A reflective synthesis of the discussions that dominated the language planning seminar The recent MATE language planning conference was an opportunity to review language related decision making processes in and for education in Morocco. The review highlighted achievements where there have been any, failures when they could not be avoided, the difficulties that were overcome and those that prevailed, the frustrations that resulted in demotivation and demobilization as well as those that liberated energies and opened horizons making the representation of positive prospects possible. In fact, although the overall assessment of the linguistic situation in the educational system has been rather on the negative side, debates took place with the attitude that hope is possible and that clear-sightedness will be recovered. The keynote speaker, Dr. Moulay Ahmed Iraki, Professor at the Medical School of the Hassan II University, Casablanca and former minister for the environment, and president of the alliance for languages in Morocco, set the tone of the conference. He described the current linguistic situation in the Moroccan educational system as chaotic, non rational, populistic, and as lacking efficiency. While discussing the issue the necessity of adopting foreign languages as windows on the world and on other cultures, he warned that that should not mean submitting to them or giving up ones own culture intimating that that might have been the case at times. For foreign languages to be possible tools for access to knowledge, learning them should be grounded in that of native languages and universal literacy in them. Addressing the issue of Arabization, he expressed the opinion that having been a poorly planned and hasty decision, it could but have as poor results. His assessment of the Arabization process, as professor, a politician and a citizen engaged in the study of languages in the country and presiding the national alliance for languages, is that the graduates of the system are incompetent both in Arabic and in French and that the policy of not extending the process to higher education was and still is a major strategic error that has resulted in the degradation of the overall quality and performance of the system. In other words, the system has dramatically failed to meet its expressed objectives. This evaluation was shared by the various speakers and participants. Profile of the audience A few of the speakers, discussants and participants are holding or have held top positions in the educational decision making system and of higher education and related institutions. Almost all are practicing teachers at various schools, universities, departments and levels and involved in more or less formalized efforts to understand what has happened to languages, how it did and how it is affecting the educational system and the whole nation. The major arguments The consensus is that beginning the late nineties of the late century, the profile of the students entering universities started to exhibit severe linguistic deficits as well as reduced nigher academic faculties. Signs of chronic learning deficiencies including in the capacities to abstract, synthesize, generalize and conceptualize were observed and were impairing achievement and performance. Indicators tend to confirm that the loss of the French language during and as a result of the educational reform that also removed such subjects philosophy, sociology, psychology and epistemology from the curriculum, was accompanied by the loss of these academic competencies. The reforms which were not all thought out or designed by educational authorities within the Ministry of Education, but in political and consultative organizations, often lacked coherence, sound arguments to support them and attractiveness to teachers, parents and students alike. For political reasons, the pass thresholds were continuously lowered until they reached unacceptable levels. Pupils who were moved up from grade to grade that earned neither through competence and actual performance nor because of some hidden potential gave a false image of the situation. The frustration has, however, caused irreparable harm and loss of trust in institutions when the kids themselves, their families and the whole nation found out that the educational system was cheating them giving them the impression that all was fine and that the sacrifices everyone was making were worth it while in fact, objectives were far from being achieved. Families found out that their kids had spent more than a decade at school without learning to read, to write, to speak their own native language, let alone a foreign one, without qualifying for higher education and without having learnt a craft. Thats the height of waste and abuse of the trust of the community; the limit beyond which lie only offenses against society. As a consequence, not only has the educational institution come to be perceived as irrelevant, inappropriate, and useless but also harmful to the community and detrimental to its future. The solutions As much as it will be difficult to achieve, the educational system will have to strive to acquire increased rationality and independence from populistic pressures. It will also have to find ways of privileging endogenous interests and of accommodating national aspirations. Likewise, the Ministry of Education needs to recover both its institutional and technical prerogatives. On a more down to earth note, the language situation needs to be clarified in terms of the priorities that should include (i) universal literacy in the native languages of the country as well as in the official languages, (ii) decent mastery of the native and official languages in the primary cycles of the system, (iii) good command of the first foreign language through which fundamental education is to be supported, (iv) a wide range of choices of third and fourth foreign languages depending on the averred needs of specific cohorts of learners and on geostrategic conditions, (v) linguistic coherence of the various levels of the system, (vi) across the curriculum language enhancement activities, (vii) integrating study skills, cultural awareness and cognitive work in language education curricula, (viii) strong initial training of the teachers and efficient in-service support to them throughout their professional career, (ix) continuous evaluation of the language education programs to avoid late diagnosis of failures, and (x) rehabilitation of the value of education and of the importance of languages for life projects. These conditions open a wide range of options to language planners and education policy makers. In fact, while they provide for the confirmation of national and official languages and acknowledge the historical role of French in the educational system and they do not exclude any foreign language provided there is a need for it, they set the rational, professional and technical requirements for choices to be made and implemented. For engineering schools to operate normally, for example, the students entering them must show evidence of sufficient mastery of their language-s of instruction regardless of which they are. Some schools could operate in Arabic, others in French and others in English. Likewise, the same school can choose to operate with two or three languages. Actually, this is already the case for French and English although the selection of the students is not always tight enough for French. The option of international baccalaureates - French, English and Spanish - could be an approach to achieve the linguistic mix which the geostrategic situation of the country commands as long as the students would all have mastered their own native and national languages. It is not the responsibility of science and engineering schools to qualify candidates in their languages of instruction. Either they qualify and they are admitted or they do not qualify and they are not. An option would be for these schools to recruit students meeting their academic criteria on a probation period during which they have to meet their language requirements. In this case, it should be possible for these students to seek the required linguistic qualification in specialized institutions to be set up for this purpose and which may be independent of the engineering schools. At best, engineering schools and science departments can provide the additional foreign languages they judge to be useful or necessary for the practice of the crafts they train in. Awaiting such decisions to be made, it would seem that the most efficient approach would be to dedicate a whole semester to the teaching of language of instruction during which the students may be exposed to a few introductory courses of a general nature that would be delivered in close collaboration with the language teaching units. This semester would be a transition course from one linguistic framework to another. These are but a few of the challenges that need to be overcome before the educational system can solve its other problems! To be continued...
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 22:18:07 +0000
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