Finding a Voice

            I realize I forgot to talk about two important things that happened on last week’s hike, both of them conversations.  At the start of the hike one of my counterparts and some students were talking about generational differences in Morocco.  Specifically, my students, typically among the young here, feel that people in their parents’ generation don’t recognize or appreciate the students’ skills.  The skills that students develop in art, writing, or online were not valuable (or around) to the lives of the parents and so don’t look valuable now to those parents.  Without recognition and support the skills languish.  This is not, of course, a universal problem, but many students face it, especially in small-town Morocco.  Later in the hike I noticed a student walking up ahead bent over and using a stick for support.  When I asked her what was wrong she laughed and explained she and another student were acting, she was playing an old woman from the countryside, he a young city boy, and they were debating who had the better lifestyle.  She was losing with comic purposefulness.

            These stock characters and the discussion of the challenges Moroccan youth face developing their skills and interests are just iterations of something I’ve written about often enough before, the conflicts between traditional and modern values and between the countryside and the cities.  What I thought was interesting was the focus, in the discussion, on creative pursuits and the creative way in which the students had their later discussion of different lifestyles.  With the heavy emphasis on rote learning in the schools, the lack of organized nonacademic extracurriculars, and the lack of support from many parents students here long for an outlet for critical and creative thinking.  That is, of course, part of my job, but starting these projects has been difficult, with my utter lack of artistic talent I haven’t done more for organizing or teaching our irregular drawing club than making sure they have supplies whenever they want, and the students who’ve asked me to help them run theatre activities or teach music have never had the follow through to actually show up to the activities we planned together (for theatre) or to a meeting where we can discuss what kinds of instruments we can try to get for the youth center.  I can’t really blame them for not showing up, so much of their lives are filled with empty promises from authority figures, but it makes things impossible to move forward.

            I want to digress for a moment and talk about another, related, issue that I haven’t talked about on this blog much since training, the almost total lack of a concept of reading for fun.  I might have said this before, but the same verb, kanqra means both “I read,” and “I study,” and although most students understand that there is a difference between these two actions very few actually put that difference into practice.  There are several reasons for this, one of them being that the schools fail to instill a love of reading and an appreciation of its power in their students.  In my intermediate English classes my students asked me for lessons in “communication,” by which I thought they meant a chance to talk in English, and I designed discussion classes accordingly around some songs and poems we could read or listen to and discuss.  While some students really like this, others complained that I hadn’t written dialogues for them to recite, which is what they’d meant by “communication!”  Slowly, by trying out different topics and seeking out easier poems and songs, I’m getting more and more students to participate in the classes, but there is still a hardcore who refuse to accept this way of learning, because for them reading is studying and there isn’t another way to engage with a text.

            I’ve been saying “the schools,” but of course this is an unfair generalization of teachers and their methods here.  The majority, which does not buck this trend towards rote learning, can’t really be blamed for the trend.  It comes both from how they themselves were taught and from the nature of the high school ending Baccalaureate exam.  Additionally, there are teachers who can and do try to engender a love and appreciation for creativity and critical thinking.  One teacher in particular, who all my students love, is an Arabic teacher who uses films and the language therein to engage his students and get them thinking.  Good cinema is just as useful a medium for transferring ideas as good drama and good literature, but it’s sad that here it is the only one of those media to really engage students.  The lack of engagement with written Arabic is something even this fantastic Arabic teacher has trouble overcoming, and this is entirely because the written and spoken languages in this country (and throughout much of the Arab world) are mutually incomprehensible.  The effect on learning is similar to—though mercifully less intense then—the effect that medieval Europe’s obsession with Latin had on it’s own intellectual climate.

            The vernaculars across the Arab world bear varying similarities and differences to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), itself a purely written dialect closely related to, though not perfectly in tune with, the Classical Arabic of the Quran.  MSA is the standard written language across the Arab world, conferring the same advantage of mutual comprehensibility, barring mistakes and miscomprehensions, among the educated classes that Latin did in medieval Europe.  Also like Medieval Latin it shuts the doors on reading for pleasure and higher intellectual attainment to millions of intelligent people who are not gifted linguists, especially in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, who all speak an Arabic particularly different from MSA.  While literacy is higher here than it was in Medieval Europe only a small group of people are actually able to enjoy reading since no matter what language they read it must be in a foreign language.  I’ve seen people who I know are really smart struggle to read and write simple sentences, and trying to get even two educated Moroccans to agree on how to write a sentence properly in MSA often ends in a long debate.  Only in cinema, and to a lesser extent theatre, is Darija a primary language of communication in the medium.  In fact, writing in Darija, like writing in a medieval vernacular, is looked down on as non-intellectual.  I write all my signs and announcements for the youth center in Darija if they’re only meant for students (for parents and government associations a friend translates from one Arabic to the other for me), and while most teachers and adults make fun of me for this I’ve never heard a peep about it from someone who isn’t yet in university.  I bet they appreciate being able to easily understand what they read.

            This of course comes back around to the students’ frustration at their inability to express themselves; writing well is hard enough without having to translate yourself to do it at all.  Sadly, even most young Moroccans are already convinced this is the way it has to be.  The few who are aware that Europe went through this same growing pain are convinced it was only possible because, in one local’s words, “all the French speak French, but” since “Darija is different all across Morocco” it couldn’t happen here.  They are unaware that every modern European language was cobbled together from dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of dialects.  To face the problem of self-expression some local counterparts and I are going to attack it head on.

            A few years ago a previous volunteer ran an English language magazine with one of the local English teachers.  While it was a good project at the time it fell apart after he left because only a very few students had English good enough to write for it—in fact most of the articles came from local volunteers and teachers and the kids used them as reading exercises, or had their own work translated—so they lost interest.  Early on this teacher came to me to start it again, but I’ve delayed while I figured out how to make it more sustainable and gathered a group of counterparts (including the Arabic teacher I mentioned above).  We’ve decided to open the magazine up to several languages, Arabic, French, English, and even Tamazight.  I’m still working on it, but I even have one counterpart willing to back me up in my crazy crusade to allow both Moroccan and Standard Arabic submissions.  This seems to have excited student interest much more than the old, English only magazine did, and the goal is to get an edition out this school year (both print and online) and then in the next school year put out regular editions and pass leadership of the club from myself and the Moroccan teachers to the students so that it can survive past my time here.  If this succeeds it will without question be my greatest contribution to my town, so here’s hoping that, given the opportunity, students will want to find and sound their voices.

            O.k. so that was a bit of a downer of a post, here are the photos I promised from last week’s hike with students who don’t mind appearing on the internet.