ANTIN, France—Every Sunday, parents in this working-class neighborhood just north of Paris bring their children to a small school operated by the local mosque. Half of the three-hour lesson is devoted to learning Arabic, the other half to learning the Quran.
Now President Emmanuel Macron’s government is considering giving parents a secular alternative to that intertwining of Arabic and Islam by prodding more of France’s public schools to offer children as young as age 6 Arabic lessons—without religious content.
France is home to one of the world’s biggest Arab diasporas, but only a fraction of the country’s public schools have the resources to offer Arabic courses. Instead, tens of thousands of children attend classes partly funded by Arabic-speaking countries ...
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