Al Maghrib - First year -- No 25, June 14, 1937
A friend asked me why "Al Maghrib" does not publish the outcomes from examinations. To respond in total, I gave him a scornful smile which conveyed the ridicule of these dishonorable results for a country as vast and densely populated as ours. We remained silent for a brief moment during which I opened up the list of passing candidates and glanced at it again with apprehension that it might not pull me out of my despair. A despair that penetrates oneself as soon as one begins to reflect on a nation's lack of education. A nation to which one does not wish to open doors so that it may rid itself from the claws of illiteracy and deterioration.
Is it not a shame and an infamy for a nation with more than eight million souls that the number of students eligible for a certificate of primary education hardly exceeds a few dozen? And that candidates accepted for the examination for secondary schooling can be counted on one hand? As for specialization examinations, no need to speak of them; you are excused from having to count the number of Moroccans who came forward. How would you like, my dear friend, to publish the outcomes of these exams?
How would you publish such a list of eligible candidates that is so derisive when under your very eyes an Egyptian newspaper informs you that their candidates for their examination for secondary schooling exceeds 15,000? As for the certificate for primary schooling, there is a countless number of aspiring candidates. Despite this, their press and intellectual class never cease to criticize the illiteracy in their nation and to clamor for universal education.
Why would you wish to publish our results when the rest of the Arab world produces annually an impressive number of students endowed with strong intellectual qualities. And they send one mission after another to the West to specialize in a discipline of their choosing. Meanwhile in Morocco we are unaware of even the notion of missions? Our government hardly thinks of this, even though it regularly sends to France the children of the French immigrants who came and settled here so they can be educated at the expense of us taxpayers.
Enough, my friend, of deceiving ourselves by thinking that we are on the road to a new era. Enough of lulling us to sleep with illusions that we are taking steps forward. It is distressing to see other nations progressing with giant leaps while we regress. Perhaps you don't believe me. In that case, you need only to compare the outcomes of the certificates of primary education granted over the last six or seven years to this current year. You may see for yourself that not only we have not made progress but, on the contrary, we are going backwards. But who knows? Maybe they will send out a communique to dispel these real obsessions and then the privilege that we have harvested from education will be a worthy of a press release.
