Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Domains, questions, and directions
- 2 Language and literacy in Morocco
- 3 The cultural context of schooling
- 4 Doing fieldwork in Morocco
- 5 Learning to read in Arabic
- 6 Social factors in literacy acquisition
- 7 Beliefs and literacy
- 8 Learning to read in a second language and a second literacy
- 9 Functional literacy: School learning and everyday skills
- 10 School dropout and literacy retention: Out of school, out of mind?
- 11 Literacy and poverty
- 12 Linking research and policy
- 13 Literacy, culture, and development: Concluding thoughts about a changing society
- Appendix 1 Cognitive consequences of Quranic preschooling
- Appendix 2 Details of test construction
- Appendix 3 Parent interview
- Appendix 4 Student interview
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
- Plate section
2 - Language and literacy in Morocco
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Domains, questions, and directions
- 2 Language and literacy in Morocco
- 3 The cultural context of schooling
- 4 Doing fieldwork in Morocco
- 5 Learning to read in Arabic
- 6 Social factors in literacy acquisition
- 7 Beliefs and literacy
- 8 Learning to read in a second language and a second literacy
- 9 Functional literacy: School learning and everyday skills
- 10 School dropout and literacy retention: Out of school, out of mind?
- 11 Literacy and poverty
- 12 Linking research and policy
- 13 Literacy, culture, and development: Concluding thoughts about a changing society
- Appendix 1 Cognitive consequences of Quranic preschooling
- Appendix 2 Details of test construction
- Appendix 3 Parent interview
- Appendix 4 Student interview
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
- Plate section
Summary
At the gas station
It is a bright sunny April day as Si Mohamed, a government agent of Eaux et Forets (water and forests department), drives his office car into the brand new Afriquia gas station in Berrechid. When Allal, the gas station attendant, has filled the gas tank, Si Mohamed asks for a facture (receipt) to submit for reimbursement. Allal rummages briefly through his leather money bag and carefully extracts a pad of blank factures and a blackened rubber stamp with the station's name and address. With a deep breath he exhales on the rubber stamp, moistening it slightly, and then presses it with deliberation into the facture paper. This small rubber stamp, like tens of thousands all over Morocco, serves as the guarantor of official literacy in Morocco. Allal, who cannot read or write, then hands the stamped paper to Si Mohamed, who fills in the date, the amount of gas, and the price.
Mohamed and Allal have just engaged in a joint literacy act, one that is representative of literacy in Morocco and in many other parts of the world that stand, like Morocco, midway between what is labeled traditional and modern. Today, literacy is possessed, understood, and used by many more than a small elite, even in countries where the majority can neither read nor write.
Two millennia of languages and literacies in contact
To discuss the history oflanguage and literacy use in Morocco is to trace the history of the northwest corner of the continent of Africa (see Figure 2.1).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Literacy, Culture and DevelopmentBecoming Literate in Morocco, pp. 15 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994