Learning in Morocco , livre ebook

LEARNING IN MOROCCO
PUBLIC CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors
LEARNING
in
MOROCCO
LANGUAGE POLITICS
and
THE ABANDONED
EDUCATIONAL DREAM

CHARIS BOUTIERI
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Charis Boutieri
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-02051-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-02049-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-02050-5 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
To my father Thanos and sister Elina
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Writing about Language: Terminology and Transliteration
1. Schools in Crisis
Part I
2. Study Antigone to Become a Scientist!
3. Paradox and Passion in the Tower of Babel
Part II
4. Inheritance, Heritage, and the Disinherited: Sacred Arabic
5. Once Upon a Time, There Was a Happy Old Berber Couple
Part III
6. Desires in Languages
7. Out of Class, into the Street
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK effectively began more than a decade ago. It has escorted me across three continents and compelled me as much as helped me negotiate a number of life experiences and relationships-academic and not-including my relationship to the discipline of anthropology, my research, and myself.
I carried my curiosity, passion, and ruminations around language, identity, and education in North Africa to a formidable department of anthropology at Princeton. Abdellah Hammoudi and Lawrence Rosen gave me the truly special opportunity to relate to them as academic mentors and fieldworkers; my memories of both of them in the field form the foundation on which I built my conviction in the intellectual and ethical commitment that anthropology can show toward a subject and toward people. Carol Greenhouse and Carolyn Rouse were more generous with their time than I ever felt I deserved and continue to astound me with their friendship and willingness to engage with my work many years later. The entire anthropology department with its staff, its students, and its most hospitable administrative team-whose iconic figure for generations of students has been the always encouraging Carol Zanca-made graduate school a space of true personal growth. Dimitris Gondicas kindly included me in the active intellectual life of the Princeton Hellenic Institute and has been a steady and comforting presence throughout my scholarly trajectory. Colleagues from a range of graduate cohorts remain to this day trusted interlocutors and scholarly companions; they include Erica Weiss, Suad Abdul Khabeer, Sami Hermez, Jamie Sherman, Claire Nicholas, Nikos Michailidis, Joel Rozen, and Dimitris Antoniou. Michelle Coghlan and Briallen Hopper are dear friends, excellent scholars, and keen proofreaders of the earliest versions of this book.
Fieldwork in Morocco over the years has been a powerful experience that pushed me to connect the dots between my own background and my intellectual pursuits, as well as to shape and consolidate my understanding of education and of the era in which we live. It would not have been so powerful without the mentoring of the late and deeply missed Mustafa Benyakhlef, an admirable thinker and dedicated educator whose voice echoes in my head every time I reflect on the scenes that feature in this book. I am immensely appreciative of the assistance of Mohamed Zernine, Mohammed Amelal, and Rachida Guelzim who facilitated the untangling of numerous practical and conceptual knots that came my way. The directors of the Regional Academies for Secondary Education of Gharb-Chrarda-Beni Hsenn and Rabat-Sal -Zemmour-Zaer were both kind and daring in granting me official permission to conduct research inside public high schools. My warm thanks go to the school principals, inspectors, and teachers who hosted me everyday in their schools, their meetings, and their classrooms, as well as their homes; their tolerance and support have been invaluable to this research project. For the Moroccan high school students I had the pleasure and honor to meet, I have no words to express my gratitude. Their curiosity and warmth turned this project into a life-changing process. One unflinching objective of this book has been my resolve to communicate as vividly as possible the creativity with which these students handle the localized versions of the global dramas of socialization in the neoliberal era.
The Laamouri family made me part of their lives by sharing their time, joys, and dilemmas with me to the extent that they became relatives undistinguishable from my original ones. Barbara G tsch, Kristin Pfeifer, Claire Nicholas, Cortney Hughes Rinker, and Elizabeth Buckner-fellow researchers of Morocco-offered me the rare opportunity to share my fondness of the country with fellow researchers while in the field. Omama Masrour, Yassine Amelal, Halima Benjelloun, Leslie Coghlan and Amina Coghan, Nia Eustathiou and Makis Melissaratos, and Polina Chotzoglou became close friends, turning the field into a place where I not only worked but also lived and had fun.
Over the years, new intellectual companions emerged and exciting friendships materialized: Youssef el Kaidi and Youssef el Kaissy offered precious advice with incredible speed and precision and constitute sources of inspiration regarding the future of the teaching profession in Morocco. Martin Rose shared my interest in the systemic intricacies and experiential complexities of multilingualism in education and encouraged me to trust the urgency I felt in disseminating my work. Youssef Amine Elalamy, my favorite Moroccan novelist, was a catalyst for pushing this project forward at a difficult juncture when, over dinner, he divulged in his truly captivating way that he wrote his francophone novels by hearing voices in his head and his short stories in d rija by feeling the rumblings of his gut. Marouane Laouina, Baudouin Dupret, and Catherine Miller from the Centre Jacques Berques in Rabat and Ibtissame Berrado from the British Council in Morocco gave me the chance to discuss, publish, and enhance with illustrations parts of this book. Most recently, Nabil Belkabir and Simo Alami injected my work with fresh energy through their neat critique of education in Morocco and their impressive activist work to reshape it.
I have shared my fieldwork experience and theoretical propositions with academic audiences of various disciplines at the Institute of Social Anthropology in Vienna, the Middle East Centre at St. Antony s at the University of Oxford, the Ethnography and History of Southwest Asia and North Africa Seminar Series at the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, the Near and Middle East History Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Middle East and Islamic Studies Department at New York University, the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at George Mason University, and the Centre d Etudes Maghr bines in Tunisia. Fellow panelists, discussants, and the audience at numerous meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the Middle Eastern Studies Association, and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies asked pertinent questions that blocked and unblocked this project just enough to keep propelling it forward. I have benefited tremendously from all these interactions, though I insist that the opinions and errors in the pages that follow are mine alone.
A number of prominent scholars who have written on North Africa and/or on education whom I deeply admire gave parts of this manuscript their careful attention and constructive feedback: they include Shana Cohen, Linda Herrera, Rachel Newcomb, Aomar Boum, Paul Silverstein, Fida Adely, Michael Willis, , and Veronique B n . I sincerely thank them for their encouragement. The brilliant Erica Weiss and Su ad Abdul Khabeer suffered through innumerable versions of the entire manuscript that they nonetheless kept reading with meticulousness, imagination, and some much-needed humor. I can only hope to have returned some of the favor in the completion of their own monographs. Hania Sobhy, Roozbeh Shirazi, Zeena Zakharia, Rehenuma Asmi, Elizabeth Buckner, and Rebecca McLain Hodges-the new and impressive generation of researchers of public education in the region-work tirelessly to thoughtfully address our joint concerns over the predicament of public schools and to disseminate the insights of our specific inquiries on academia and beyond. They have enriched my perspective and inspired me to continue working for what truly feels our common cause. My colleagues at King s College London, especially Carool Kersten, Madawi al-Rasheed, Marat Shterin, and Martin Stokes, urged me to highlight the broader implications of my work fo