The Algerian government is trying to re-engineer Algerian identity, changing school curriculum to wrest momentum from the Islamists, provide its youth with more employable skills and combat the terrorism it fears schools have inadvertently encouraged.
It appears to be the most ambitious attempt in the region to change a school system, but educators are resisting the changes, and young men are dropping out of schools.
From 1991 to 2002, as many as 200,000 Algerians died in fighting between government forces and Islamic terrorists. Now one of the main terrorist groups, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Young people in Algiers appear extremely observant. The strictest form of Islam, Wahhabism, has become the standard for the young.
The schools were one center of the drive toward extremism. French was banned as the language of education and was replaced by Arabic. Islamic law and the study of the Quran were required. Students were warned sinners go to hell, and 6-year-olds were instructed in how to wash a corpse for burial, education officials said.
The government did push back, reintroducing French, removing the most zealous religious teachers and trying to revise the religious curriculum. Seven years ago, a committee appointed by the president issued a report calling for an overhaul of the school system, but it died under political pressure.
But this year, the government is making changes. The schools are moving from rote learning — which was linked to memorizing the Quran — to critical thinking, where teachers ask students to research subjects and think about concepts.
Yet students and teachers are still unprepared, untrained and, in many cases, unreceptive. (CD)
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