The Political Coherence of Educational Incoherence: The Consequences of Educational Specialization in a Southern Moroccan Community AOMAR BOUM University of Arizona This article is based on an ethnographic study I conducted in southern Morocco during 2004. I explore the historical, ideological, and cultural background behind educational specialization among Moroccan university students. I describe how French colonial educational policies and postindependence Moroccan national schooling ideologies have created a national system of double standards that: (1) privileges French-educated urban middle- and upper-class students, (2) emphasizes the Arabization of the national education system, and (3) discriminates against Arabized, largely rural students, which have exacerbated regional educational and socioeco- nomic inequalities. I finally contend that educational specialization in noncompetitive degrees such as Arabic language and literature, Islamic studies, geography, and general law is the result of an ideological matrix I have termed political coherence of educational incoher- ence. Political coherence of educational incoherence naturalizes the reliance of certain dis- franchised regional groups on a traditional preschool Islamic education that is largely based on memorization and inefficient pedagogy and is unsuitable for the modern educational require- ments. [Islamic education, school ethnography,Arabization, school failure, minority education] This article is an attempt to develop an ethnographically and historically grounded explanation of the differential access to educational opportunities as means of upward social mobility in postcolonial Morocco. I draw on data I collected in the southern oases of Morocco during fieldwork in 2004 for a project that included interviewing Muslims about their memories of Jews in southern Morocco (Boum 2006). During meetings with my informants, I observed a strong ideology held across different Muslim generations, a belief in the power of rote memorization as a natural gift that endows particular children with the ability to learn the Qur’an by heart and results in their access to spheres of power as adults. I was told during many meetings with old and young individuals that memorizing, especially memorizing the Qur’an, is a “divine gift” that separates Muslim scholars from commoners (Zghari 1938). Educa- tion (ta’lim) was synonymous with memorization (hifz). This strong cultural and social belief in the organic relationship between the Qur’anic text and its memoriza- tion facilitated the acceptance of colonial and postcolonial educational policies, even though they turned out to be in opposition to individual self-interest and limited broader opportunities for upward social mobility. In this article, Bourdieu’s concept of the process of elimination in education was useful for analyzing how children of disadvantaged classes in rural communities of southern Morocco continue to have low chances of entering the higher education system that would allow them to get better jobs (Bourdieu 1996). Using indivi- dual testimonies and family narratives, archival historical data, and my own Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 39, Issue 2, pp.205–223, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492. © 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1492.2008.00016.x. 205