Zawaya

Educational curricula in the Maghreb region: Copying instead of innovating

By: Mohamed Yehdih Ould Baba Ahmed

In his speech addressed to the Arab and Islamic worlds, the American President Barack Hussein Obama pointed that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century, and reliance will be on them instead of traditional sources of economic wealth like oil for example. However, the question that remains open is: to which extent will the Maghreb countries deal with this trend? And do they have sufficient will to improve education and innovation in order to provide young people with new job opportunities?

Before answering these questions, we should point out two fundamental issues: firstly, the convergence attitude or reconciliation brought on by Obama’s speech with the Arab and Islamic worlds, at least verbally and publicly; and secondly, the focus of the American President on the centrality of the individual and his innovations as an alternative economic wealth. As for our main issue, which is whether there is sufficient will in the Maghreb countries to improve education and innovation, and create new job opportunities for young people, I personally think that will alone is not enough, even though most of these countries have it, and this is due to several factors, namely:

1- Inadequacy of the educational system in most of the Maghreb countries with the current requirements.

2- Profound differences in the educational systems of each country in comparison with others.

3- Evident differences between political systems in the Maghreb Union’s countries.

All these factors remain under regimes that do not pay attention to the individual, but rely generally on a policy of marginalization and exclusion of the unemployed youth, and employees of the education field who are paid salaries of about $300 a month, that barely feed them. So how would anyone expect creativity or innovation from them? There is also the danger of poverty among a large segment of young people in these countries, which may lead them to poor morals and incite them to commit crimes, engage in adventures and pitfalls like illegal migration, adhere to terrorist movements, etc.

I believe that if there is a serious will by the regimes of these countries to achieve the aspirations of their peoples on the one hand, or try to keep up with the American President in his new orientation on the other hand, then these countries should break up completely with their educational policies, and perform a new clean up that does not stop at the borders of changing the educational system alone, and reach out to the teaching and non-teaching staff. They should also allocate the greatest part of their budgets to invest in the quality and quantity of education, and establish specialized institutes for scientific research as well as institutions for vocational training to meet the preferences and desire of students and encourage innovation.

As long as this is not happening, we will remain in front of this black vision. I have to say that most human resources in our Maghreb region have been and will remain a hostage to their educational curricula, which rather spread the spirit of boredom and copying instead of learning and innovating.