Language Policy and Education in the New Europe

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Tilburg University

Language Policy and Education in the New Europe

Extra, Guus

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Language Policy and Political Issues in Education

Publication date: 2017

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Extra, G. (2017). Language Policy and Education in the New Europe. In T. McCarty, L. Teresa, & S. May (Eds.), Language Policy and Political Issues in Education: Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 331-347). Springer International Publishing.

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Europe

Guus Extra

In this chapter, the constellation of languages in the new Europe is described as a descending hierarchy of English as lingua franca, national or “ofﬁcial state” languages, regional minority languages, and immigrant minority languages. The main European institutions promoting language learning and multilingual-ism/plurilingualism are the European Union (EU) based in Brussels (Belgium) and the Council of Europe based in Strasbourg (France). Within the three constituent bodies of the EU– the Council of the EU (heads of the state and government), the European Commission (EC), and the European Parliament – these domains have been focused upon for more than 20 years. Early develop-ments and major contributions of these institutions in the domain of language

G. Extra (*)

Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg School of Humanities, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

e-mail:guus.extra@tilburguniversity.edu;Guus.Extra@uvt.nl

# Springer International Publishing AG 2016

T. McCarty, S. May (eds.), Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, Encyclopedia of Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02320-5_26-1

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policy and education in the new Europe are outlined. Three major initiatives of the Council of Europe are addressed: the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Common European Framework of Reference for Lan-guages, and the European Language Portfolio. The focus of work in progress is on the Language Rich Europe project, which examines European trends in policies and practices for multilingualism across 25 European countries and regions. Problems and difﬁculties are discussed in terms of multilingualism and linguistic diversity as sometimes conﬂicting policy agendas, the lack of legal binding of European Parliament communications and resolutions, and the reluc-tance in promoting the proposed trilingual formula of the European Commission at the national policy level. In this formula, the principle of “a language of personal adoption” plays a key role. Future directions of European policy on multilingualism and education are offered in reference to international experi-ences and recommendations.

Keywords

European Union• Council of Europe • (Co-)ofﬁcial state languages • Regional minority languages• Immigrant minority languages

Introduction

Speaking more than one or two languages is a common challenge for most Europeans, and many of them, both“old” and “new” Europeans, learn the national language of their country of residence not as aﬁrst language but as an additional language. Linguistic diversity has always been conceived as a constituent charac-teristic of European identity (Arzoz2008). However, some languages play a more important role in the European public and political discourse on“celebrating lin-guistic diversity,” the motto of the European Year of Languages (2001). The constellation of languages in Europe actually functions as a descending hierarchy (Extra and Gorter2008; Nic Craith2006) with the following ranking of categories: • English as lingua franca for transnational communication

• National or “ofﬁcial state” languages of European countries • Regional minority (RM) languages across Europe

• Immigrant minority (IM) languages across Europe

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There is a great need for educational policies in Europe that take new realities of multilingualism into account. Processes of internationalization and globalization have brought European nation-states to the world, but they have also brought the world to European nation-states. This bipolar pattern of change has led to both convergence and divergence of multilingualism across Europe. On the one hand, English is increasingly on the rise as lingua franca for transnational communication across the borders of European nation-states (Jenkins2010), at the cost of all other ofﬁcial state languages of Europe, including French and German. The upward mobility of English is clearly visible in such recent European Commission reports as Special Barometer 386 (2012) and Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe (Eurydice/Eurostat2012). In spite of many objections against the hegemony of English (Phillipson 2003), this process of convergence is enhanced by the extension of the EU to Eastern Europe. Within the borders of European nation-states, however, there is an increasing divergence of home languages, often referred to in Europe as“mother tongues” (see Extra2010), due to large-scale processes of global migration and intergenerational minorization. The outcomes of the 23 June 2016 EU Brexit Referendum in the UK, in which more than half of voters voted to leave the EU, may lead to a complex and lengthy disentanglement of the EU and UK, the political and sociolinguistics effects of which could not be foreseen at the time of writing.

