Conclusion

Summary

From Abdelhamid Benhedouga's 1975 novel, which questions how taboo elements of Algeria's past might enter the literary classroom, to Yassine Adnan's 2016 work, which satirically mocks the students-turned-writers of the digital age, authors have reimagined and renegotiated literature’s place within the postcolonial schools that create future generations of readers. In many cases, these reimaginings are suffused with palpable anxiety over the state of education. The struggles of decolonization, the marginalization of Tamazight speakers and women from classrooms, and moments of political upheaval like Algeria's Black Decade all provide context for literary portraits of education that are far from optimistic. These concerns are echoed in other arenas outside of literature. Journalists regularly describe education as being in a state of crisis. A report from the Superior Council of Education Formation and Research in Morocco said the system's problems threatened the “destiny” of the country (qtd. in Kabbadj n. pag.) and in Algeria intellectuals accuse the education system of “incompetence and obscurantism” (Djebbar et al. n. pag.). Reading, similarly, is called the “mal-aimé” [neglected, unloved] activity of the Moroccan public (Boushaba n. pag.), and “not the best friend” of young Algerians (“Le livre” n. pag.). This anxiety is also evident in the words and actions of authors, from Ahmed Bouzfour's refusal of a literary prize because the government failed to create readers for his work, to published interviews where authors call for a “complete overhaul” of education from the elementary school level onwards (Fadel qtd in Sefrioui 86–87). While many of these concerns stem from the specific history of Arabized education in Morocco and Algeria, they are also of a piece with global anxieties over the fate of literature in modern society, wondering whether today's education systems still turn students into avid readers of novels.

Yet, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, the idea that local literature is the mal-aimé of Moroccan and Algerian education does not tell the full story of its relationship to the classroom. Moroccan textbooks teach Leila Abouzeid's dialect usage as a scholarly competency, allowing her literature to create pedagogical space for marginalized voices. In Algeria, Education Minister Nouria Bengharbit recently announced the creation of a series of Algerian literary anthologies for use in classrooms that would celebrate and promote modern Algerian authors. Literature's encounters with the classroom have also become increasingly multimodal since the colonial period.