Elitism In Morocco

Language and Elitism One of the major ways to influence and change the Moroccan population was the language. Leila Abouzeid calls it “the most insidious wedge the colonialists have driven into our society” (Abouzeid, 2003). French was used both as a medium and as an objective – assumingly to provide Moroccans with more life opportunities. However, a person`s culture is always tightly connected with their mother tongue, therefore one cannot expect to introduce school education in a non-native tongue without encountering side effects such as identity crisis and self-defining issues. Sometimes French-educated Moroccans would use Arabic words, but still convey a French way of phrasing. The impact of Morocco’s French colonial past is still obvious and can be seen through the writings of the majority of contemporary North African authors who tend to write in French. Significantly, Leila Abouzeid, who grew up as a product of independent Morocco, chooses English for her international audience “for personal and political reasons” (Abouzeid, 1989). It seems that the French influence and the Moroccans` resentment to it are both still present. The Berber population shared the language problem, however, from a slightly different angle. For them, Arabic could also sometimes come across as a foreign language, and neither Arabic

During the pre-colonial period “the decisive factors which decided Moroccan lives included inheritance and lineage, [and] rarely qualification or professional achievement” (Irbouh, 2005), and the French adhered to this system instead of looking out for underprivileged children. The rigid bond between caste and education was even sometimes viewed as a