“All the pain in the world.” Audrey (her name has been changed at her request) rolls her eyes when asked about her two sons, aged 9 and 12, who are learning Arabic. They may have been born and lived their whole lives in Morocco, but their eloquence in the official language is limited to “mumbling”They barely know how to count, introduce themselves, or name objects. “They have no desire to progress”laments this 43-year-old Canadian-Moroccan who lives in Casablanca, the country’s economic capital. Like many binational parents and mixed-race couples, she wants her children to be able to express themselves in Arabic and preserve this cultural heritage. But they are not able to do so. In question, according to her, “a difficult language to learn, but above all we don’t have the opportunity to speak it”.
Let us immediately clarify what the fate of the entire formerly colonized Maghreb is: the gap between the language of the school and that of the street or the home. It is true that the kingdom recognizes standard Arabic – a modern variant of classical Arabic that we find, for example, in administrative documents – as the language of the State, but it is “airtight for most people”says publicist Noureddine Ayouch, a former member of the Higher Education Council. Except where Tamazight, the Berber language, is dominant, only Darija is commonly spoken in Morocco. Both brands and politicians have understood this: with rare exceptions, they only communicate in this dialect of Arabic, which is understood by everyone.
Except that it is not Moroccan Arabic that we learn in the country’s schools, but standard Arabic, which is taught in all Arab countries. Hence the impression of a gap, felt by many parents, between what the child recites in class and what he hears outside. “Who can you talk to about what you’re supposed to be studying?” It’s like spending hours in school learning a dead language.”Charlotte (who did not want to give her name), 48, French-Moroccan like her husband, is irritated by the fact that she is talking about her 13-year-old son. Is the absence of a partner to talk to the only reason? Not really, according to the mother of 12-year-old Jad. “Look, after a year of German he learned more words in Goethe’s language than in Naguib Mahfouz’s. [écrivain égyptien, Prix Nobel de littérature en 1988]explains. However, Jad does not speak German with anyone. »
A “gradual distancing”
This is because the real reason is elsewhere, and it is a cause of contention at every parent-teacher meeting. Pedagogy would not only be “old fashioned” and textbooks that are unsuitable for the alpha generation, born after 2010. But above all, the books neglect tachkil, the vocalization of letters by means of signs placed above or below them. Without this vocalization, “Word comprehension slows down”says Youssef El Haji of Rabat-based Varlyproject, a company specialising in the assessment of educational achievements. ” Therefore, He continues, Students tend to react more slowly to reading Arabic texts compared to Latin languages. »
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