[Foundation-l] Re: Languages and education

[Anthere]

Jens Ropers a écrit:
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>> (...)
>>>
>>> all asked for books. Only books. Not
>>> food, nor money, nor sweets, only books. And they
>>> wanted books in french language. I told them "but you
>>> can't read french". But this is what they wanted
>>> nevertheless.
>>>
>>> (...)
>>>
>>> Computers in these villages is out of question. They
>>> have electricity but I doubt a computer could survive
>>> long in such an environment (I spent two hours in the
>>> local gendarmerie, they have desks, paper, pens and
>>> sand). However, most of our youngest guides had an
>>> email adress and went on the net thanks to cybercafes
>>> in Tamanrasset.
>>>
>>> There might be things to do no ?
>>
> 
> On 5 Jan 2005, at 14:58, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> 
>> This is absolutely fascinating to me.  Just really fascinating.
>>
>> I think this is the kind of knowledge we have to have, knowledge of
>> real conditions in real places, in order to be able to help
>> effectively.
>>
>> --Jimbo
> 
> 
> Seconded.
> 
> Caution may be advised however:
> If, say, we get something going and distribute books ''from France'', 
> this could easily be seen by local (Algerian) politicians/nationalists 
> as "some French-American organization is trying to subvert our education 
> system by hijacking our children's literacy development." Very bad 
> mojo/karma/blood. Yes, I agree with Anthere's (implied) suggestions, but 
> if we even try to do something, we should be very diplomatic about it 
> and thread very carefully. Make sure our non-affiliation and charitable 
> nature is very much known and possibly involve the (Algerian) national 
> through local government and/or kindly ask them for advice or even 
> permission. Make sure our attitude does NOT get to be: "What a crappy 
> country and f*&ked-up government/education system. Heck, we can do this 
> SO much better." And make sure local (ie. Algerian) people KNOW that 
> that's not our attitude. Just asking people nicely and showing them that 
> we fully respect them will often work wonders. And make sure that they 
> know that they can become Wikipedians, too.
> 
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com

To go further in what you say...

One guy in our group has been to this place many times already. Well, he 
worked there for a long time in infrastructure. He told me there is 
currently an undergoing work intending to have some french people train 
algerian teachers to teach french. I can actually understand that a 
village of 500 inhabitants does not necessarily have a teacher good 
enough in french to teach it efficiently. My own english teachers were 
far from great sometimes :-)
Though backshish does not really exist at "lower" levels in Algeria, 
these people trying to organise training had to "participate" heavily at 
"upper" level :-(
Though the Algerian government has been trying for many years to strip 
anything french from their country (in particular the language, from 
education, administration etc...) (it is just a factual comment, not a 
criticism, it is extremely understandable reaction from a country just 
liberated from colonialism), a reform is under way in the education system.

The education system reform is such that french is taught two years 
sooner than before, english teaching is also one year sooner and more 
room is given to Tamazight. This goes along with other changes, and if I 
remember well, the Algerian government recently decided to try to get 
nearer France than before. There seems to be a wish to really maintain 
the multilingualism of the country. In any cases, the main three points 
are 1) the education system is not working very well 2) a reform is 
under way and this reform intends to leave more room to 
french/english/tamazight and 3) they apparently lack educational resources.

Now it sure would be wrong I think that the previous colonial country or 
the current (add any description of the USA that might fit in your 
opinion here) appears overbearing/critical etc...
Similarly, one of the book I had available when I was over there was a 
sort of children tales from the Bible. Stories from ancient books. 
Believe it or not, I DID NOT offer the Bible to these 100% muslim kids. 
I do not think it would have been appreciated, even if the stories are 
real nice and adapted to their age ;-)

Obviously Algerian teachers and Algerian decision makers should be 
involved one way or another. In any cases, Algeria is a policy state, so 
you do not import things just as you wish (I will avoid telling you much 
about the 2 hours we spent in a gendarmerie in Ideles, JUST because we 
needed to purchase matches, bread and coffee in the village after 10 
days in the wild. The gendarmes did not need to check who we were, we 
were obviously not illegal traders hiding ourselves behind our 8 kids 
age 3 to 13. Nevertheless, they checked :-)). Very gentle people, but I 
wonder if their bureaucracy might not be worse than the french one.


Possibly as well, if we were thinking of books (thinking wikijunior 
books we are currently trying to do), we could envision them to be 
bilingual or trilingual. Or at least, we could envision to distribute 
books in different languages. Having the books include arab resource 
might help.

The arabic wikipedia is quite small as well, but it exists and ar 
wikipedians should get involved. They need certainly to be slightly 
bigger. As soon as ar is involved, and arabs leaving there are involved, 
there should not be so much fear of a sort of imperialism/colonialism. I 
hope.

Just thoughts.