Education in Morocco: School X

 I decided to focus on Morocco for my project, first because it has an illiteracy rate of 30%, but also because my connection to it would probably allow me to put much more effort and heart in my work, than if I were to work somewhere else, and finally because I recently found out about a staggering study that has been made in collaboration between the world bank and the national observatory for human development. This study seeks to evaluate the level of professors in Morocco, especially in private and public schools, excluding international schools. They gave teachers fake tests from primary schools, in three subjects that are math, French and Arabic, and they considered that a good teacher would be one that can detect at least 80% of the mistakes made by kids.  It has been shown, that for mathematics, 70% of the teachers were detecting 80% of the mistakes so we can consider that 70% of math teachers are qualified enough. Now, what is the percentage of teachers that were able to detect more than 80% of mistakes from an Arabic test? 4% of professors were able to detect more than 80% of the mistakes.  What about French? For French classes, 0% of the teachers were detecting more than 80% of the mistakes made by students. The results of this study can possibly be applied in the same way for higher education in Morocco.

Clearly, Moroccan people suffer from a lack of educational opportunities, simply because the best private schools like the one I have been to are too expensive, and public ones are not good enough. Professors are not good enough, and their students, therefore, can’t find success. As a result, every year, thousands of young students, thousands of bright young Moroccan minds fail to have access to better education and to reach their full potential. Nowadays, when people think about waste, they mostly think about food and plastic waste, however, what I see here is a waste of potential, a waste of intelligent people that can learn and help their countries progress. We don’t have good professors, and this is because we don’t value education enough.

There are few ways one can have an impact, and what I want to do is to give smart Moroccan kids the opportunity to have access to better educational opportunities, and thus to facilitate social mobility. The average Moroccan income is of 400$, and most of the people in Morocco end up working in Morocco, which means that the smartest people that don’t have the financial means to study in a foreign country, might making their way through school because they are smart but will end up going to Moroccan universities, but won’t make as much as they can when they graduate. My Idea is to create a boarding School that cooperates with the government, and gets the list of the best Moroccan students, whether they are rich or poor. With that list, our school will be able to target those students that have the potential to compete at the international level and our goal will be to save them from the careers that they will probably end up having if they stay. Initial investments would allow us to pay for great teachers, and our goal would be to form these students and get them access to the best universities worldwide that have either a need-blind or a need-based policy.

However, if the book that we all read taught us one thing, it’s that we need to make it sustainable if we are trying to make an actual impact in the long run, rather than pouring water on sand. The idea is to offer two payments options for richer and poorer students. The students who don’t have any money would sign an income sharing agreement with us, because even though they get full scholarships, we would have to finance their living expenses when they are abroad, and we would take a percentage of their salary when they get a job after they graduate, but pay for their living expenses, with the money that we will get upfront from the richer kids that will pay for their years in our boarding school. At the end, they will all probably end up getting jobs that pay them at least 10 times what they would have made, had they stayed in Morocco.

In the long-run, I have no doubt that the students that we would have helped will feel the need to come back to Morocco, when they have enough experience from working in a foreign country, and to give back to our country by using their excellent education to make our country a better place. Having students go to great universities also mean that our school will have access to their network, and potentially bring other students that want to work with us and help them get into the best schools of the planet. Ultimately, I believe that allowing Moroccan kids to reach their full potential would be to totally change the workings of my country, making it a place where the focus is nothing else than people and potential.      

When it comes to myself, I am already exposed to the Moroccan and French educational systems, but throughout my studies, I know that being exposed to various educational systems will further help me in my mission to make access to education in Morocco a more level playing field, or at least, to shed some light on the issue which I truly believe is Morocco’s biggest concern of the century, for it is those who will have a good education that will make Morocco a better place, in a world that I will always dare to imagine.

Expensive Teapot.

A world we dare to imagine

I dare to imagine a world where the focus is not money but passion and fulfillment, a world where everyone has access to a universal basic income that allows people to start seeking for things that they like to do, rather than for any job that will allow them to live or sometimes survive. The rise of Artificial Intelligence is transforming the way our societies work, and to successfully manage this disruptive transition, people need to be given financial cushions. This starts by voting for the right people, not for the populists that say what people want to hear, but the ones that will actually have a positive impact. 

