Moroccan school administrators faced a similar task to their Algerian counterparts upon independence: Arabizing a school system previously administered by the French. Yet Moroccan officials would encounter a very different set of challenges in this process. Development plans for postcolonial education created by the Moroccan Ministry of National Education have regularly listed four major objectives: “Arabization,” “Moroccanization,” “Unification,” and “Generalization” (Ameziane 14). Each of these goals was designed as a direct response to forty-four years of French educational dominance and, as in Algeria, Arabization was one of the first priorities. The colonial-era collèges musulmans, jointly administered by the French Residency and the Moroccan Sultan, incorporated some elements of religious education and Arabic language into their curriculum (Boutieri, Learning 111). However, these institutions were designed to preserve the social status quo and provide Moroccan students with a deliberately limited access to the Arabic language. Religious institutions like the Qarawiyyine and Quranic schools, along with nationalist-run schools, helped to maintain the teaching of Arabic during the colonial period (Ennaji 202–03). But the post-independence task of creating a school system covering a broad range of subjects, in a language that had been restricted to acting as a vehicle of religion and anti-colonial resistance, was significant.

The second goal, “Moroccanization,” raised the issue of how the education system would contend with being both generally “Arab” and specifically “Moroccan.” Could a nation like Morocco, with the Maghreb's highest percentage of Amazigh citizens, call itself an Arab nation? What would doing so say about the relationship between language, national identity, and political power? In Morocco, where the monarchy coalesced national identity to a significant degree, Arab nationalism was less central to nationalist discourse than in Algeria, where “Arab nationalists took control of the government and policy” (Willis 212). Yet while the monarchy was “willing to tolerate low-profile expressions of Berber culture” as part of Moroccan, rather than strictly Arab, identity, the scope for such expressions remained narrow and entirely excluded politics (Willis 212). Arabic remained the sole national language and language of education. In the face of this state monolingualism, demands for the recognition and teaching of Tamazight became not just a rallying cry within individual communities, but also part of a broader dialogue on language rights and national identity.