A wider Scope for Sociopolitical Integration of Language Education

Rabat – Just as some decisions and actions are made at the international level or national level and others at regional or local levels, or even at the family level, strategies integrating actions, programs and projects also have to be thought, designed and assessed at each of these levels.

To ensure optimal success to such strategies, the support of each level of the decision-making process and the efforts to identify opportunities and risks at the various levels of the implementation of projects must be provided through collaborative and inclusive methods.

Nevertheless, discrepancies among the priorities of these levels will persist and have to be addressed in the framework of credible conflict resolution processes and in the prospect of accepted respective responsibilities of each level and the commitment of all to mutual support. There is no doubt that there is an external as well as internal division of labor, which results in a system of exclusive and competitive models. From the outset not all educational possibilities will be available to all, regardless of where they are from, who their parents are, but also, how intelligent and smart they are.

The cost of not settling issues resulting from discrepancies collectively, will always be higher than doing so through negotiated and consensual solutions that may appear to be detrimental to a given level in the short term. Any delay in settling such issues will also actually be jeopardy to the achieving the objectives of all these levels together. The challenge is therefore how to identify the issues that have to be addressed at each level and to design and provide appropriate mechanisms for settling them and resolving the conflicts to which they give rise.

However, because the costs, including the social costs, are not all generated by the decisions and the activities of the level that is submitted to them, they should be addressed collectively and assumed by those responsible for them. Among all reactions possible in such situations, the most costly are always going to be the most defensive ones. This is to say that unless conditions conducive to accurate diagnoses, controlled dialogue, and disciplined negotiation, outcomes will hardly be supportive of fair settlements of the issues and the inequity of conflicts will continue to prevail.

For Moroccan families living in remote rural and/or mountainous regions with scarce educational offers, their conflict will, therefore, not be exclusively with their national institutions, but also with international financial and monetary organizations that support the central government’s policies that favor urban over rural social services and infrastructures.

In this regard, one is entitled to ask whether those concerned have even taken the time to analyze, describe and characterize the production chains of educational products and services in their country and the exact origins of the effects they observe. Likewise, while they have talked so much about partners and various types of partnerships, have they ever asked who these partners really are, do they know them, do they know their motivations, and do they know how they can or cannot partner with them?

The most recent trend seems to be to import solutions from successful experiences through importing foreign consultants and borrowing bits and pieces from the agendas of different models. While there is no problem in learning from others and from human experience, those concerned would better not forget that neither copy and paste and insert and delete solutions are possible in real life. Likewise, stopping at observing and reporting that gaps are widening between the central decisions and the immediate needs of regions and local entities would not be enough especially considering that claims for more equitable distributions of tax payers’ money are increasing all over the world and in all communities.

It has, however, to be kept in mind while thinking about social issues, and education in particular, that local communities and individual families are engaged in conflicting relationships with much more powerful entities which are much more skilled in negotiation strategies and whose interests are in global hegemony. In fact, if left unchecked and counterbalanced by a strong civil society, the complex relationships that create and underlie the power of the State will dehumanize society and alienate the individual.

In fact, the alienation and dehumanization of communities and individuals have become a necessity for the foundations of the State which are rooted, on the one hand, in the comprehensive network of various impersonal institutions and ruthless administrations and, on the other hand, on an essentially profit driven private sector organized around an increasingly globalized capital and increasingly independent production networks and autonomous distribution and marketing chains of goods and services.

Unless communities, families and individuals are organized in some way and pool their energies to face up to the colossal block of the central State and the global and national economic and financial interests, they will not have the education that will serve their own wellbeing, emotional stability and standards of living.

This organization, whether in NGOs, INGIs, Labor Unions, Political Parties, Associations, Territorial Collectivities, protest movements, etc. is the more necessary and urgent as the stakes are of a wide range of types and origins. Whether man-made or environmental, material or immaterial, they may – and as a matter of fact often – originate far away from the sites they impact and in both production and consumption behaviors of communities and individuals. The challenge is for every community to find the most appropriate ways of negotiating binding obligations and commitments with whomever they judge is hindering the achievement of the kind of education they want for themselves and for their children.

At the local and personal levels, the unnatural competition for the scarce resources allocated to the sector has ended up being accepted as normal and natural, while it may be anything but normal or natural. In fact, equal quality education being a fundamental human right; everyone should have an equal opportunity to benefit from it.

In addition to the rightful governmental budgetary allocations to which the various educational organizations and institutions are equally entitled, incentives and special grants may be made available on a preferential basis according to criteria that include among others more integration of social responsibility, promotion of human rights, involvement in green economy, environmental friendliness, inclusiveness and service of the local community, commitment to innovation, imagination and creativity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy