Jack Lang

“I have been promoting Arabic language learning and acquisition for over forty years. I did not wait to become President of the Arab World Institute (IMA) to spearhead this struggle. I am a multilingualism activist. My dream is that we teach modern languages and ancient languages to children very early on, in addition to their own language. Children are receptive to learning foreign languages and this facility reaches its zenith at twelve years of age. It is a real waste then, not to engage their ability to grasp the musicality of languages. Its apt to note at this point that learning several languages does not impair the comprehension of ones first language, on the contrary, this understanding is heightened through the interplay of comparisons, dissimilarities and similarities.

I regret that France is not sufficiently committed to teaching the Arabic language. The strength of a country and its youth is the power to access diverse cultures. Nothing better than language to penetrate the minds and souls of a people. The Arabic language should be one of the key languages taught in schools. It is the world’s fifth language. It is the richest language in the world in terms of vocabulary and syntax. It is the language that carried ancient, mathematical and philosophical knowledge to the West. To learn the Arabic language is to educate the ear and the intelligence. It is also to perceive another civilization.

When I was the French Minister for Education, I fought for the Arabic language to be taught from an early age. I built an ambitious plan that was abandoned by my successors. They were unaware of the urgency and importance of learning it. They associated the language with Islam and radical Islamism. In reality, the Arabic language pre-exists itself. It is the comprehensive language of everyone, including Jews, in the Arab world. It is a language that predates Islam yet it is the language of the Quran. It is a magnificent language that lends all its strength and beauty to this great spiritual text. So quite the opposite is true: learning the Arabic language is a means of combating fundamentalism. Pap Ndiaye, the Minister for Education and Youth in France, made a promised to me to give the Arabic language the place it deserves in France. I want to believe him. He is an undeniably open-minded humanist. 

At the Arab World Institute (AWI), we have sealed an agreement with the Centre for Arabic Languages in Abu Dhabi, which is part of the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, (DCT). It will provide high quality education at all levels. We have created an Arabic language centre and the CIMA (Certification Internationale de la Maitrise de la Langue Arabe/ International Certification in Arabic Language Proficiency), a globally unique international evaluation system for the mastery of the Arabic language by a varied scientific authority. The absence of a skills level assessment system does not facilitate learning in this field. Arab countries are very attractive to modern day France and learning the Arabic language has been very successful in higher education. It's a pity that this desire for knowledge is not satisfied within the school system. The disappointment is all the heavier for me, with my visions of a universal society.”