Why education is not a cure all or panacea

On Friday 1 June 2012, I submitted a complete draft of my dissertation to my committee members.  Since then, I got some feedback from my committee chair about removing some items from the 330 page document (or 82,632 words not including footnotes and references).  My next few posts might end up serving a similar purpose to this one--serving as a repository for the rejected prose from my dissertation.

When one sets out to write a book-length project, inspiration comes from everywhere.  That was the case for me, as I read Obama's memoir "Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance" while doing fieldwork in Morocco during 2009-2010.

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            An alternative view to the near universal assumption that education is a quasi panacea is the viewpoint that formal schooling does not provide adequate education to marginalized or minority populations, including the poor and women.  In other words, formal schooling does not teach marginalized or minority students about the world based on their perspectives or experiences.  In one of his memoirs, Obama profiles educator Asante Moran, a character that may represent a composite of more than one real person.  Obama quotes Moran as saying, “Just think about what a real education for these children would involve.  It would start by giving a child an understanding of himself[/herself], his[/her] world, his[/her] culture, his[/her] community.  That’s the starting point of any educational process.  That’s what makes a child hungry to learn—the promise of being part of something, of mastering his[/her] environment.”[1]  While Obama’s character was referring to inner-city minority youths in 1980s Chicago, his thoughts are true and valid for all people, not just inner-city minority youths.  This point speaks to the importance of involving the targets of education (or the products of education, whether failed or inadequate or successful) into the curriculum and program designing process.  Such inclusion is challenging for Moroccan society, where teaching is a low prestige job, and teachers are largely not respected by the state or society.  There is growing research on the positive results of including different voices in designing curriculum and schooling programs.[2]

            The character in Obama’s memoir, Asante Moran, discusses the educational experience of his pupils through the lens of standpoint theory.  The challenge to formal schooling in Obama’s text cites the disconnection between the experience behind the curriculum that is being taught and the experience of the pupils to whom it is being taught.  Obama quotes Moran further, “From day one, what’s he[/she] learning about?  Someone else’s history.  Someone else’s culture, Not only that, this culture [she/]he’s supposed to learn is the same culture that’s systematically rejected him[/her], denied him[/her] his[/her] humanity.”[3]  This second quote is even more relevant to the women of Morocco, and the relevance increases as the intersectional identities increase.  Rural women, poor women, girls and teens (youth is another intersectional identity), Amazigh (Berber) women, single mothers, mentally or physically handicapped women, homosexual women, children born to Moroccan women and non-Moroccan men (this affects issues of nationality and the privileges associated with it), widows, mothers of daughters, non-Muslim women, and others.

            Indeed, inter-subjectively, the marginalized student is not being taught her history while the enfranchised students gets to benefit from an otherwise more robust educational experience when that experience is shared with students from different backgrounds.  Obama points out through his character Moran that, “The flow of culture [runs] in reverse as well.”[4]  The disenfranchised have “their own forms of validation.”  Their “claims of greater deprivation” afford them “greater authenticity.”  Furthermore, their mere presence in the classroom with privileged students provides those privileged students “with an education”[5] from the points of view of the disenfranchised (the poor, the deprived and other areas outside of affluence and privilege).  Inclusion leads to an improved school experience for everyone.


[1] Barack Obama. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. 1st pbk. ed.  New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004. 258.

[2] See for example, International Working Group on Education (IWGE). "Critical Issues in Education for All: Gender Parity, Emergencies," (Paris: UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning, 2003).

[3] Obama, Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance: 258.

[4] Ibid., 286.

[5] Ibid.

Hijab ban for Moroccan school girl

I was shocked to see in this Alam article that the prestigious French secondary school Lycee Descartes in Rabat refused to allow a school girl to take her entrance exam because she was wearing a head covering.  The private school justified the exclusion based on its deference to French law.  However, Moroccan law does not allow for private schools owned/operated by foreign governments or entities to enforce laws that are at odds with Moroccan law.  It will be interesting to see how the PJD (the Islamist party running Morocco at the moment) will react to this.