I dare to imagine a world with better access to free education. In the USA, students spend years trying to pay-off their debt, wasting their time and living under pressure, while they should be free to do what they like. Online classes and MOOCs are already helping education to become more widely spread and easily accessible. Online universities like Lambda School that offer income-sharing agreements also give new solutions to people’s problems, but these models are yet to be accessible by everyone. To have access to online classes, people need the internet, and to have the internet people need to have access to electricity, which is not the case everywhere. Finding big solutions often starts with solving small problems, and I believe that if political leaders cooperate with ambitious entrepreneurs, and if successful projects are reused in countries that need them, the world will be progressing faster than it has ever been. 

Extra credit #2 on sexual predation

During this conference, the speaker talked about the topic of sexual predators, and what I thought was striking is that sexual predation is actually way more common than we usually believe, and this was proven by the fact that we could cite events where sexual predators were involved pretty fast. They include Michigan State, Fox News, NPR, The New York City Police, The University of Southern California, Uber, Google, the Harvey Weinstein case, and even the US Navy, and I have to say that I did not know about most of them. I don't know whether it is because I am not American or because these events tend to be hidden not to deteriorate the brand image of the different institutions that were involved.

The speaker, later on, gave us a legal definition of sexual harassment, and this can be divided into three parts: one is Quid pro quo, second is a hostile workplace, and third is the fact that a third person is usually involved. People being harassed sexually suffer from different health outcomes, that include PTSD, lower life satisfaction and usually isolation and fear to talk about what happened because they believe that they will be seen in a different way.

But one must also know that sexual predation also has organizational outcomes that affect the business in which the event happened. This includes employee payouts or turnover, lower productivity and brand damage. This increases the cost of running the business and it seems as though companies should become more concerned about these issues because they are also affected negatively.

Sexual harassment is a multilevel problem that is normalized by silence and organizational narcissism, and this should change. It starts with a good comprehension of the different parties involved.

Below is the proof that I was present on that day.

Ciao tutti!

I remember back when I was in high school that I wanted to start learning a new language. I considered Chinese, but I knew this was setting the bar way too high for something that I would have to teach myself. My trip to Venice was determinant in my decision to start learning Italian. It sounds good and did not seem too hard to learn, so I got started. The first thing I did was “Duolingo”. You must have heard about this application if at some point you also tried to learn a new language. Honestly, this was a good start, but it pretty much gets boring after some time, and I realized that I could not really practice my oral skills, which I believe is the most important aspect of learning a language. Thus, my motivation decreased, and I went from using this app a few minutes every day, to a few minutes every week, and without realizing, I had stopped opening Duolingo. Even though I was putting notifications on every day, I was just ignoring them. I did not understand why I could not go on, and I probably just concluded that I must be too lazy to teach myself a new language or that it was too hard.

 

After being admitted to the world bachelor in business, I started to think again about Italian, knowing that this time, I actually had a reason to learn the language: I was going to spend one or probably two years in Milan, but I was not really in a hurry, because I still had two years to learn. After I landed in LA, I quickly became friends with most of the Italian people in my program. This means that we were hanging out together a lot, and many times, I found myself being the only non-Italian guy in the group, so I had to remind them many times to switch to English. However, I also could understand that they were naturally speaking to each other in their own language. After all, if there were other Moroccans with me, I would have probably done the same. This is when I decided that I must do something about this situation.

 

By the beginning of October, I decided to get started seriously. I gave up on Duolingo and grabbed a notebook. I thought: If I could study Italian on my own for one hour every day, by the end of the second year, I would become fluent and be ready for Milan. The beginning was probably the hardest. Building new habits need a lot of self-discipline, which is something that I lacked before. I decided to start with basic verbs in the present, then to go on with some vocabulary using different topics, like nature, home, clothes, the human body… I was going slowly but steadily, and what was great about having a notebook is that I could actually observe my progress, which was helping me to keep going on day after day. I was also blessed to have a suitemate that was Italian that could help me with my mistake or when I had questions to ask.

 

The next step was to get added to the Italian WhatsApp group chat “USC mafia”. This is when I stepped up my game. Not only I could read Italian every day, at any moment, but I could also answer (google translate was a good start), and of course, keep writing new stuff on my notebook. Right now, I try to have short talks with my suitemate from time to time, and I try to read or listen to the news in Italian because the major issue I am facing right now is trying to understand Italians when they talk at a normal pace. After all, I think that our environment really plays a big role when it comes to what we try to achieve in life and that we should take advantage of every opportunity that is presented to us. Teaching myself this language is still not easy, but I am confident that if I keep learning, I might find myself speaking without any difficulty in two years. Let’s see how it goes.

 

Find below a sample of my notebook.

Ghali