Even at the level of (co-)official languages, Europe’s identity is to a great extent determined by cultural and linguistic diversity (Haarmann1995). Table1serves to illustrate this diversity in terms of EU (candidate) Member States with their esti-mated populations (ranked in decreasing order) and corresponding (co-)official state languages. As Table1 makes clear, there are large differences in population size among EU Member States. German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Polish belong, in this order, to the six most widely spoken official state languages in the present EU, whereas Turkish would come second to German in an enlarged EU. Table1 also shows the close connection between nation-state references and official state language references. In 27 out of 30 cases, distinct languages are the clearest feature distinguishing one nation-state from its neighbors (Barbour2000), the only exceptions (and for different reasons) being Belgium, Austria, and Cyprus. This match between nation-state references and official state language references obscures the existence of different types of other languages that are actually spoken across European nation-states (Haberland 1991; Nic Craith 2006). Many of these languages are indigenous minority languages with a regional territorial base; many other languages stem from abroad without such a base. As mentioned before, we will refer to these languages as regional minority (RM) languages and immigrant minor-ity (IM) languages, respectively (Extra and Gorter2001), in this way expressing both their shared main property and their major modifying difference.

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refer to the official state languages of the EU. In that sense, the designation “community languages” is occupied territory, at least in the EU jargon. The distinc-tion between RM and IM languages is widely used and understood across continen-tal Europe. Afinal argument in favor of using the concept of “immigrant” languages is its widespread use on the website of Ethnologue, Languages of the World, a most valuable and widely used standard source of cross-national information on this topic. A number of other issues need to be kept in mind as well. First, within and across EU Member States, many RM and IM languages have larger numbers of speakers than many of the official state languages mentioned in Table1. Moreover, RM and IM languages in one EU nation-state may be official state languages in another

Table 1 Overview of 30 EU (candidate) Member States with estimated populations and (co-) official state languages (EuroStat2015)

Nr Member States Population (in millions) (Co-)ofﬁcial state language(s) 1 Germany 81,2 German 2 France 66,4 French 3 UK 64,9 English 4 Italy 60,8 Italian 5 Spain 46,4 Spanish 6 Poland 38,0 Polish 7 Romania 19,9 Romanian 8 The Netherlands 16,9 Dutch (Nederlands) 9 Belgium 11,3 Dutch, French, German 10 Greece 10,8 Greek

11 Czech Republic 10,5 Czech 12 Portugal 10,4 Portuguese 13 Hungary 9,8 Hungarian 14 Sweden 9,7 Swedish 15 Austria 8,6 Austrian-German 16 Bulgaria 7,2 Bulgarian 17 Denmark 5,7 Danish

18 Finland 5,5 Finnish, Swedish 19 Slovakia 5,4 Slovak

20 Ireland 4,6 Irish, English 21 Croatia 4,2 Croatian 22 Lithuania 2,9 Lithuanian 23 Slovenia 2,1 Slovenian 24 Latvia 2,0 Latvian 25 Estonia 1,3 Estonian 26 Cyprus 0,8 Greek, Turkish

27 Luxembourg 0,6 Luxemburgish, French, German 28 Malta 0,4 Maltese, English

Candidate Member States Population (in millions) Ofﬁcial state language 29 Turkey 78,7 Turkish

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nation-state. Examples of the former result from language border crossing in adja-cent nation-states, such as Finnish in Sweden or Swedish in Finland. Examples of the latter result from processes of migration, in particular from Southern to Northern Europe, such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, or Greek. It should also be kept in mind that many, if not most, IM languages in particular European nation-states originate from countries outside Europe. It is the context of migration and minorization in particular that makes our proposed distinction between RM and IM languages ambiguous. We see, however, no better alternative. In our opinion, the proposed distinction will lead at least to awareness raising and may ultimately lead to an inclusive approach in the European conceptualization of minority languages (Extra and Gorter2008; Extra and Yağmur2012).

Early Developments

Both the EU institutions based in Brussels and the Council of Europe based in Strasbourg have been active in promoting language learning and multilingualism/ plurilingualism. The major language policy agencies in these two institutions are the Unit for Multilingualism Policy within the Directorate-General of Education and Culture in the European Commission and the Language Policy Unit of the Direc-torate of Education in the Council of Europe. The work done by these agencies underpins the important resolutions, charters, and conventions produced by the respective bodies. Coulmas (1991) and Baetens-Beardsmore (2008) give insightful overviews of both EU and CoE language promotion activities in the past.

A search for multilingualism publications on http://europa.eu/ yields key EU documents in a range of languages organized under ﬁve headings: EU policy documents, information brochures, reports, studies, and surveys. On the CoE site, http://www.coe.int/lang, publications are offered in the domains of policy develop-ment, instruments and standards, languages of school education, migrants, confer-ence reports, and selected studies. The CoE makes a distinction between plurilingualism as a speaker’s competence (ability to use more than one language) and multilingualism as the presence of a range of languages in a given geographical area. The EU uses multilingualism for both (sometimes specifying“multilingualism of the individual”).

