![Reflections on the Moroccan Educational System. Moroccan students]()
By Jawad Garmah
Rabat - Education is always considered as the backbone of any society. It contributes significantly in the development of any country at all levels including business, health, law, agriculture, and services, etc. Most of the developed countries put education in the priority when it comes to rank the sectors that help efficiently the progression of the country. In Morocco, however, education is the sector that is not in the primacy of the government and doesn’t give it great importance either in terms of human resources or financial aids. Consequently, since the independence, the Moroccan educational system has been flopped in many setbacks, and despite of the reform stages that have been witnessed, none of them has succeeded to redress the crux of the problem. This failure of the Moroccan educational system has been shared by many important elements. These may include the government, parents, teachers, and students.
In any developed country, the success of the educational system comes primarily from the support of the government that provides all the necessities to lead its educational system onward. However, in Morocco, the government does not supply the educational system with the adequate props; this lack of support is reflected in the profitability of both students and teachers. On the one hand, in most of the Moroccan schools, the profitability of students is reduced due to the lack of teachers, resulting in the overcrowding of students in the classrooms, and thus the teaching-learning process is hindered. This grave problem restrains the teacher from communicating with the students to know their weaknesses and strengths in order to structure the lesson and to know the materials that should be used to make the objectives met. Additionally, the overcrowded classroom handicaps the ability of students to communicate with each other and to make working groups, such as preparing presentations, working on projects, and writing papers. This process helps them develop many skills and competencies. On the other hand, the low wages of teachers in comparison with other professions make them in continuous search for other sources to gain more money, like working in the private schools, the thing that decreases their performance in the public schools. Moreover, The government doesn’t equip schools with the technological devices, such as, laptops, tablets, data-show, and the printing machines. These technological instruments may yield tangible benefits, in terms of making students engaged and eager to learn with modern devices that they are proficient in their use. Integrating ICT in the classrooms enables the teacher to achieve the lesson’s objectives. By a way of an example, for a teacher of English language to teach listening and speaking, which are the two essential elements of learning English, he-she needs to use the laptop or the smart phone to show to students some English movies, music or conversations to help them improve their listening and speaking skills.
Needless to say, the teacher is the very fundamental element in the educational process. If the teacher is effective, then learning process is going to be fruitful, or, otherwise, the whole educational system is going to be collapsed .Very often, most of the Moroccan teachers deny the fact that they are the very significant element to make the Moroccan educational system transcend and override most of the problems mentioned. However, these teachers neglect their role as being leaders, supporters, mentors, facilitators, and providers. They do not open discussions with students, or give them the chance to express their opinions freely to know what they like and what they dislike. The only thing they do is to dominate the session, fill in their minds with information, use inappropriate pedagogical methods, and force them to work with undesirable materials. Additionally, most of these teachers work in the private schools, or in the language centers. They pour out their complete efforts in the private sector, because they are well-controlled, but when it comes to the public school, they perform and treat students very badly, since they know that their monthly salary is guaranteed. Besides, some teachers are not well-qualified in terms of the educational sciences, educational psychology, and educational sociology; as a result, they mistakenly mistreat students, and do not know how to cope with problems such as the overcrowded classrooms, troublemakers, lazy students, and those who do not pay attention during the lesson, etc.
The responsibility of parents or the family institution in the failure of the educational system is very influential. Many experts regard the preschool period as the steppingstone of a child to pave their ways to become good persons. Psychologically speaking, children’s personality and character are shaped by the parental upbringing and the social environment. In this sense, in the family institution, parents pass to their children their attitudes, values, and morals which represent the basic elements of the child’s personality, so the child becomes heavily influenced by their parents. This means that, when the child goes to school he-she reflects the behaviors and the upbringing that they have learned at home. However, many students go to school only for the sake of creating troubles, showing their muscles in front of their friends, mocking and making jokes about teachers, the thing that cause conflicts between these students and teachers, and, consequently, they hinder the learning process. Additionally, the main concern of the majority of students is to get good marks and to succeed at the end of the year, instead of concentrating on getting knowledge or learning new strategies, skills, and techniques that can ameliorate their competencies; they only focus on how to get good marks, either by learning by heart what they have got from the class, or by creating new tricks to outsmart the teacher and cheat in the exam.
At last and not least, as Alice Hoffman states, “every problem has a solution’’. Indeed, for the Moroccan educational system to be successful, there are thousands of solutions, but it only needs the policy makers to take the initiative and take these solutions into consideration to reform the educational system. First, talking about the government, what it needs to do is to provide sufficient schools that can encompass a large number of students, and to provide enough teachers, as well as, to equip the schools with technological devices. Moreover, the government should well-train teachers in terms of the educational sciences, psychological and sociological sciences to improve learning outcomes and to adjust students’ behaviors. Furthermore, we must not put the blame only on the government, teachers also must be blamed, because as I have already mentioned they are very fundamental in the whole educational system, so the teachers should bare in mind that, they are carrying on their shoulders the responsibility of the reform. They need first to work sincerely and to consider students as their children, and then, to try their best to understand students’ desires and wants, open discussions with them and teach them how to express themselves freely and how to respect others’ opinions. In addition, parents also should contribute to this reform; they must teach their children how to respect the teacher and their classmates, and to pay special attention when the teacher is explaining the lesson. They should also teach their children how to be good citizens before being good students. Parents also should train their children how to get the habit of reading, how to love knowledge, learning, and discovering, and how to depend on themselves in the exams to avoid cheating. As far as I am concerned, if all these elements work hand in hand to put an end to these handicaps, our educational system would be developed and lead our country forward.
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