptions of supply and demand. This point is an important one. James Tooley, one of the guest speakers at HGSE this semester, seems to make a similar argument in A BeautifulTree. In this book, Mr. Tooley highlights multiple cases in which private schools provided underprivileged children with access to education when the public system was too corrupt or incompetent to provide the services. I feel like I’m coming full circle with my previous point about religious schools, but personal biases aside, many private schools work. Damn you, dilemmas.
   

   

   Folded hands are engaged hands!

4. Non-Formal Education: I know non-formal ed is a topic close to Meaghan’s heart, and I think she did a great job on explicating that theme. I won’t spend too much time here, except to thank the department for its gracious welcome. Amine warned us that after couscous, people tend to need naps, followed by hunger pangs shortly afterward, since it digests so quickly. I was able to keep my glucose level up by snagging fruit from the restaurant, but I know some of my compatriots had been battling lunch lurgy since the teacher training session.  As such, the first instance of a media presentation (in English!) and an embarrassment of snacks was enough to keep us all peppy.
   
   The presentation was remarkably well-organized and covered a lot of bases, as demonstrated by the contingency of attending department members which rivaled our own group in size. In short, I thought their two-pronged (that’s for you Colleen!) strategy that addressed dropouts from both a preventative and curative approach was a sensible, balanced one. I also thought of all the departments, they were able to provide the most concrete examples of deliverables. We’ve talked a lot about strategy, especially within the context of the National Charter and Emergency plan, so it was refreshing to actually see some concrete programmatic interventions.

An open mouth equals an open mind

Hopefully we’ll see some more in the days to come. Over the weekend, we’ve spent most of our time strolling around Rabat and taking silly pictures (ref: Meaghan’s infinitely superior camera). Tomorrow (Monday, January 9),we’re going to be getting up bright and early for  a packed day of decentralization policy and higher education, so look forward to that!