Chicago is one of the biggest cities in the USA that still attracts many immigrants every year for work or school. It’s the home town of many international companies like Motorola and one of the biggest schools in the country, the University of Chicago. It is an international city that hosts many ethnic groups from all over the world. The dominant community among immigrants is the Hispanics, and then the Polish. These two communities are present and active in the public life of citizens and are very well organized. Being an Algerian that has lived in Chicago for a few years pushed me to question myself about the Algerian community in Chicago. Most educated Algerian immigrants in Chicago went through a rigorous education system in Algeria, and when they come to Chicago they confront even more steps to be considered educated in the USA. They go through these steps because they are a small community that wants to grow through education. They already have a degree from Algeria, and they want to pursue their path; also, most of them are young and without family responsibilities.
The Algerian education system is copied straight from the French educational one that the Algerian government has continued to follow since the independence from France in 1962. Basically, children start their elementary education when they are six. They go through six years of school; then they move to the middle school where they spend three other years of general education; it ends with a final orientation decision that sometimes works against the students’ will. After that, they go to high school already oriented to one of the fields: science, humanities, or technical studies. During that period, students get put in a field which they follow all the way to the university. All these years of studies are basically in Arabic, at least for my generation, with French as a second language from the fourth grade. Most likely, students start English in the eighth grade and continue it all the way to the university as a third language. When students go to college, French become the language of technical and scientific studies; all other humanities and social sciences are continued in Arabic. On the contrary, Algerians who attended school just after the independence were basically using French as their first language and Arabic as the second. This Algerian educational system seems very different from the American one which prepares all students with the same general education till they reach College. Then, they decide which field they want to specialize in. after being educated in this Algerian educational system, Algerian students confront
