Minority Schooling in Europe

Different Forms of Minority Schooling

The rationale for minority schooling is based on the ideology that separate educational programs are best suited to protect and preserve the distinctive languages and cultures of minority groups. The educational provisions for national and regional minorities and types of minority schooling differ between and within European states.

For example, in France, which does not grant collective rights to minority groups, the language of a regional minority (e.g., Breton) may be taught in schools only as a subject; it cannot be used as the main language of instruction in the public education system. In contrast, the Spanish constitution grants historical communities the right to form autonomous regions. Although all Spanish nationals have the duty to know and use Castilian (Spanish), the official language of the state, schools in autonomous regions may offer most instruction in the regional minority language, and Castilian is introduced progressively with the goal that eventually all students acquire an equivalent knowledge of both languages. However, at present these language immersion programs are contested by the Spanish state in Catalonia. Another example is Finland, where both Finnish and Swedish are official languages. Contrary to Sami, Russian, Romany, and Tatar, which are officially recognized minority languages, Swedish, the native language of Swedish-speaking Finns, who constitute a small linguistic minority (about 5% of the total population), legally speaking is not considered a minority language. In schools, both Finnish and Swedish are compulsory subjects, but the primary language of instruction depends on the students' mother tongue. Even in municipalities where Finnish is the [Page 1516]dominant language, schools have to organize instruction in Swedish when at least 18 students apply for instruction in their mother tongue. There is also a monolingual Swedish university (Åbo Akademi) in an area where Finnish is the predominant language. In the autonomous region of Åland, where Swedish is the main language, only Swedish-speaking schools are allowed.

...