Quite simple really.

(i) Historically the language of literacy was Arabic, period.
(ii) Some Berber language writting occured as 3ajam script in the late medieval period, but largely the Berber languages were unwritten.
(iii) During the colonial period, the French unwisely tried a fairly gross divide and conquer maneuver call the dahir berber with a view to reinforcing divides between the Arabophone populatoin and the Berberophone population. It was, to be blunt, a disaster and helped set off a nationalist backlask.
(iv) On decolonisation there was a shared desire to reaffirm local culture and literacy, which traditionally was done in Arabic, regardless of one's ethnicity.
(v) While probably 90 percent of Moroccans are of Berber descent, it does not follow - despite modern ethnic promoteurs claims - that all identify as Berber per se.
(vi) The actual percentage of the population that is "actively" primarily Berber identifying is probably in the low 40 to high 30 percent. This has been declining with urbanisation and Berber families switching over to Arabic. Note, the three Moroccan Berber languages are not mutually intelligble (or are very difficult for all but the most fluent speaker).
(vii) Until the rise of Berber identity politics in the 1960s in Algeria, and later in Morocco by the 1980s, this was a non-issue.
(viii) The state has provided since the 1980s (perhaps the 1970s) radio and TV broadcasts in all three main dialects, thus serving the largely rural and largely illiterate Berber populations.
(ix) Certain Berber tribal leadership was, in the colonial period, associated with pro-French actions, obviously a degree of politics played a role as well.
(x) The present movement is a joke, aimed at soothing some unrealistic activists. French and Arabic will continue to displace Berber languages as before.

Now, as to the points:
a) it’s spoken by a small minority of the population; a) is not true in Morocco, though it may be true in other areas where various Berber dialects are spoken (but even then, it seems those minorities are fairly substantial);

Each dialect/language is spoken by a minority, which is largely rural and lower status.

The number of true native speakers is a minority, and the minority is divided.

b) it doesn’t have a written form, or acquired a written form only recently; b) is not true by a looooong shot;

The several written forms were never important and are unlikely to become so. Arabic script usage was probably the most widespread, although now online use of roman script is certainly evident. The Tifanagh alphabet is a piece of dreamy art house romantic nonsense.

c) it has vocabulary gaps, particularly ones related to scientific and technical vocabulary and/or areas of discussion that typically take place outside the home and/or in spheres of activity that normally occur only in groups of mixed ethnicity;

Berber languages are only used at home or in deep rural areas. Draw the conclusions.

d) there is a shortage of teachers qualified to provide instruction in the language;

Given it has never been a really written language, or at best, not in centuries, one can expect a severe shortage.

e) the language is not useful in wider public life; and/or

It isn't, none of the 3, although in entertainment cheap Berber movies are now quite popular, which may keep it alive.

f) the educational system has limited resources, which are better deployed in other ways.

Basic literacy in core Berber with bilingual instruction in Arabic would be far more useful than teaching just Berber and that absurd alphabet.

All in all the effort is mere political posturing, and will go nowhere.

The article by BBC is a piece of illiterate crap by some ignorant journo lapping up what the activist crowd had to pimp.

Building on my prior reply, more interesting is how the Berber revivalism in the Maghreb is working. They (Berber speakers as a "community") losing thousands of speakers a year due to urbanisation and people opting for local dialect plus French or formal Arabic. While governmental focus of teaching Arabic in schools (fighting French influence, Berber is incidental) has an impact, the economic engines of the cities and the failure of the rural economy on a sustained basis is the real driver here. Rural is Berber Land, cities are Arab. Have been for centuries, a dynamic difficult to break. It's clear from what I see that the 2nd and 3rd generation Berberophone immigrant to Casablanca becomes an Arabophone, and manages an oddly shifting identity. Sometimes claiming Berber, sometime Arab. Sometimes both.

As to the language, a realistic program might well rescue the languages, see the underground market for Berber language AV products which apparently is quite lively and profitable.

But revival of the Tifinagh alphabet is guaranteed failure. No one has used that alphabet, aside from smoe whack women in the deep desert, for thousands of years. Oppting for Arabic or Latin alphabet, the former more useful and politicaly palatable, would go a long way. Forcing chilcdren to use a 3rd alphabet they'll never use is a sure sign of romantic idiocy and will fair. A lightly modified Arabic script would at least provide gateway to wider literacy while enabling operative literacy in commerce and the like.

Well, since no one else is interested, but it is a point of some interest to myself, an issue I find peculiar in this connexion is the choice among 'leading' Berberist or Berber ethnic activist circles to try to revive the tifanagh script for use in teaching any of the dialects.

The choice is queer for a number of reasons.

First, the script was apparently historically largley used in the region of Tunisia (unsurprising there, it appears to have originated from Punic script, or have been inspired by). There is little historical connexion with the rest of the Maghreb Berbers.

Second, it strikes me a foregone conclusion that adding another layer of learning complexity to teaching the language (another script, one never used outside activist circles) is a sure recipe for failure. Above all, as I noted, the main Berber languages are not fully mutually comprehensible (indeed many native speakers of one or another variety claim they can't understand the nieghboring major variety - others claim otherwise, I would hazard the opinion that vocabulary depth and exposure are the explanatory differences), making teaching and standardisation a challenge regardless.

