Recently, the issue of improving of Morocco educational programs is again on the agenda. This question is actually recurrent since the protectorate and no satisfactory solution so far. To have stayed in Switzerland, for university studies and the professional work after, I did notice, after my return to Morocco, some curious practices in the audit work quality, and similar operations, that this article proposes to share with the reader.
English as reference
In Switzerland, students were asked to learn, just after their native language (German, French or Italian, depending on the region), successively the other two national languages before thinking about the assimilation of another additional language. However, this rule did not resisted requirements of international order (hereinafter the global market) which made knowledge of English pre-eminent on compliance with national preferences. In the seventies already, the past century, the holding in Switzerland of intervarsity seminars in English was the norm. Then, Zurich was the first to formalize the priority of learning the English language before the other national languages, followed later by other cantons. Today, the teaching English just after the mother tongue is the trend over the entire European continent. In Brussels, for example, texts defining the rules within the European Union are often conceived and written in English and then translated into other languages, including French. Whereas a text always loses some of its soul in translation, and sometimes more, of course we would be better off in Morocco if we could read the texts of Brussels directly in English rather than French or, even worse off, translated from French into Arabic.
The Anglo-Saxon system as a platform for international trade
University studies may be, save exception, difficult to imagine today without the knowledge of English. Aware of this reality, Swiss universities provide, for decades, the teaching English for free to beginners who do not have the mastery of the language, pushing them to express themselves in English in presentations and / or interventions in seminars. In the definitely globalized market, beyond work, the studies are supposed to prepare the candidates to research and innovation that are the prerogative of the English language these days. It is not surprising that the Anglo-Saxon is the first in the charts of financially profitable technological innovations, all sectors combined. Having only English to learn, these people may very early spend the remaining time to learn other things that are marketable successfully. When you know that a language may request a long-term effort to be mastered, that’s a lot of time saved that can be invested elsewhere. In contrast, when Arabic is your native language, that you must learn French as second language for a long period of time, just to speak it with French folks, there is little energy left to learn the English language and the result is that: “not mastering” of English equals a stay among the least developed countries in the world for more time. The reasoning applies even more so for those of Morocco with the Berber as mother tongue to whom one must pay special tribute for their resilience.
With regard to international trade, which cannot be circumvented, the countries have never been as dependent on each other as they are today. In this respect, each one buys something from another and, at the same time, must sell other thing to a third one. For all this, there are rules. For example, you cannot survive just by purchasing and you have to find things to sell with the best added value as possible so to bring the most money. We must at the same time respect the rules established in the global market. But these rules, which are here to stay for a long time to come, are of Anglo-Saxon obedience, unless one is blind or refusing to see the reality. It follows that, to understand the rules, and get maximum profit, we must master English. Otherwise, we would stay our lives dependent on intermediaries of all kinds and see our integration into the international market getting away for even longer. If Switzerland, modest country initially without resources on its soil, has won the bet of excellence, this is, in large part, thanks to the ingenuity of having been inspired by teaching Anglo-Saxon which provides much more flexibility than the French system. Students learn how to search for knowledge rather than having their heads overloaded with general information without relevance to the jobs demanded by the labor market. By the way, everyone agrees, including France, on the fact that the system of baccalaureate, that has been established two centuries ago, is obsolete and no longer meets the modern way to acquire knowledge. But no one dares to criticize the Baccalaureate because it has virtually been sanctified by the French education system and, in Africa, we are mere collateral damage. Almost at the same age other systems produce engineers ready to work in industry units.
Impact of education on audit activity in Morocco
Our recent education system was made by France, which looked at first, and it is not an exception in this, how to serve its own interests and nothing else. Educate Moroccan yes, but to serve that purpose only. I once complained, while working in a Casablanca pharmaceutical unit in the eighties, to the president as I was having difficulties to find confirmed laboratory technicians, to which he replied, “You may feel happy to find one. There is not long, I had to go to Paris to find a secretary that we had to pay in foreign currency”. In this regard, some of the Moroccan students educated in France were with the idea of serving the exclusive interests of France once returned home. Even if so, for this purpose, one would have to create on those students some degree of dependence upon “French-style services”. The result of this deliberate and tenacious effort, whose sole purpose was to keep, beyond education, the grip on the economic and trade sector of Morocco, was accompanied occasionally by sort of dumbing down. Thus, certain behaviors that are decried elsewhere are oddly glorified in our country. I could see bonuses being offered to technicians responsible for monitoring / quality to do their jobs faster. Now, if in an industrial unit, a production bonus is acceptable, a premium for Quick Control is usually prohibited. Because if an error of a production that go fast can be detected through control services, mistake of the latter can be a disaster for consumers. Thus, among all pharmaceutical units existing at that time in the Kingdom, only Hoechst-Polymedic had, to my knowledge, service to the rank of management of quality control and whose head was therefore the same grade as the production manager and could, if necessary, stand up to him. In the other units, mostly associated to “French big pharma”, product quality control was reduced to the level of a simple service related, according to the moods, with production department, purchase or otherwise and would have had harsh difficulties to block the selling of a pharmaceutical product once manufactured! In fact, this issue has she ever been on the agenda of the AMIP (Moroccan Production Drug Association), very clever who can say!
It comes back to me, in conclusion, this picture where I was in 2001 in Nyon near Geneva, where I took my two kids for a routine visit to a doctor. My children were alone in the waiting room and they were very surprised to have never had such an experience (being just them two in a waiting room of a doctor) before in Morocco. They were almost to blame me for the doctor chosen for them. For “more the number of patients waiting is high, sometimes tens, more the reputation perceived of the doctor is good ». I had to explain that the doctor must do a job and that the Swiss authorities, the Metropolitan France also consider that for this he must reserve a time average of fifteen to twenty minutes per patient to comply with the rules. Otherwise, his reputation will be made of negligence at work and patients would refuse to see this doctor again. Another idea so far blocked at the entrance to the Office of the National Order of Physicians of Morocco.
