New generation of school teachers - 2

This time, we go to a small village, in High-Atlas moutains, 70 kms away from Ouarzazate (one hour by car), in the small rural council of Tazadoute (a Berber name meaning the female monkey, monkey being Zatout). Berber and Berber speaking village, whose three Arab speaking family are actually bilingual, and therefore well-integrated. (See our page on the Berber language in Morocco)



Tazadout is in the middle of the mountains. By winter’s heart, its 42 families can be blocked a few day, even a week by the snow, making roads impossible to drive. The traditional houses, made of argil and adobe are isolating from cold, but they are more difficult to maintain, and are replaced by concrete constructions.

Brahim El Guabli is primary school teacher in Tazadout for several years. The 42 families have many children (each household counts in average 8 persons), the school is quite full.

After his lessons, Brahim supports a training program for women. He believes that school must be extended out of its wall, to meet the rural population, still highly illiterate. People must learn to read and write, and many other things. The program is large, including importance of education, hygienics, the impact of new family legal code (which is still not fully applied in the remote areas), and several workshops (cooking, embroidery…) Brahim helps the association, trains its members, teaching them their rights and obligations.

This kind of action, of small individual action, is what helps rural Morocco in its evolution. Teaching adults to read and write, as well as their rights makes them less dependant of the administration and helps to fight a corruption unfortunately still widely established.

By now, Brahim tries to have a new room in his school, for the association « Education and Solidarity ». Helped by French associations, in relations with two schools in Frence, he needs more help, to find funds and gather all the energies.



The room will be used as a multimedia library, with computers used by pupils and the families of Tazadoute. It will be also a normal library, with a dedicated space for reading, it will host training sessions (including the sessions dedicated for women), exhibitions, and will help to remedy to the derelict state of two of the three class-rooms.
It will be managed by the teachers, all members of the Association, each of them giving half a day for these activities, after school-time.

And in between, even without a room, things happen !

A few days ago, two French musicians came in Tazadoute, and organized musical workshops for the pupils… whether in the yard or in the class-rooms, everyone enjoyed it !

New generation of school teachers

Like in any school in the world, good pupils are in front, and the more troublesome try to hide behind. Our arrival has troubled the quiet school, all schoolmasters are in front of their classrooms, which are full with the laughs of the children. They saw us, and expect a very welcomed diversion, shortening their 45 minutes lessons. We are in the month of Ramadan, in the end of the morning, and everyone is happy to stop for a while.

In the Aït Ballouk doyar, in Tazzarine, there are five schoolmasters in the primary school. The class are reasonably populated, between 20 and 30 pupils.


Mohammed Khalloufi is one of those young teachers who do everything they can imagine to help their pupils, to push them a little bit further, learn other things than the official program and make them discover the world. He has an incredible IT equipment, a laptop, a DVD burner, a satellite card with which he can record TV shows from the whole world. A beamer, loud-speakers, also, and he regularly organises, in his class-room or at home, slide shows. In his class-room they are serious ones, at one, more fun, like cartoons, but he always uses them to teach something new.

He uses topical events, special days like « World Day of Ozone » or « World Day against Tuberculosis », of the Moroccan Day for safe driving (so much needed). He builds his slide-shows with videos, texts, looks for references on Encarta, to keep it short he acts like did our old schoolmasters, and try to bring his pupils all the knowledge available on Internet.

Tuberculosis for example is a question of health and biology. But also history (who did discover it), and prophylaxis. Each of his slideshows tries to give practical things to do. And he hopes the children will transfer the message to the parents. Because books are very rare here, and there is no other source of information than TV


ADSL, which arrives in the countryside had really changed Mohammed’s life !!

Education is one of the biggest challenges of modern Morocco. With a birth rate over 22%, young children are more and more to knock on schools’ doors, when, with action against illiteracy, women and adults come back to study after school hours.

These two last years saw proud proclamations from the Ministry of Education, with a schooling rate of nearly 99% of the children of age to enter primary school. The main black areas are in the remote mountain villages, specially in Middle and Anti Atlas, and by the nomads, for obvious reasons. Also many children leave school early, and leave at the end of elementary school, to become apprentice.

But, one after the other “colleges” (from 13 to 15) open, offering general or technical cursus. It is easier for a young to pass his baccalaureat (equivalent of A/O levels), and grants are given for poor families to send their children to university.



Everything is not perfect, far from it. There are still a lot of old school masters, hastily trained after the independence, some of them even did not know the topics they taught their pupils just by asking them to learn their books by heart.

Today, Morocco still misses many teachers, and the lessons can start quite late after the official date, even with one month delay.
Young teachers sent in the remote doyars (villages) have a very hard life, even more when they are Arabs (and from the city) in Berber area, their contacts with the population can be limited to nearly nothing, because of the language gap, and a quite old mistrust.

A Moroccan primary school teacher earns at the beginning around 200 euros per months, and up to 600 per month at the end of his career. (Minimal salary is 180 euro per month). He has quite often a high diploma, 3 or 4 years at university, but he had to take this profession, by lack of other opportunities. He wants to help his pupils as much as possible to improve their future.

If you pass by Tazzarine, Mohammed will be very happy to open his classroom to you.

If you want to help a class or a school in Morocco, you can :

• give school stationery, which you purchase in Morocco (it helps the local shops, and, « all inclusive » it is cheaper than bringing it from Europe), like notebooks, pens, chalks, school books, etc… and even aprons and satchels. The school teacher or the caïd (administrative manager of the village) will distribute them to the families needing them
• give material for the class, glob, maps, posters, IT equipment, books and dictionaries. Here also, it is better to buy as much as possible in the village, even if some of it can be found only in the cities. Even in Ouarzazate everything is not available and we sometimes have to go up to Marrakech
• when you’re a teacher yourself, you can organize an exchange with one of your classes. Letters, exchanges, even a long-term sponsorship (and why not a school travel ?) would be a wonderful opportunity for both sides.