King on education reform

Educational model acceptable to the country's future.   Casablanca - Raja Battaoui   King Mohammed VI, in his speech on Monday evening marking the Moroccans revolution spoke of the importance of reforming education and public schools in the country. He called for a rethinking of the educational methodology designed for future generations and stressed in his speech heard by Arabstoday: "Trying to find a new methodology where the teacher is not the main axis of the educational process". The king explained the educational model acceptable to the country's future: "The educational organisation in our country must aim towards developing young talents, investing in their creative energy and developing their personality in order to raise citizenship duties in an environment full of dignity and equality of opportunities, in order to make the coming generations able to contribute to the democratic process of the society." In order to reach this aim, the king continued: "We should enjoy intellectual integrity and develop strategies to prepare Moroccan youth for a better future, to activate the emergency plan for the education sector by applying the amended constitution in a new modern education and reviewing all traditional typical practices followed in Moroccan schools." The king stressed: "The entire educational approaches should be reviewed in order to move from an educational system limited to the teacher and his performance for delivering knowledge to students, to another system based on participation and developing student self-motivation offering a chance for creativity and innovation as well as to enable them to acquire the skills to coexist with others, respect diversity and respect our differences." The country's illiteracy rate has been stuck at around 50 percent for some years, with male literacy at 65.7 percent and female at 39.6 percent.