I will discuss this story, which though posted in April, has been going on since January at least, in more detail soon.

Boys' literacy

While spending this year in Morocco (September 2009 to September 2010), part of my time here is dedicated to working on my dissertation. I am rounding up the 4th year of the International Studies doctoral program at Old Dominion University. This fourth year is also a first year of sorts. On 16 September 2009 I successfully defended my PhD comprehensive exams, a brutal 2-day (8 hours per day) writing exam (without notes or resources other than what I’ve learned and prepared between the 3-year period between matriculation and satisfying class/lecture requirements) followed by an oral defense. I am now ABD—all but dissertation—and dissertating full time instead of attending lectures full time. As an ABD, my dissertation is on my mind at all times, even when I am relaxing, which for me often includes reading or watching something inextricably connected to my research interests.

My dissertation topic is the role of illiterate women in political change. I am specifically looking and illiterate women’s agency in developing states, and Morocco is one of my chosen country studies. When my thoughtful aunt forwarded me the most recent issues of my favorite women’s magazine—Bitch—I read them with interest, finding particular inspiration from an article about boys’ literacy. I offer up here some [superficial but thoughtful] insights and critical commentary.

Jeffrey Wilhelm, coauthor of the male literacy study Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men, declares that, “[i]t’s understood that boys, in general, struggle with literacy.” I wonder, is this universally true? Or only true in the US/North America/developed countries? Is there an implication for Morocco?

Later the author concludes that, “boys aren’t (as is sometimes claimed) reading worse than before, but they are reading consistently worse than girls.” In Morocco, where women’s illiteracy is consistently much higher than men’s (except in Western Sahara…but that point deserves its own special focus), what can we learn from the case of Morocco from how/what boys read compared to girls, including how boys and girls are taught differently about literacy, its function in their lives, and how they perceive literacy as benefiting or fitting into their lives as citizens, activists, and everyday folks?

According to Jon Scieszka, founder of Guys Read, a literacy program for boys, “there [is] hardly any research on the connection between gender and reading.” This is my chance to fill that gap, while integrating an international perspective, an Arab perspective, an African perspective, and perhaps even an Islamic perspective.

“Scieszka’s theory is that because boys develop at a different rate than girls, many of them simply aren’t ready for reading—‘the very abstract task of learning to make literary sense of combinations of 26 different squiggles on a page’—when it’s first taught in school.” In the case of Morocco, public primary and elementary education is lamentable, and thus an issue that requires analysis and deconstruction in its own right. Nonetheless, this hypothesis (not so much a theory), inspires critical analysis of the pedagogical approach to boys’ and girls’ education in Morocco. Is it a given in Morocco that boys develop at a different rate than girls? What are the value judgments assigned to or accompanying perceptions about differential rates of learning between the sexes? Or does a separate understanding altogether exist in the Moroccan approach to pedagogy and sex? Is there a particular approach anyhow?

The author asserts that reading preferences are largely socialized, a point that seems fairly obvious, certainly to anyone who would be reading Bitch magazine.

More insightfully, the author declares that feminists should be at the forefront of [innovative] literacy approaches, especially prepared to approach them critically. “After all, if boys are having problems with reading, that negatively affects how the men they become see both themselves and women. When we read, we see from other perspectives—including other perspectives on gender.”

Is this true? Or is this simply reinforcing the status quo notion that readers are more intellectually adept or are intellectually superior to non-readers…where do language, diglossia, linguistic prestige, etc. fit in?

The author continues that, “[t]he uncommonly honest accounts of men’s and women’s experiences that can be found in literature make the gender construct seem a cartoon of human experience, and offer boys the chance to transcend simplistic, dehumanizing notions of masculinity and femininity. For boys to access these accounts, though, they first have to want to—they first have to make sense of those squiggles on the page.”

This is laying a LOT of responsibility on literacy, not to mention assuming that literacy sine qua non provides enlightenment. I am not convinced. What do you think?

Jonathan Frochtwajg. “Paper Boys.” Bitch Magazine. Winter 2009. Issue no. 45. Page 11.