ABSTRACT
Post-independence scholarship has pictured colonial education in Morocco as an enterprise of assimilation and erasure of the national personality, especially through contempt for the Arabic language. This discourse, a key driver of Moroccan nationalism, is in reality a nationalist re-writing of colonial history. Arabic language teaching in Morocco under the French protectorate (1912–1956) was much more complex than what became the doxa after independence. The teaching of Standard Arabic was in reality mythologized during the French Protectorate by both colonial and Moroccan nationalist voices. This chapter is a history of Arabic language teaching as a discursive object in colonial Morocco. It investigates how discourses carrying misconceptions and misinformation about Arabic language teaching were circulated by both colonial officials and Moroccan nationalists to construct narratives that would win people over.
