The purpose of this column is to once again draw the attention of our high-ranked leaders, particularly President Tebboune, to the irresponsibility of replacing French with English in schools in record time. Who on earth is in charge, then, to allow notorious lunatics to exacerbate the disaster in an area as sensitive as education?
How on earth can one ignore the catastrophic results of rapid and thoughtless Arabization?
Let’s be honest, who really speaks classical Arabic after more than fifty years of nuclear-Arabic bombardment? I’m not a good Arabic speaker, but the little I’ve been able to retain over a few years of forced and inadequate learning is enough for me to spot glaring errors in comments written in Arabic! That’s saying something…
As for French, in the post-independence years, there were certainly more French speakers fluent in it than in 2025. The comments of our young people on social media are, in this regard, quite eloquent. In sixty years, we have massacred French and driven tens of thousands of French speakers away, leaving behind an Arabization that no one understood. As a result, with a few exceptions, we have turned our children into bilingual illiterates.
What is the purpose of a language, after all?
– First: To communicate clearly and intelligibly with those around us. First and foremost, within the family circle, from the cradle. In this regard, it would be interesting to know if there are mothers who communicate with their little cherubs, in their ticking-tickling developmental phase, or couples who exchange a little verbal affection in nuclear Arabic. It would be fun to see!
– Second: To interact with the outside world. With the neighborhood, the government, at the market, etc. But, for example, apart from the paperwork written in Arabic characters, when one goes to the counter of the local town hall or prefecture, for an overwhelming majority of Algerians, it is always with the same terminology, inherited from koufar: ixtri d’nissance, cardentity, passepourt, cazyi judiciyire, etc., that one addresses our administrators for any issuance of official papers!
– Third: to immerse oneself in worldly knowledge, from primary to high school, and beyond, to university. But it is clear that despite the multitude of subjects taught in Arabian Arabic, from the playgrounds of all schools to university campuses, it is unlikely that communication between pupils and students will take place in this Lougha El’Watania, which is imposed simply because other languages are considered ineffective dialects and French is the language of the Colon, to be banished from our oral, verbal, and vocal genetics!
What does this rush towards English mean, and what are the real reasons driving our leaders to eliminate French, which is still used more or less in our country despite the determination of our leaders to erase all traces of it well before the country’s independence?
Indeed, we all agree that it is not a bad idea to add English as a strong foreign language but it needs to be ramped up slowly as the country builds up the supporting educational structures and available training competencies.
No doubt the eternal « patriots » who consider us as supporters of France will not miss their endless cries of outrage without putting forward the slightest argument. They are wrong! Because in terms of patriotism, we do not lack it either. We believe that debate is necessary in any project that commits the nation. However, everything has been imposed from the highest levels. This is not a very modern approach to governance. Let us resort to a referendum! We will then see that the people are much more lucid than they would have us believe.
Those who will read this text will not fail to conclude that its author mastered the language of Shakespeare, given that he was immersed in the English-speaking world for almost 50 years and that English was the language he practiced every day in his profession as a teacher and researcher in physics. This is evidenced by dozens of publications in prestigious journals and a research book published in his early years of retirement.
And yet, in an effort to make the text as perfect as possible, he had no choice but to have it proofread by two close friends. And believe me, there were mistakes. Some other careful reading will probably spot other errors. This shows how difficult it is to claim any kind of mastery in any language. To expect mastery of English with unexperienced teachers is absurd and ridiculous.
Despite warnings and alerts from educators and other knowledgeable pedagogues, the government and its cronies persist in their madness, wanting to impose English in our schools at all costs. Their predecessors ignored Mustapha Lacheraf and Kateb Yacine, who pointed to hasty Arabization in the 1970s. Why would the new clan heed the warnings of ordinary men and women, English speakers at that?
Do you have to be a graduate of Saint-Cyr to understand that replacing French with English is a collective suicide the country could do without?
Patching up, more patching up, nothing but patching up!
First question: who are the trainers of trainers? On what basis were they recruited, not to say appointed?
Second question: assuming these teachers are all pedagogical geniuses, what about the cultural environment necessary to enhance any self-respecting learning?
Third question: assuming we can overcome all sorts of difficulties and obstacles in primary school to give our little cherubs a good level, what magic wand will we use to maintain a decent level of the language of Shakespeare in middle and high school? Let alone university!
No matter how much we ponder the matter, we always arrive at the same dead ends!
By dint of believing in the genies of the Arabian Nights, our leaders are no doubt hoping for a visit from Jafar, the djinn who makes Aladdin’s carpet fly, to instill English in our schoolchildren’s heads!
None of this is serious! If nothing is done to stop this impending massacre, in a few years, the repercussions will emerge in the form of a third linguistic gibberish after that of Arabic and French.
History will record that it was within the framework of the « new Algeria » that this new gibberish was born in the land of all the unusual!
Education requires a general overhaul of programs, from primary to high school, and beyond, to university, and it is not by pretending to replace one language with another that we can claim to train better… in this regard, many teacher friends, even those in primary school, report the fact that they still continue to teach their classes in French, not having, themselves, a good knowledge of English. No! Clearly, everything is going upside down in Tebboune-Changriha’s « new Algeria ».
By digging deeper, our leaders will soon find themselves on the other side of the planet! They will come back with the idea of replacing English with the only language of the future, Chinese!
