The tension between family and school is increased due to the lack of understanding between both the Moroccan parents and teachers in elementary schools.
Moroccan parents think that their children are getting too little subject matter at school and waste too much time playing around. The teachers on the other hand have the impression that Moroccan children haven’t learned anything at home.
Moroccan parents also think that schools are concerned too much in upbringing and too little in what they are supposed to do. Schools have the impression that Moroccan parents couldn’t care less if their children learn something at school, due to the fact that they never attend parent-teacher meetings.
Though there are many causes of the problems with Moroccan youngsters, these can be reduced to six general causes:
Education-support in a strict sense
Education-support in a broad sense
Expectations for the future
The influence of the social surroundings
Educational-pattern
Environment based selection-processes in the educational system.
Education-support in a strict sense
The more parents are able to assist and help their children in their school careers, the bigger is their chance of succeeding in the educational system. More highly-educated parents will be more able to do this.
In general Moroccan parents are less educated. Most are not able to assist with homework, answer questions about subjects at school etc... Children have to find everything out on their own.
Education-support in a broad sense
The more parents are able to assist their children with learning, the bigger their chance of succeeding in the educational system. This increases the interaction between parents and children, the communication with and the individual attention for the children. Most important are reading aloud and the use of language at home.
Due to the size of Moroccan families, little individual attention is paid to children. It is of little importance for them. Moroccan parents, in their upbringing, stress collective values, family, religion and the community.
Dutch parents strongly emphasise individual development and variety. In the Moroccan community discipline, calmness, and reasonableness are seen as signs of good behaviour for infants, whereas in Dutch culture these are characteristics for adults.
In Moroccan culture there is no child phase. Children are taught to behave like little adults immediately. At school, children are expected to develop social skills, assertiveness and individuality.
Reading aloud hardly happens. Parents are illiterate or haven’t mastered the Dutch language. A lot of Moroccans with a Berber background aren’t used to reading. Berber is a spoken language. Therefore Moroccan children will fall behind in their linguistic development.
The differences in the process of socialising between Moroccan and Dutch families are mainly responsible for the initial conditions for the children when they go to elementary school. Communication with other children and adults leaves a lot to be desired. Disagreements are settled with beatings and not with talking. In this way children are taught that aggressive behaviour and physical violence are normal. Moroccans are not used to settling disputes through conversation. Children are seldom taught to admit that they were wrong or to forgive another child. The development of a conscience is not natural.
Expectations for the future
When parents have higher expectations about what their children will achieve in future, children will tend to score higher in the educational system.
Moroccan parents still too often think that who is born to be a nickel, will never become a dime, which explains their own low level of education.
The influence of the social surroundings
What appears to be common and/or seems to be normal in the social surroundings of a child, influences the future possibilities of the child.
In Moroccan society most people have had little or no education. The majority of the fathers are working in low paid and in socially low-dignified jobs. Mothers stay at home to take care of the children and do the housekeeping. This is a generally accepted image. In the residential neighbourhood, this pattern is also well established. Children don’t have any other role models.
Educational pattern
This means that certain kinds of educational patterns and educational notions more or less fit the requirements set by the educational system towards the behaviour and attitude of children. A style of upbringing based on discipline stands opposed to a style directed towards negotiation and a style that is character/rolebased rather than individual.
Moroccans are not used to negotiating. You do as you are told. At home this is accepted, but not at school.
Moroccan upbringing is more rolebased than personal orientated. Role models are fixed.
What they are being told at school confuses children and often contradicts what is being said at home. Boys are supposed to have jobs and girls are supposed to help in the house.
There is often a lack of communication in a Moroccan family. Children are evasive towards their parents and especially towards their father. Frequently they themselves know that their behaviour is inadmissible. The dominant father does not respond to this. He does not use his position to talk to his children in a decent way. He seldom talks to his own children about all kinds of feelings and problems, which leaves no room for children to think about the eventual bad behaviour that they show.
Environment based selection processes in the educational system
This concerns the way the educational system responds to the class differences between children. The central idea is that the educational system favours children from a higher social class by implicitly taking their knowledge, their use of language, their way of life and their behaviour as a standard. Higher expectations are held of them than of children from a lower social class.
In general, Moroccan children go to lower forms of secondary education than an average Dutch child.
Schoolbooks are based on an average Dutch middle-class family, with which foreign-born children can not identify.
They feel that they are different and are confirmed in their ideas that they are different and might be inferior.
