Macron’s Arabic Language Proposal Sparks Political Debate in France

It is a "ridiculous" idea, said former Education Minister Luc Ferry. A "cowardice and a mistake", added LR deputy Aurélien Pradié, or even worse, a "shame", denounced Steeve Briois, the vice-president of the Rassemblement national. This is the ball of positions.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, president of the Debout la France party, saw in it only an attempt at the "Arabization of France". In 2018, the opening of Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer to the learning of this language was met with the outcry of the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, who thus attributes to the government the intention to "Make Arabic compulsory from primary school", while no hint of obligation appears in Jean-Michel Blanquer’s remarks.

"Politically, the issue of teaching Arabic is very difficult to carry," said Françoise Lorcerie, a sociologist at the Institute of Research on the Arab and Muslim World at the University of Aix-Marseille.

Even if Arabic is an excellent field at the University, in secondary education, in the 2019 school year, only 14,900 middle and high school students took Arabic courses, out of a total of more than 5.6 million students, or 0.3% of students, the Ministry of National Education said. In the first degree, the teaching of Arabic is even more marginal. Only 0.1% of students take Arabic courses compared to 96.4% for English, Franceinfo reports.

Arabic is often associated with religion, the bloody past of the colonial era and the bad memories of certain immigrant families.

"We have to stop demonizing Arabic, devaluing this language and seeing it as a problem," concluded Françoise Lorcerie, to some extent, to appease the debate around the teaching of Arabic in schools.