The reformation of the Daaras in the schooling system: A contribution to the inclusion discourse or a new form of neo-colonialism/neo-liberalism
Note: With an analysis of ongoing education reform initiatives in Senegal, Barrel Gueye continues the Miami Institute’s forum, curated by Takiyah Harper-Shipman and titled: “A Different Type of Extraction: Remove Race from International Development Theory and Practice.” Gueye warns that “we should be careful in aligning with international donors and ideals of development, which have failed to encompass the cultural and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives, values, and aspirations.”
In Senegal, 34% of children are not in formal schooling (Orlecole, 2016). They are in the Franco-Arab schools or in the Daaras. Thus, this 2016 study, published under the direction of Laylee Moshiri with the assistance of Issa Mboup and UNICEF Senegal, recommends taking into consideration possibilities for reforming the education system with alternative schools. Senegal’s government has considered since 2011 to include the Franco- Arab schools and the Daaras in its education system. However, these approaches to education have different rationales than the formal system, which are similar to the French model.
To facilitate the inclusion or “hybridation” of the systems while considering excluded children from formal education, a new program has been launched to modernize the Daaras with a more formalized curriculum.
Daaras can be defined as religious schools that are attended by children aged 5/6 to 16 to learn the Qur'an, and the Islamic principles. They can be residential or day schools. Since the 17th century, it has been an important component in the education of Muslim children. Most Muslim children start from the Daaras and later on join the formal schooling. Since the Daaras were not considered part of the official system, their graduates were not regarded as schooled. It was recently, in the 1990s, with the Education for All (EFA) goal, and especially with President Abdoulaye Wade coming to power in 2000, that Daaras became an integral part of the educational community.
In 2009, the creation of the Daaras Inspectorate started the modernization policy. Its goals are to offer people in favor of the Daaras more improved learning conditions and socio-professional life prospects. This decision was stimulated by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) projects for the universal access to basic education.
Thus, the modernization of the Daaras was launched in 2011 to respond to the aspirations of communities and to assure the democratization of the education system. In the struggle for inclusion and Education for All, Daaras have become big targets for an upturn of the missed objectives. Therefore, the revolution of the Daaras has become imperative.
Nevertheless, if the choice is clear, the effective implementation of modernization is riddled with obstacles: with large proliferation of Daaras, absence of a reference guide, lack of synergy of interventions, etc., according to interviewed Inspectors.
Since its inception, the evolution of the program for the modernization of the Daaras has not evolved. Even though the declared purpose is to correct unfair considerations of Daaras and Franco-Arab schooling, their integration as valid alternative education is still lagging behind.
The reformation of the Daaras
Through the modernization of the Daaras, a change of the curriculum is proposed, including subjects of the formal schooling into the Daaras curriculum, such as French and mathematics. Learning in the Daaras is done in local languages and in Arabic. According to Koranic teachers, this seems to align more with the integration of the Daaras into the formal system than its valorization. Although the learning of the Koran and the hadiths remains parts of the curriculum, the whole environment and cultures of the Daaras is going to be shifted towards a more regular schooling. An Imam who has a Daara claimed that they just want to transform the Daaras into “French” schools. Hence his categorical refusal of following the process. Turning Daaras into French schooling is a call for a neo-colonialist, racist, and elitist French model, undermining well-rooted paradigms in education.
Opponents of this modernization wish to root children into their local languages first and then to the Arabic to learn the Koran and understand the hadith before being open to French. The imposition of French in the Daaras is viewed as a form of hegemony and the imposition of a neo-colonial order.
Calling on neocolonial theorists such as Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivack, this essay argues that the modernization of the Daaras is a new racist form of subordination, if taken from Eurocentric perspectives that constitute the main donors’ rules. According to the Inspectors, the slowness of modernization is due to the reluctance of teachers of the Daaras to apply “the donors’ imposition.” They are not interested in the learning of the Koran and would not fund Daaras schooling that does not integrate aspects of the globally-accepted formal curriculum.
