University of Al-Qarawiyyin's Position Regarding the French Educational Policy Between 1918 – 1925

Abstract

The University of Al-Qarawiyyin began to confront the French educational policy since 1919 after the end of the First World War in 1918. That was after the French Resident General, Hubert Lyautey, began adopting a new policy in Morocco, one of which is the educational policy, through which, he sought to obliterate the Arabic and Islamic identity of Moroccans, and then Francization of Moroccans, and linking them to the French culture.

Accordingly, the research was divided into two topics, the first topic deals with French educational policy in Moroccan cities in its first section, and how was education divided into a whole system and departments based on religious, class, and ethnic foundations. The French, via those types of education, pursued an existing educational policy to tear-apart the Moroccan fabric, and prohibiting Moroccans from granting sufficient opportunities to learn various sciences. While the second section of the topic deals with the French educational policy in the countryside regions inhabited by the Berbers, who are the Arab component with the prominent effect on the Moroccan social fabric.

As for the second topic, it deals with the position of Al-Qarawiyyin University as a Moroccan educational institution that, for hundreds of years, supervised the foundations of education in the country, and prepared the Moroccan students so that they obtained the highest university degrees. In establishing these schools, the second section of the topic deals with the curricula of free schools and their types, with an example of free schools (Nasiriyah School in Fes)