Tayeb Zaid
I don’t know what has kept me until now from saying what I have to say to my former superiors in the administrative hierarchy. I wore out my fingertips hammering the keys of my keyboard to give shape to things that relate to the pedagogy and didactics of FLE. I was neither evil nor wicked, but I had more animosity in my heart than venom in the fangs of a naja. It is true that from time to time I had a few claws to distribute here and there to some of my superiors to respond with words to their underhanded and disingenuous maneuvers. I only had words to keep them at bay and I had succeeded in many situations in my business in keeping them away from me. I knew from experience that it was wasted effort to make them listen to reason because you can never turn a reaper’s sickle into a Samurai sword! Now, nothing binds me to them and they to me other than a thin thread of forced cohabitation, tainted by years of less than cordial relations. To the hypocrisy of my superiors, I responded with hypocrisy and to false smiles with false smiles. What do you want me to say to you who read me? Cinnamon is not sniffed, it is smelled. For the days of tensions and nullities that I suffered in my workplaces, I did not replace evenings of pedagogy, didactics, grammar, linguistics, stylistics, pragmatics to write on my PC to publish them on the Oujdacity portal and on my Facebook page. Twenty years of writing intended for the school, twenty years of criticism of regional French exams, twenty years of silence from the various school officials and headed by those of my educational inspectors. Which of my superiors, the most distant or the closest geographically or institutionally, had given me a sign of reproach or recognition? I therefore had to be blamed, decried, shamed, and brought before the disciplinary council (at least when I was still active) if my educational and didactic writings deviated from the usage, the norm, the educational guidelines in practical. I had to be thanked, encouraged, congratulated if they had any added value to the school. Nothing. Not one of my managers reacted either negatively or positively to what I wrote. Only once, in a friendly manner, did a manager ask me this perfidious question: ‘Mr. Zaid, what do you have against the unit responsible for preparing the regional exams for criticizing them so harshly?’ ‘I told him that it was not up to me to ask this question but to the team in question. And we remained at this level of the discussion with the idea that I was in the wrong and that I had to stop harming the authority from which the cell in question benefited and from which I was deprived.
In principle, if each of my administrative and educational leaders occupied his position thanks to his educational or administrative skills, he had to closely follow the creative and innovative minds of the officials under his authority. To make things clearer, in the only city from which I speak and where I ended my career as a French teacher, – and I ended it badly, alas! after 40 years of practice! – there are writers, poets, mathematicians, artists, painters, whom I know by name (and whom I unfortunately cannot mention by name!) who have published their books at abroad, or in Morocco at their own expense, or who exhibit their paintings in European countries. These intellectuals with the names of authors, these painters with the vocation of artists should have been taken care of by the leaders of their schools, their delegations, their academy and their works published in booklets which would fill the shelves of school libraries. These intellectuals and artists could have set up workshops and led round tables on poetry, the novel, theater, didactics, pedagogy, painting. The students, teachers and the school as an educational institution could have drawn added educational, didactic and artistic value from the writings and paintings of these professors, writers, poets, mathematicians and painters.
I have never been asked by my educational and administrative superiors to take part in any awareness campaign for learning the French language in our schools, which I would have had the pleasure of leading for the benefit of students and teachers at the start of the year. career. Throughout twenty years, as far as I am concerned, I have written many educational and didactic articles on the French language in accordance with the Pedagogical Guidelines in force since 2007 and which could be useful to our school . I would have done it with the greatest pleasure and without expecting any reward in return! Let’s leave these things to the so-called ‘influencers’ who infest Youtube with their mediocrities.
Each of us, me a simple French language teacher, them high school directors, educational inspectors, delegates or directors of academies, is now retired. What have we donated and left at the school that others can use after we leave? NOTHING that can be materially cited.
In conclusion, I inform my readers that I have finished collecting all my writings in 2 volumes: one will be devoted to the analysis of texts, the other to language and style. Two books that complement each other, two books that will be useful for learning the French language in our schools.
Tayeb Zaid