But if you look closely, the recipe of the ruling clans has not changed one inch since Chadli was imposed on us, replacing Boumediene. The clan at the time promised us a better future by importing eggs and bananas, but the suicidal Arabization was never questioned, quite the contrary, Zeroual had done and said everything to reinforce it. Bouteflika arrived and dared to break some taboos by not hesitating to express himself in the language of the unbeliever, but it was only smoke and mirrors, since nothing was done to rectify the situation regarding school programs. Programs concocted by morons to make our cherubs good Muslims, and nothing else, by stuffing them with surahs and other useless verses, thus hardening the active parts of their brains, those which reflect instead of swallowing everything by heart and without understanding anything of what is being plotted behind their innocent backs!
Our president promises us a new Algeria, with English as our new spearheads to pull the country out of the quagmire it’s mired in!
In fact, the formula is simple and seems to have been well-researched by our demagoguery experts. It consists of blaming the previous clan for all sorts of setbacks and finding other ways to sink the country further. Thus, the new clan has plenty to keep itself busy, getting excited in every direction to force us into another tunnel and better blind us.
No matter who the President is, it’s always the fault of the previous one! For Tebboune, if nothing goes right, it’s Bouteflika’s fault; for the latter, if everything has fallen apart, it’s Liamine’s lack of experience; for Zeroual, if everything is sordid, it’s Bendjedid’s accountability; for Chadli, all the filth is Houari’s responsibility! As for the next one, we already know, the bad luck will be Tebboune’s immaturity!
Destroy what has been built and then pretend to build on shifting sands! And there you have it!
New or old, this is how the Algeria of the Officers is!
Turn around, Mr. Tebboune, before it’s too late! Do it for us, for our children, and also for yours! History will thank you!
I know that unpacking all this risks attracting a lot of hostility. Only sincere love of Algeria pushes us to take such risks!
Like many Algerians, I was fortunate to be born in a village in the Kabyle hills where my mother tongue was a unique language: Kabyle. During our early school years, French began to subtly inundate our brains. Following a move to Algiers, as teenagers, it was the turn of Algiers Arabic to take over. By the time we were 15, we were already trilingual. Learning English afterward was child’s play. But no matter how hard we tried, we were impervious to classical Arabic thanks to incompetent teachers (let’s not be afraid to unpack it all).
Where are we, in the year of grace 2025? Despite decades of Arabization, our children only retain a few verses from the Quran from their studies. We’re not going very far with that!
The logic of our leaders – if, in fact, they know what such a word means – suffers from obvious distortions. From Boolean Algebra, they retain and apply only the exclusive « or » principle: it’s Arabic or French or English, never both or all three at once. This is the case with our social problems: it’s Arabic or Kabyle, whereas the inclusive « and » principle allows for a better blending of things: Arabic and French and English, or Arabic and Kabyle and Chaoui and Mozabite, etc. The inclusive principle is imbued with strength and modernity. The « and » is unifying, while the « or » is divisive. Yet our leaders keep proclaiming, to anyone who will listen, that they are champions in Computer Science!
Moreover, they operate as if by tossing a coin in the air, it inevitably falls on an English-teacher’s head! This is not serious! English teachers aren’t running around blindly rushing into the language of Shakespeare!
For historical reasons, the ideal way to get back on track is to reinforce French from the first years of primary school. It takes no more than two years to master a language with dedicated teachers who believe in their profession. With teachers of a decent level, Arabic could also be mastered by the end of primary school, if only, and only if, the ideological aspect is courageously evacuated so as not to harden the brains of our little cherubs. As for English, it can wait until middle and high school, and beyond that, university.
And where does Tamazight stand in all this, you might ask?
Tamazight is the best cherry on the cake. Its transmission is of capital importance. It should be shared among all the citizens.
If there’s one salutary message to convey throughout the country, it’s to maintain an oral tradition like no other, by encouraging any expectant mother who still speaks Berber to pass it on to her offspring like a priceless treasure!
Mastering Tamazight from childhood is an immeasurable guarantee of success, as such mastery provides a potential for phonematic articulation capable of facilitating the learning of any other foreign language, including Arabic. And only Berber speakers know this! Others delude themselves with the illusion that a single language, Arabic, is the only language of God, and that it is therefore above all others. As a corollary, in this atmosphere of Islamist benevolence, these other languages must be eliminated as quickly as possible to please Allah! We won’t get very far when the majority of our compatriots are consumed by such nonsense, including the lunatics in power!
Tamazight therefore imposes itself as a mother tongue, to be enriched from the first grade. By mixing with their classmates, non-Berber speakers will quickly assimilate its subtleties. These lessons should continue throughout elementary, middle, and high school. Our children are not stupid! Far from it.
A simplistic scenario? Perhaps. The fact remains that if the focus on English is maintained, we will be the only country in the world to have massacred three languages in a row. And that deserves a special mention in the “Guiness book of records”.
Speedily replacing French with English will cost us dearly. Entire generations will inevitably be sacrificed if we do not react urgently.
The ball is in our leaders’ court. Let us hope that our ancestor wisdom will ultimately prevail, having in mind that it is the future of the country that is at stake!
Please stop de disaster before it’s too late! Isn’t it already?
Kacem Madani
