must try harder france vows to end school neglect of arabic
Last Updated : GMT 09:07:40
Egypt Today, egypt today
Egypt Today, egypt today
Last Updated : GMT 09:07:40
Egypt Today, egypt today

Must try harder: France vows to end school neglect of Arabic

Egypt Today, egypt today

Egypt Today, egypt today Must try harder: France vows to end school neglect of Arabic

A class of Arabic language for young children
Paris - Egypt Today

In the ethnically mixed Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre, a group of children sit quietly at their desks while outside their classmates frolic in the autumn sunshine.

“Ayna yaskunu Adel? (where does Adel live)” teacher Hanan asks the children, pointing to a textbook drawing of a boy and girl in a village with a school and a mosque.

Hands shoot up, and a little girl replies that he lives behind the “madrassa,” or school.

Welcome to Lissane, one of a growing number of private language schools where the children and grandchildren of North African immigrants go to learn classical Arabic on Wednesday afternoons, when schools are closed, and on the weekend.

While Hanan’s students, aged 7 to 10, study interrogative pronouns in one of seven classrooms housed in a former office building, a group of four-year-olds next door is singing a nursery rhyme about the parts of the body.

So far, so normal, with the notable difference that female teachers wear the Muslim headscarf, a garment banned along with other religious symbols in state schools.

But it is not so much the headscarves as the “Islamic sciences,” or religion lessons, conducted at Lissane and many other private Arabic language schools, that have drawn scrutiny in a country that has an uneasy relationship with its Muslim minority, the largest in Europe at an estimated five million.

Lissane’s co-founder Abdelghani Sebata, a 37-year-old Algerian law graduate, says that the religious component of the course — which includes learning verses of the Qur’an — is “very light.”

“We leave the religious side to the families,” he told AFP.

But at the many mosques that also teach children to read and write the Arabic used in official communications, literature and media across the Arab world, as well as in the Qur’an, Islam is the main focus.

A report on radicalization last month by the Institut Montaigne, a respected liberal French think-tank, warned that Arabic classes had become “the best way for Islamists to attract young people into their mosques and (private) schools.”

In response, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer — one of centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s most combative ministers — announced plans to take back control.

Arguing that classical Arabic should be treated like all other “great languages” such as Russian and Chinese, he vowed to develop its teaching in state schools in order to combat “the drift toward self-ghettoization” in private institutions.
His proposal drew a furious reaction from rightwingers who view the use of Arabic by North African immigrants with hostility, seeing it as evidence of a failure to integrate.
Luc Ferry, was was education minister under former center-right president Jacques Chirac, questioned whether the government was bent on “fighting Islamism or bringing it into public education” — suggesting that by giving Arabic more prominence it was doing the latter.

“We’re in a logic of submission,” fumed Louis Aliot, a lawmaker from the far-right National Rally (formerly National Front) party, echoing the title of a novel by controversial author Michel Houellebecq, “Submission,” which imagines a France ruled by Islamists.

Hakim El Karoui, author of the Institut Montaigne report which revived a long-running debate about France’s insistence that immigrants ditch their ethnic identities on arrival and embrace Frenchness, said he was “not at all” surprised by the reaction on the right.

“Everything to do with Arabs drives them a bit mad,” El Karoui, a Tunisian-born geography scholar and former government adviser, told AFP.

He points to the increasing scarcity of schools offering Arabic — France’s second-most spoken language, and one used by over 430 million people worldwide — as evidence of their reluctance to teach a subject associated with “problematic” immigrants.

Only 567 primary schoolchildren studied Arabic last year, a third of the number who took Chinese as their mandatory second language. Most chose English.
In secondary school, just 11,200 pupils studied Arabic, which is offered in a handful of schools in each city, mostly elite city-center colleges.

With demand far outstripping supply, parents have turned to mosques, religious associations and private schools like Lissane, which together attract some 80,000 students, according to a government estimate cited by the Institut Montaigne.

Ines Kridaine, a 35-year-old Tunisian living in France for the past 13 years, enrolled her daughter Ikram in classes at Lissane at the age of four.
Five years later Ikram can understand her Tunisian relatives, follow Arabic news channels and read the Qur’an. But Ines, who wears a headscarf and a loose abaya robe, still wishes Arabic was taught during class time.

“It should be treated like any other language,” she said.
Writing in Le Monde newspaper last month, the head of the prestigious Arab World Institute in Paris, former Socialist minister Jack Lang, defended Arabic as the language of “Arab Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists, bloggers, social media, young people, writers, poets, artists, singers, hip-hoppers, scientists, researchers, journalists, companies and innovators.”

It’s a view shared by Jerome Gercet, principal of an international secondary school in the southeastern city of Grenoble that has to turn away applicants for its Arabic section each year.

After graduation, most of his students go on to study political science, medicine, business, engineering, arts or administration.
That’s proof, he said, that Arabic is “a subject of excellence.”

From :Arabnews

egypttoday
egypttoday

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

must try harder france vows to end school neglect of arabic must try harder france vows to end school neglect of arabic



GMT 07:22 2017 Monday ,20 November

Honda recalls 800,000 minivans over faulty seats

GMT 07:15 2017 Thursday ,30 November

Colombian President invites UAE companies

GMT 13:44 2013 Wednesday ,07 August

Chinese game developers bet on smartphone games

GMT 10:30 2011 Tuesday ,23 August

The Arab-Spanish investment forum 2011

GMT 10:49 2017 Monday ,06 November

Britain frozen out as EU finance chiefs plot future

GMT 14:30 2017 Wednesday ,06 December

India scent Test victory as pollution makes bowlers vomit

GMT 12:32 2018 Tuesday ,16 October

Runaway former sex offender nabbed in Thailand

GMT 16:34 2017 Wednesday ,01 March

Afghan capital attack toll jumps to 16

GMT 20:32 2013 Monday ,17 June

Porsche finds a new target audience

GMT 10:13 2011 Sunday ,31 July

Distressed debt firm eyes Nakheel creditors

GMT 18:25 2016 Thursday ,08 September

Ex-Lankan president’s ‘vanity airline’ grounded

GMT 21:02 2018 Wednesday ,05 September

Magnitude 5.5 earthquake strikes Russia’s Urals region

GMT 18:54 2014 Tuesday ,14 January

Cobalt nanoparticles applied in designing biosensor

GMT 12:00 2013 Wednesday ,31 July

Saudi consumers given teeth whitening kit warning

GMT 14:26 2014 Wednesday ,12 February

Earthquake behind shroud of Turin image

GMT 08:58 2014 Wednesday ,15 January

\'Lone Survivor\' blows away North American box office

GMT 15:32 2015 Sunday ,27 September

Thousands march to remember Mexico's missing students

GMT 01:25 2017 Thursday ,05 January

Strong Earthquake Strikes Off Coast of Fiji

GMT 12:51 2011 Friday ,08 July

No plans to merge Gazprom and Naftogaz
 
 Egypt Today Facebook,egypt today facebook  Egypt Today Twitter,egypt today twitter Egypt Today Rss,egypt today rss  Egypt Today Youtube,egypt today youtube  Egypt Today Youtube,egypt today youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

egypttoday egypttoday egypttoday egypttoday
egypttoday egypttoday egypttoday
egypttoday
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
egypttoday, Egypttoday, Egypttoday