Rabat — Thirteen months after the first shut-down, the world is nearly wrecked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The novel coronavirus, this lethal microbe, caused a near global standstill. It marked the social, economic, and moral bankruptcy the world has been heading to with great velocity. But who can stand stronger in this macro dog-eat-dog race?
The death and infection tolls have been skyrocketing for months. Worse, victims could not say a last word to their loved ones and their loved ones could not take a last look at their dears. Yet, the supreme law of the universe pushes life forward with no time for prolonged mourning.
Only a few countries can still grapple with the unseen ghost owing to sufficient preparation and well-built capacity. The building not only of material infrastructure, which is surely of critical importance, but of humans. China, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand are some of the model countries which stand out for being able to fight the invisible enemy with collective responsibility and manifest determination.
Eventually, this colossal calamity will come to an end, but the nation which learns the fewest lessons will certainly be doomed to meet another devastation in the uncertain future. Singapore became a pioneering international scientific and technological hub after having been expelled from Malaysia in the middle of the last century. Japan grew into a third universal economic power after suffering the ordeal of war and atomic bombings. Germany stood as a global superpower after it was brought to its knees in WWII. Turkey emerged as an influential political, economic, and industrial force even though its candidacy to join the EU has repeatedly been turned down.
The same applies to people as well. If a person, people, or nation cannot compete in the survival-of-the-fittest race, crises present an unrepeatable chance for capacity building.
In Morocco, a mere example of many comparable countries, the wheels of development have been moving in slow motion for around several decades. The piecemeal development has created enormous frustration and significant loss at all levels. These include relentless brain drain, fragile economy, crippled education, and persistent social issues, to name but a few. It is needless to say that missing chances of progress has been costly insofar as massive budgets have been deployed to little or no avail.
Education, the alleged vehicle of the progress of nations and the benchmark of their strength, has been in deterioration since the closing years of the last century. In an attempt to revive the ailing sector and catch up with modern education tools and methodologies, the state launched in 2006 a national project called “Genie” to equip schools with technological aid for education commensurate with contemporary global and local demands.
In 2020, it appeared that through this colossal project, the state was only trying to pay lip service to the growing global trend of ICT integration in school education; eventually, it executed this costly project after fashion and the dramatic consequence of it is manifest today.
Despite winning UNIESCO’s prize in 2018 for this project, education authorities have been proven wrong in their belief in its success by the forceful suspension of education and the resort to online education for which it was building castles in the air.
Apart from a subtle official confession of its flaws, the omission of distance-learning courses from the national baccalaureate exams and the cancellation of the second term’s content and assessment from students’ evaluation is a plain validation of the project’s failure.
Fourteen years passed and the project still has not seen the full light of day due to poor management, lack of common willpower, and irresponsibility. The public would not have discovered the mediocre readiness to offer online learning to Moroccan students if the coronavirus pandemic did not bring the state to a standstill, while some countries which launched ICT-based instruction at relatively the same time are now in a safe haven.
With the abrupt coronavirus outbreak, the government strove in unusual haste to devise a complete online education scheme in the blink of an eye. This haste was necessary, I must admit, but it could have been avoided had senior education officials and august education bodies of the state put forth ready practical paradigms in the past.
Be it as it may, crying over spilt milk is of no avail. The enormous work done by the teachers and education’s diverse governmental and non-governmental divisions over the past months rivals or exceeds what has been accomplished since the launching of Genie. If the state learns the lesson this time, it will turn constant setbacks into unprecedented success. Frequent missing or, say, unlearning of the lessons will only be more damaging. In these hard times, national solidarity, awareness, and responsibility should be exploited in the utmost efficient ways to push the country out of the mud it has been stuck in for decades.
People who have been putting the cart before the horse should be removed from their positions not to say they should stand trial, as such a concept is still merely a hope or illusion. Competent, brave, and innovative experts should be let through for sensitive decision-making and project censorship duties. And what is said about education can be said about health, economy, administration, …you name it.