While Eva naively saw a major push for teaching the Berber dialects (really one should do a bit of research, but no matter), it strikes me what is actually happening is empty symbolism where the pragmatists have lost out to starry eyed fools (aka activists, ever the fools) and the government has deliberately let the activists types proceed with ridiculously naive and unrealistic romantic idiocies.

You aren't the only one who's interested - that's why I asked. And I actually did do some poking around before posting, but having a) zero knowledge of one relevant area language, and rather limited knowledge of the other; b) no access to a university library these days, and precious little access to a decent public one, for that matter; and c) next to no sort of time to bone up on an issue like this even if I did, doing my homework first tends to prove to be difficult at best. And having written a master's thesis on an analogous topic (albeit in a different geographic region), not to mention grown up in a school district that had a bilingual program in the eminently widespread Hatian Creole, I hardly think I'm naive regarding issues related to bilingual education, even in areas with multiple, mutually incomprehensible (and in my case, often not related at all) indigenous languages, populations with literacy issues, and/or languages that have never had a widespread written form and/or have had, say, 3 different written forms in the past century (one of which was Arabic script, by the way), and an overall linguistic environment far more complex than the one under discussion above (~60 languages, most of whose classification hasn't even been agreed on, spoken by ~5 million people, in one compact geographic area) - if you want a little light bedtime reading, I'd be glad to e-mail it to you. One of my committee members even advised a C. Asian government on language policy issues. Governments address this problem all sorts of ways, and for all sorts of reasons.

Anyway, leaving that all aside, the reason I made the initial post was because I cannot hope, with a reasonable amount of preparation, to understand all the dynamics at work here.

So, back to the topic at hand: it seems to me there are at least a couple of issues here. One is the script which apparently upsets you so - I am actually not so tied to that, because it seems to have had very little to do with the preservation of the language(s) per se. Plenty of languages in analogous situations have used (sometimes modified) alphabets used by languages more widely spoken, either in the same region or elsewhere (Roman script for Turkmen, for that matter, which I find hilarious). (And by the way, I find it curious that you seem to think that requiring Berber to be taught in every school in the country within 10 years, in a program that sounds like it's starting totally from scratch, isn't a major push.)

What I am more curious about:

1) is the ambition to teach Berber simply as one subject, as, say, Spanish might be taught in the U.S. in the Southwest - available to all, some of whom may be native or quasi-native speakers, but not a requirement for every student to study it?;

2) is the ambition to use Berber as a medium of instruction for other academic subjects, which would lend credence to the idea that there is intent to make it a more useful language in the publi realm?; or

3) is this proposal nothing more than the (highly typical elsewhere) creation of a bilingual education program with the aim of mainstreaming Berber-speaking children in Arabic- and/or French-language instruction, perhaps with the additional goal of (as in bilingual programs elsewhere) ensuring that they aren't left behind on their academic subjects while they struggle to learn their second or third language?

Constructive commentary, and suggestions for additional reading (yes, even in French if it isn't horribly voluminous - I can puzzle through newspaper articles reasonably well), welcomed.

Well, a response. Good.

So, back to the topic at hand: it seems to me there are at least a couple of issues here. One is the script which apparently upsets you so

Upset me? No, I merely have contempt for useless frilleries and romantic claptrap, as, for example, reviving a script effectively dead a thousand years.

Especially in the context of supposedly wanting to stave off or slow the slow death of the berber languages.

Want to save a language, give it a purpose. Want to kill it, make it a useless pain in the ass.

I like berber, Berber is not part of my family, so to speak. I have, however, no romantic sympathy for wooley headed activists.

(And by the way, I find it curious that you seem to think that requiring Berber to be taught in every school in the country within 10 years, in a program that sounds like it's starting totally from scratch, isn't a major push.)

Because it isn't going to happen. Far more modest and pratical projects don't happen, this one is certainly not going to happen.

Promises without follow-through.

What I am more curious about:

1) is the ambition to teach Berber simply as one subject, as, say, Spanish might be taught in the U.S. in the Southwest - available to all, some of whom may be native or quasi-native speakers, but not a requirement for every student to study it?;

What may happen is teaching in the various Berber dominant areas. Maybe.

2) is the ambition to use Berber as a medium of instruction for other academic subjects, which would lend credence to the idea that there is intent to make it a more useful language in the publi realm?; or

Intent? Maybe among activists, certainly not relevant to reality.

3) is this proposal nothing more than the (highly typical elsewhere) creation of a bilingual education program with the aim of mainstreaming Berber-speaking children in Arabic- and/or French-language instruction, perhaps with the additional goal of (as in bilingual programs elsewhere) ensuring that they aren't left behind on their academic subjects while they struggle to learn their second or third language?

It's a political sop without any bloody coherent concept of anything of the sort.

Politics.

And not particularly practical ones.

Practicality would involve focus on using Arabic script, or perhaps Roman, but for the rural population, Arabic script makes the most sense, and a focus on core practicalities in basic literacy and maths.

Constructive commentary, and suggestions for additional reading (yes, even in French if it isn't horribly voluminous - I can puzzle through newspaper articles reasonably well), welcomed.

First, basic demographics. I am sure you can get that online. The wikipedia entry on the languages has reasonable cites, against all odds.

Else, probably the best information is in this arty:
http://archives.leconomiste.com/article.html?id_journal=2131&a=66141
although this site might be helpful: http://www.souss.com/

Effectively there is little strange about the case of Berber, but rather it is very ordinary.

Urbanisation is killing the language(s), and unless practical, economical actions are taken, it will die out. Period.