Abderafii Ait Bourchim is a BA holder in English linguistics and literature at Ibn Zohr university in 2013. LP holder at ENS Rabat in 2014. Found of reading about fiction, poetry, and theater. Writes attempts in poetry and prose.Tinghir, Morocco
The recently launched Moroccan governmental Training Program, which aims at qualifying 10000 Cadres Pedagogique by the year 2016, has caused severe debates and a traumatizing situation that consequently pushed its applicants into an enigmatic ocean of doubts and frustration. Ironically speaking, the candidates of that training program resemble fish out of water that have recently been hooked and left on the shore awaiting a bear to take it back to the water. The candidates who hold higher degrees, namely BAs, MAs, and PHDs in various branches have been manifesting for their legitimate rights, the scholarships, and the feasible future chances they will gain by the end of the one-year training. Teacher trainees decided to lead a largely immense strike against Benkiran’s program, calling for their basic right to be given the scholarships by which they can survive for the entire year of their training.
What an enigmatic and a traumatizing situation for teacher trainees, the agents of change, is that? Does Morocco really desire to qualify teachers of the future? I may be right if I say NO!
Teacher trainees of all departments--English, French, Mathematics, Physics, Geography, Earth and Natural Sciences, Philosophy, Islamic Studies—all together boycotted their courses, for they’re in an urgent need of some financial aids that will at least help them cope with the tragic, devastating and catastrophic situation in which they are living in Rabat, the capital city of Morocco.
The Moroccan government has promised the applicants that a 1000 DH as a monthly salary will be offered to every teacher trainee. However, the government as usual burns the promise and tends to tiptoe upon it. Students with highly and talented intellectual abilities have come from different parts of Morocco--East, West, North, South, so that they can join the teaching training program at Rabat after they had successfully passed both the written as well as the oral exam phases. However, four months have almost passed now, and the trainees are still waiting for their scholarships, or what the Ministry of Education prefers to call ‘Charity’. Thanks for the humble name anyways! Neither the former nor the latter has been launched yet indeed. Consequently, some of the candidates of the program left the training completely for the very simple reason that their cluttered financial situation does not help them pay the cost of the rent. As a result, they eventually rejected their dossiers and definitely quit the program. I do sympathize with them and wish them the best of luck in their future upcoming opportunities. Thus, is this the appropriate way the Ministry of Higher Education treats its most highly intellectual, ambitious, and elite teacher trainees?
During those cluttered conditions in which students have been manifesting for their basic rights, the Ministry of Education took the chance and launched an official announcement in which ambiguous and misleading lines combat each other, and through which various contrasting thoughts can be derived. Better phrased, the administration of the ENS has received a primarily official announcement from the Ministry of Education. The latter has deeply shaken the teacher trainees’ doubts about the brighter future about which they have always been dreaming. For example, the teacher trainees were told that they will be directed to teach in the private sector with no other blatant clarifications about their monthly salary, the part time job they will be given, their social insurance, etc.
Consequently, all the teacher trainees of all branches once again went on another strike: the strike that will certainly determine who they are, the boat they are leading, and what they are hoping to achieve.
Actually, there seems to be no point in launching a project in order to highly qualify ambitious and intellectual elite people without necessarily providing them with the indispensable equipment, scholarships and clear maps for their destinations.
Hence, the question still remains: When will the Moroccan government take care of its intellectual elite?
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