Leadership and Values in Language Education - Al Akhawayn ...

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22Proceedings of the 27 th MATE Annual Conferencedesign of syllabi and the production of materials. A key factor of the curriculumis of course the human variable. The starting issue to address is therefore changeand innovation in mentalities, attitudes and aptitudes of the various players in thelanguage educational enterprise.Changing people, administrations and/or procedures will, however, notnecessarily result in changes in policy, attitudes, working habits, ethics, bestpractices, and the implementation of alternative values. In fact for decisionsconcerning the promotion of change to have the desired outcomes, they need notonly to be made in a collective manner and to be appropriated by all, but also tobe implemented and monitored in a collegial manner according to a pre-specifiedschedule.What are values?Values are expressions of the absolute truths a community holds. It is perhapswithin this feature of values that many social, cultural, religious and economicconflicts originate. In fact, in their quest for specificity and identity, communitiestend to charge values with markers they set as mirrors in which their idealisedprofile would be reflected. As such, values are for communities a system withinwhich they can be identified and distinguished from other ones and throughwhich relationships can be established among members and among thecommunity itself and other communities. Because values are assigned the powerof creating symbols and of assigning meanings to them, they are subjected to verytight monitoring mechanisms that tend to reduce the various markers to forms andexpressions closer to those of dominant groups. Diversity and multiplicity ofethnic, economic, linguistic and/or historical markers of a community tend thus tobe overlooked by dominant values of a community whereby the seeds of conflict.In a school environment, the markers of the language of the student communityare suppressed and those of the dominant educational authority are opposed tothem. The same can be said about the markers of the clothing culture of thestudent community, of the accessories and paraphernalia of their outlook, of theireating habits, of their leisure and recreation options, of their aesthetic tastes formusic and art in general, etc. In short, the culture of the students, who form themajority in a school, is dominated by that of the representatives of the schoolestablishment who are often a small minority. Students who insist on theirattachment to the markers of their community are taxed by deviation epithets.
23Proceedings of the 27 th MATE Annual ConferenceMany of the grievances of teachers and of educational management in generalhave to do with the difficulties students have respecting norms. In other words,the problem concerns breaches of values expressed in violations of expectedconduct and desired school performance. The general tendency has been toperceive these deviations from the norms and values as forms of violence againstthe establishment and its symbols hence their punishment with more violence:harsh language, debilitating sanctions, further exclusion, limitations on thefreedom to circulate and the humiliation of failure. While the mainstreameducational psychology - ideology indicates that repression of deviation is neverthe ideal correction, the general tendency is to reinforce repressive practices inschools, including language classrooms (Cf. Mrs. Kerkech paper in Tangiers,2006). These repressive behaviours are the materialised collective will not only tojudge learners but to enforce sanctions without really giving them the opportunityto be helped into speaking and expressing the conflicts that oppose them to thevalues they have deviated from and to be listened to and understood. The storiesof deviant learners have very rarely been told and they if have, very seldom havethey been listened to. Educational judgment not withheld until the story of thedeviant is investigated, explained and fully understood and before the promise ofalternative ways of behaviour and of performance has been explored is always ajudgment that reinforces the deviation and that is therefore an irrelevant approachto the remediation of the problem and to the resolution of the conflicts.The multiplicity of values is also a multiplicity of readings and ofinterpretations“Mediation of texts – discourse assigns to words, propositions, symbols andmetaphors, new or additional values, dimensions and extensions in history and insociety that they did not, perhaps, have at the moment of theirenunciation.”(Zaki) In other words, values are to a great extent an interpretationof various levels of the symbolic of language through which it exerts its powerson humans and on their institutions. The mediator – reader / interpreter whoalways seeks further ways of acquiring additional powers, tends to submitsymbols, and hence values, to the constraints of his/her perspectives of time andspace. It is thus, for instance, that the “desacralisation” of holy religious texts canoccur. Texts taken to be of a “Devine” nature are corrupted by their submission tothe relativity of time, space, social intelligence, the plurality of human nature, ofsocial, economic and political motivations. The “desacralisation” process, whichis in fact but a re-appropriation of discourse by wider communities, is a
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