Hostility and Controversies upon Recommending the Teaching of a Standard Variety via a Colloquial Variety at Primary School Level

In 2015, speculations have raised to debate recommendations suggested, among others, at the Algerian National Conference on the Evaluation and Implementation of School Reforms to recommend the teaching of Standard Arabic through Algerian Colloquial Arabic –Darija- at primary school level. Since independence, in 1962, Algeria has witnessed an Arabization policy whereby the Arabic language was imposed as the sole official and national language at political, economic and most importantly education level. The aim of this work is to shed the light on the pedagogical and socio-linguistic motives nourishing the possibility of implementing a vernacular variety– which has no morpho-syntactical and phonological representation - as a vehicle for knowledge transmission, literacy and education in the Algerian primary school level. Focus will also be put on highlighting emerging vectors of controversies and hostilities against the project that are deeply rooted in the historical, political and identity-based reality of the country.