French MPs Ask Government To Ban Teaching Arabic To Kids Of Algerian Immigrants

At a time when Algeria is witnessing intense controversy after the head of the Peaceful Society Movement, Abderrazzak Makri, asked the government to criminalize the use of French in the official deliberation of the state in the constitutional amendment, French MPs submitted, since months before, demands to the government of their country to stop teaching Arabic and other languages to the children of immigrants on its territory, under the argument that the French language is the first with support and development.

A few days ago, the head of the Peaceful Society Movement, Abderrazzak Makri, defended his party’s proposal to covertly criminalize the use of French, confirming that the French followers are taking advantage of the Algerians’ struggles to enable it to keep its status in Algeria.

Makri published a tweet in which he said; “The movement’s recent statement attributed the battle to its true nature. The children of France felt pain about criminalizing the use of the French language in official institutions and documents because their real issue is to defend French language and French interests.”

“The real language that competes with Arabic is French. They use our struggles to enable the French language, French culture and French interests, they are lobbyists that work for the benefit of a foreign country, and nothing else.”

In this context, accountability of the French National Assembly (Parliament) to the MP Guy Teissier for the Republicans, dated October 15, 2019, and it was answered by the Ministry of National Education and Youth, that France approved a program to teach indigenous languages and cultures or what is known as “ELCO” in the seventies that aimed at teaching the children of immigrants from 9 countries, Algeria, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey, and the principle was that the control of the mother tongue of the children of immigrants is necessary for success and acquisition of another language.

French MP Guy Teissier justified his request to halt this program by the fact that French society has evolved since the 1970s and that the French language has become a priority for its development, through more effective methods and approaches.

According to him, the students ’level in the French language was not as low as it is now according to international studies, adding that the Council asked about the possibility of cancelling these procedures (teaching indigenous languages and cultures to the children of immigrants, including Arabic), intending to eliminate societal or ethnic aspects because there is a Republican school and it is the guarantee of the unity of the French nation.

MP Guy Teissier, who was preceded by similar questions to French MPs to the National Assembly and Senate (Senate), in particular, asked Republicans if the government had the intention to end programs to educate indigenous cultures and languages, which consider that Algeria is part of teaching Arabic.

The response of the French Ministry of National Education and Youth was on March 17, 2020, in which it was stated that these programs are subject to European directives, according to which the teaching of indigenous languages to the children of immigrants in the continent, explaining that these lessons are optional and are carried out by providing teachers of indigenous languages and cultures by the government of the member countries of the Convention, that is, including Algeria, by an hour and a half per week.