La escuela en el proceso de descolonización y desarrollo de la república de Malí

Resumen

As a «compressed political message», Mali's school (which can be considered a sort of specimen regarding the conditions and the problems of many other Countries of the African Continent), has been used in this work as a preferential point of view for finding useful ideas for the understanding, however partial it may be, of the current post-colonial environment and for the identification of possible future outlooks. How much is it possible to infer from the school regarding the influences arising from the international organizations (UN, Islamic religious organizations), from the traditional internal powers and from what remains of the deep wound of the recent colonialist past? Adopting a mixed qualitative methodology, the study has been divided into two parts. In the first part, given both the cultural distance from the Malian world and the considerable shortage of sources relating to the education system of Mali, I have decided to focus on a general approach at "360 degrees", in order to try to equip with all the necessary tools to understand and to decode the findings while the research advances further, as well as to start a new work aimed at the recovery of key primary sources, not currently available for the scientific community, as, for example, official Government programs and textbooks. In the second part I have conducted some ethnographic research aimed at restoring the polyphony of "voices": "voices" of the teachers, of the directors and of the officials of the ministries (especially AE, but also CAP) which help, protected by the shield of anonymity, to shed some light on the many difficulties and peculiarities that the application of the projects meets when put into practice, mainly due to the historical and cultural heritage, but also to the traditional local resistance and to the socio-economic situation. The work has requested the following: an introduction of historical type (divided in the following periods: pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial, all studied in the different government structures which reflected in the same number of school systems) (Chapters I and II), the study of laws, regulations and system of the education system, from 2000 to 2010 (Chapter III) and the analysis of existing programs (Chapter IV), of the manuals adopted in different school levels ("classic" schools, ¿curriculum¿ schools, secular schools, Islamic schools, Catholic schools and so on ...) (Chapter V); to continue, in the second part of the work, with the definition of the main choices that I have made regarding the ethnographic research (Chapter VI), the identification of priorities, dialectics, conflicts, frictions, and commitments in the educational field (Chapter VII and VIII ) and the description of particular moments, often filled with conflicts, in which school life gets in the private life (Chapter IX). In the conclusions I have try to outline, with due caution, a picture of the country from the several features of the school system analysed. The study has revealed a complex situation in which, next to a big commitment of the country in the process of democratization and social development, many difficulties, delays, and unforeseen events stem, as well as a cloud of uncertainty related to the penetration, from the northern regions, of aggressive and intolerant Islam culture and religion that could replace the traditional one, certainly more moderate and ecumenical.