By Adam Arroudj
Posted 3 hours ago, updated 2 hours ago
In 2019, the rectors of the universities (here the University of Algiers) received a notice that the headers of administrative documents must be written in Arabic and English. Agency MOUSAAB ROUIBI/Anadolu via AFP
DETECTION – Since this school year began, the government has enforced the teaching of English from primary school, with competition from French apparently at the expense of the “language of colonization,” while the administrative purge began several years ago.
In Algiers
In Algeria, Arabic and French can no longer live together. Khaoula Taleb Ibrahimi, who has spent his career teaching young Algerians languages at the University of Algiers, is struggling to hide his sadness just months after retiring. His first graders, who once could write and speak French, “can’t even form Latin characters anymore,” the eminent linguist notes. A large proportion of them had no contact with a foreign language during their school days.
And yet. In Algeria, French is included in the curriculum in the third year of primary school (equivalent to CE2). But given the lack of teachers trained for such a mission, it has gradually disappeared from the curriculum.
On July 30th, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune decided to complete it by decreing that English would be compulsory from the start of the third year, at the rate of an hour and a half per week, in the same way as…
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