The Political Coherence of Educational Incoherence: The Consequences of Educational Specialization in a Southern Moroccan Community

This article is based on an ethnographic study I conducted in southern Morocco during 2004. I explore the historical, ideological, and cultural background behind educational specialization among Moroccan university students. I describe how French colonial educational policies and postindependence Moroccan national schooling ideologies have created a national system of double standards that: (1) privileges French-educated urban middle- and upper-class students, (2) emphasizes the Arabization of the national education system, and (3) discriminates against Arabized, largely rural students, which have exacerbated regional educational and socioeconomic inequalities. I finally contend that educational specialization in noncompetitive degrees such as Arabic language and literature, Islamic studies, geography, and general law is the result of an ideological matrix I have termed political coherence of educational incoherence. Political coherence of educational incoherence naturalizes the reliance of certain disfranchised regional groups on a traditional preschool Islamic education that is largely based on memorization and inefficient pedagogy and is unsuitable for the modern educational requirements.  [Islamic education, school ethnography, Arabization, school failure, minority education]     

Obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes in the sand rat exposed to a hypercaloric diet; possible protective effect for IL1-β

It is well established that, upon changing their natural desert low caloric (succulent halophilic plants) to a regular laboratory high caloric diet, sand rats undergo various phenotypic changes depending on their genetic background and including obesity and various degrees of insulin resistance. Our aim was to investigate the acute effects of Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and Interferon-γ (IFN-γ) on glucose-induced insulin secretion in normal lean sand rats maintained on their natural diet and in obese insulin resistant normoglycemic or type 2 diabetic animals after a 9-month high caloric diet. Animals were fed either a low or a high caloric diet; after 9 months, pancreatic islets were isolated and incubated in the presence of increasing cytokine concentrations. At the end of the high-energy diet, animals were all over-weight, and probably due to a different genetic background, they displayed either insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia and normoglycemia or a marked type-2 diabetic state. Pancreatic islets from obese insulin resistant normoglycemic animals were much more sensitive and responsive to IL-1β when compared to lean controls. The cytokine was inefficient in diabetic islets. In conclusion, the markedly increased insulinotropic effect of IL-1β in obese diabetes-resistant sand rat could participate and be involved in pancreatic β-cell hyperactivity that compensates for insulin resistance and thereby prevent the development of type 2 diabetes in these animals.