? Abandoning French ... Will it ignite the linguistic conflict in Algeria
This week, the Algerian political scene was marked by some reactions to the decision taken recently by Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to abandon the French language in the primary stage and teach English in its place, starting from the next school year. In this regard, the reactions of the media elites and political activists on the level of social media varied between welcoming the decision and skeptical about the success of such an endeavor for many reasons that we will address later.
What is remarkable in this regard is the silence of the opposition parties, with their various formations and affiliations, and the degree of their interaction with the ruling Algerian regime, and the loyalist parties, which are known for their positions that are always consistent with the positions of the authorities, towards this decision taken by the President of the Algerian Republic and blessed by the government and representatives of the various organs of the ruling regime.
In light of the silence of these parties, parliament, various large mass organizations, unions and civil society associations, which have only symbolic influence in Algerian life, the Education Teachers Organization, which is close to the decision-making bodies of the Ministry of Education, came out, appreciating the decision of Algerian President Tebboune and calling at the same time to delete The French language is subject to this phase, in whole and in detail, on the pretext that teaching French alongside Arabic is a matter that violates national identity, and the English language is excluded from this, as it seems that it considers it a neutral language and does not have a colonial legacy in Algeria, which makes it not in the organization’s assessment of a danger on the national identity.
In this context, it should also be recalled that the Algerian Education Teachers Organization has been defending the distinction between identity-related subjects and other neutral subjects, and in this regard we find it stressing the need to teach Islamic sciences and everything related to Islamic references in order to preserve the national identity.
Algerian political observers believe that there is a difference between the decision to teach English in the primary education system and the replacement of this foreign language in the place of the French language, which has existed in the joints of Algerian society for nearly a century and 92 years. They consider this a very sensitive step, because taking such a decision before the storms of the mosaic of the popular movement are extinguished, and the sharp contradictions permeating its demonstrations and slogans regarding the national linguistic identity, the Amazigh cultural banner and other issues can be exploited by certain currents that are well known for their sharp positions on the issue of pluralism. Language or its monotheism in Algerian society.
These political observers also believe that the decision to abandon the French language in the primary phase could lead to a revival of the old conflict between the Algerian Arabist trend, which links national identity with the Arabic language and Islam only on the one hand, and the Francophone movement, which argues that the French language is the only carrier of modernity. On the other hand, science, technology and high-end literature.
In addition to the foregoing, there are those who also warn against the reactions of the Amazigh trend to the obligation to teach English to all Algerian students in the primary stage, and to maintain the non-mandatory teaching of the Amazigh language in the majority of the country’s governorates, with the exception of the governorates affiliated with the Berber region that extends through the spaces of Tizi Ouzou, Bejaia, and Bouira, to Aures.
Despite these warnings, some educational organizations close to the ruling organs show a clear enthusiasm for the project to abolish the French language from the Algerian primary education stage and replace it with English, and this is mostly justified by the colonial past of this language and the disputes that have been erupting between Algeria and France over the historical memory file of the period French occupation of Algeria.
In this particular context, the report published by "Al-Shorouk Algeria" newspaper, affiliated to the private sector, on June 20, of the Algerian journalist, Nadia Slimani, confirmed that the "parents' associations and educational unions welcomed the decision to include English language teaching in the primary stage, which was adopted on the French language as a first foreign language.” The same report highlighted that the enthusiasm of these parties is due to their belief that “English has become the language of science, development and interaction among peoples, which makes it inevitable that it is the first foreign language in Algeria.”
It is worth noting that the associations of parents of students and educational unions have an advisory opinion only and do not have the right to make decisions or exercise public pressure on the authorities, including the educational authority represented in the Ministry of Primary, Complementary and Secondary Education or the Ministry of Vocational Training, which in turn should not be excluded from the issue of employment Languages taught in institutes responsible for their pedagogical conduct across the country.
But here are other issues that have not been satiated with a lesson and scrutiny regarding the substitution of the English language for the French language in the primary stage, and for example only, the issue of the lack of any relationship of the English language with the general popular environment in Algerian society and the national media life for the well-known reason that Algeria is not historically classified as a country Anglophone.
In addition to this, Algeria does not have English pedagogical traditions, and it did not meet the standards of the education systems in Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand, or even the standards of British colonies in Asia and Africa in particular, which makes the frameworks of the Algerian education system do not have Indeed, the keys to the English language, its literature, and its cultural and technological load. As for the English lessons that Algerian students benefit from in the secondary and secondary stages, they are carried out by these teachers who lack the serious training that enables them to
absorb the jurisprudence of the English language and its cultural contents.
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