‘There is No Such Thing as “Keeping out of Politics”’: in Morocco

Although Classical and Modern Standard Arabic carry a certain degree of prestige in their respective domains, they are not the mother tongue of Arabicspeaking Moroccans; the latter’s first language is Moroccan Arabic (also known as Dialectal or Demotic Arabic). These linguistic distinctions are not merely of theoretical interest; they have significant import in educational policy and practice, as we shall see below.