Using ethnographic interviews this study reveals that a great deal of discontent and criticism surfaces when Moroccans who live in Belgium and the Netherlands speak about the education their children receive in these countries. They often see Western schools and society as immoral and racist while they portray themselves as first-class educators. Set against the backdrop of the dominant discourses in these countries as expressed in interviews with teachers, newspaper articles and political discourses, these parents' utterances are interpreted as counternarratives through which they assert their moral responsibility and lay claim to their dignity in societies where they are too often framed in terms of problems and deficit.