This resonates with Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s point in Decolonising the Mind (1986):
Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. For colonialism, this involved two aspects of the same process: the destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of people’s culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature, and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer (p. 16).
The modernization of Daaras still carries on that colonial racialized legacy that Wa Thiongo referred to. The imposition of the French language over local languages and the formal schooling structures are considered true hegemony. Instead of empowering this alternative schooling well-cherished by communities, they reject them.
This does not mean that the Daaras should be unreformed. Rather the formal education, despite its positive outcomes, has failed by detaching itself from people’s socio-cultural and religious beliefs. Instead of turning Daaras into “formal schooling,” the government would build upon its positive aspects that drive communities. Insisting the blending of Daaras into the French model would lead to denial. Modernization could be beneficial, if the process is set up from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down. Including well-informed local stakeholders is key to building modernized Daaras with suitable learning environment based on people’s needs and aspirations, not on donors’ hidden agenda.
Besides, we should be careful in aligning with international donors and ideals of development, which have failed to encompass the cultural and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives, values, and aspirations. The modernization of the Daaras is heavily guided by Eurocentric motives, not by altruistic intentions. This could lead to some dimension of oppression while denying to communities their sense of representation and the construction of their identity (ie), beliefs, and practices. The structural changes for the modernization of the Daaras should not be hatched by neoliberal and racist discourse; they should consider all key stakeholders’ perspectives including local communities in the process of reformation. We construe the silencing of key players of the Daaras through the imposition of French to be contributing to the racist and neoliberal continuum. While donors along with the Senegal government set up the modernization process from a Eurocentric elitist discourse of development based on GDP and the tendency of valuing oneself and others through achievement in the material world, the Koranic schools and its defenders are into spiritual preparedness and the religious rootedness of their children rather than accomplishment in the physical realm. Therefore, the current model of modernization is essentially neo-liberal as it puts forth the Western values for progress and development. This becomes hegemonic.
Furthermore, one could argue that the modernization of the Daaras in Senegal—in the ways in which it is programmed—translates to some extent the Western hostility towards Islam and equates what Edward Said terms the belittling stereotypes of Islam and the Muslim. Donors, most of whom are from the West, would not favor any funding that supports the development of Islam and its followers. Consequently, they fail to value people’s aspirations and spiritual needs for the benefit of a coercive order of Westernization and neocolonialism. Learning the Koran and the Hadiths is considered as secondary in a racist and neoliberal world and even a censure with the advent of terrorism.
Conclusion
With its young population, Senegal is faced with high education and health demands. Therefore, the country needs to bring about innovative schooling systems. Many studies have shown the limits of formal schooling. More inclusive forms of learning are imperative. The Daaras could be a good alternative if the process of its institutionalization follows the communities’ aspirations rather than the racist and hegemonic motives of donors. Besides, following the agenda of the neoliberal order according to which the principle of the market becomes the sole indicator of value, Senegal is heading to fail its comprehensive policy of education for all. It is high time for the country to think humanistically.
-Barrel Gueye
Dr. Barrel Gueye is an advocate of human rights, girls & women's empowerment, inclusion and social justice with numerous years of in-depth and well-rounded expertise in equity and equality, gender and education, inclusive and quality education for all. Dr. Gueye’s past experience included substantial field research practice through her participation in and contribution to research projects on education with the Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée (CREA) in Senegal on Women’s literacy. As a Post-Doctoral Fellows at the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE) research program on gender and education in Africa, she managed various projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Gueye has also extensive experience at all levels of the education cycle including significant teaching experience at University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, D’Youville College and East Stroudsburg University. Dr. Gueye is a co-founder of the Dakar Institute of African Studies (DIAS) with a main focus on promoting research on and study abroad and exchange programs to Senegal (www.thedakarinstitute.com). She is currently enseignante/chercheure in education at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar. Dr. Gueye is also leading the project on “promoting girls’ education and the reproductive health of adolescents in Senegal” in collaboration with the WARO (West African Research Office) of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC).
