By Noureddine Baba
By Noureddine Baba
Tinghir, Morocco – Nowadays, most, if not all, teachers are left with untold questions about the milieu or conditions under which they teach and the students they teach. Novice educators are on the top of the list, as they find nothing of what they have learned at the pedagogical centers about their classes and students. It so appears that beginning teachers need a psychologist to assist them to accept the bitter reality of schools in Morocco, students and some stubborn headmasters, that is hidden in remote areas and also exists in urban ones. Countless teachers have resigned, especially primary school teachers who taste the bitterness of this profession at all levels.
At the professional level, most teachers do their best to impart lessons to their learners in an easy and fun way employing all techniques, strategies, and materials under their belt, but only few of their students usually respond to and interact with the teachers’ efforts, while the majority shows a sort of indifference and reluctance.
At the social level, teachers often get married to working women, sometimes teachers themselves. But in many cases husbands are sent to work in the South and their wives in the North, with their children having to stay with grandparents in the East.
At the financial level, ask any teacher you may come across, be it a primary school or middle or high school teacher or even a university instructor, about his or her salary and you will get the same answer: “it is inadequate.” You might also get shocking answers such as: teachers sometimes spend on credit half or all of their slim salary before receiving it. So, how can these people of whom the majority feed extended families save a better life for themselves and their children? Gone are those days when a student’s scholarship alone covered his and his family’s needs.
At the psychological level, it is pretty tough to live in an urbanized society and, then, shift to a rural one where you are treated as though you are an alien who has just landed from Mars. So unwanted and unjust is the life some teach.
Additionally, when supervisors come to schools and are received by headmasters with glasses of tea, coffee, different types of cakes, and sweet words and expressions, they do reckon that everything goes well the way glasses of tea and sweet cakes go through their throats.
Decision-makers who work in well-equipped offices also think that teachers work in the same conditions they have in their offices. And when it comes to supervision, they, supervisors, bring with them all the western theories and approaches to Moroccan classrooms and penalize the teacher for not implementing them in a class that has nothing to do with a class without taking into account the student’s and his circumstances.
Shortly stated, I don’t know how a teacher who is shocked by the bitter reality: miserable classrooms, students’ reluctance to learn, insufficient salary, obstinate headmasters, callous supervisors, loneliness and homesickness, and the like, will blandly work without going on strike that is after all his or her right, a right which the government will take away if it is not defended.
Nour Eddine Baba is a teacher of English in Tinghir, south east of Morocco. He obtained his B.A in TEFL&ICT at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir. He was a member of Journalism Club at ALC in Agadir and published in the ALC magazine “oasis”. He is keen on politics, journalism and global issues.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy.
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