European Union (EU)

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than 20 years. EU language policies aim to protect language diversity and promote knowledge of languages, for reasons of cultural identity and social integration, but also because multilingual citizens are better placed to take advantage of the educa-tional, professional, and economic opportunities created by an integrated Europe.

The European Commission (1995), in a so-called Whitebook, opted for tri-lingualism as a policy goal for all European citizens. Apart from the “mother tongue,” each citizen should learn at least two “community languages.” At this stage, the concept of “mother tongue” was being used to refer to the official languages of EU Member States and overlooked the fact that for many inhabitants of Europe, “mother tongue” and “official state language” do not coincide (Tulasiewicz and Adams 2005). At the same time, the concept of “community languages” referred to the official languages of two other EU Member States. In later European Commission documents, reference was made to one foreign language with high international prestige (English was deliberately not referred to) and one so-called“neighboring language.” This latter concept always referred to neighboring countries, never to next-door neighbors.

In a follow-up to the European Year of Languages in 2001, the heads of state and government of all EU Member States gathered in 2002 in Barcelona and called upon the European Commission to take further action to promote the learning and teaching of two“additional languages” from a very early age (Nikolov and Curtain 2000). In 2003, the EC committed itself to undertake a range of new actions to encourage national, regional, and local authorities to work toward a“major step change in promoting language learning and linguistic diversity.” Whereas the con-cept of “additional languages” within the EU policy context initially related to European languages, the reference to “European” was removed in more recent documents.

Council of Europe (CoE)

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develop their culture and to preserve the essential elements of their identity, namely, their religion, language, traditions, and cultural heritage. States that have ratiﬁed these conventions are monitored with regard to their fulﬁllment of the commitments they have undertaken.

CoE recommendations are authoritative statements to national authorities on guiding principles and related implementation measures, but are not legally binding. What might be described as“technical” instruments in the ﬁeld of language educa-tion are generally reference tools, always nonnormative, which policy deciders and practitioners may consult and adapt as appropriate to their speciﬁc educational context and needs. These instruments include the widely used Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the European Language Portfolio, policy guides, and a variety of other practical tools developed through the programs of the Language Policy Unit in Strasbourg and the European Centre for Modern Lan-guages in Graz.

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2001) was designed to promote plurilingual education and to be adapted to the specific contexts of use. The CEFR offers a common basis for developing and comparing second/ foreign language curricula, textbooks, courses, and examinations in a dynamic plurilingual lifelong learning perspective. Developed through a process of scientific research and wide consultation, the CEFR provides a practical tool for setting clear goals to be attained at successive stages of learning and for evaluating outcomes in an internationally comparable manner. It provides a basis for the mutual recognition of language qualifications, thus facilitating educational and occupational mobility. It is increasingly used in the reform of national curricula and by international consortia for relating of language certificates, in Europe and beyond, and is available in over 35 language versions.

The European Language Portfolio (2001) is a personal document in which those who are learning or have learned any language can record and reﬂect on their language learning and cultural experiences. It is the property of the learner. In the Portfolio, all competence is valued, regardless of the level or whether it is gained inside or outside formal education. It is linked to the CEFR.

Major Contributions

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European Commission

The EC’s ﬁrst ever Communication on Multilingualism, A new framework strategy for multilingualism, was adopted in 2005 and complemented its action plan Pro-moting language learning and linguistic diversity. In 2008, the EC produced their well-known Communication Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment. The Communication set out what needed to be done to turn linguistic diversity into an asset for solidarity and prosperity. The two central objectives for multilingualism policy were:

• To raise awareness of the value and opportunities of the EU’s linguistic diversity and encourage the removal of barriers to intercultural dialogue

• To give all citizens real opportunities to learn to communicate in two languages in addition to their mother tongue

Member States were invited to offer a wider range of languages more effectively within the education system from an early age up to adult education and to value and further develop language skills acquired outside the formal education system. Moreover, the EC stated its determination to make strategic use of relevant EU programs and initiatives to bring multilingualism“closer to the citizen.”

In its 2008 Communication, the EC referred to the many “national, regional, minority, and migrant” languages spoken in Europe “adding a facet to our common background” and also “foreign languages,” used to refer principally to both European and non-European languages with a worldwide coverage. The value of learning the national language well in order to function successfully in society and beneﬁt fully from education has been widely recognized. The learning of foreign languages has also been common in Europe. The language types which have been less emphasized are RM and IM languages, but their value across European Member States has been acknowledged and supported by both the CoE and the EU, which have emphasized that both types of languages need to be supported as they are important means of intragroup communication and are part of the personal, cultural, and social identity of many EU citizens.

The Commission Staff Working Document (2008), accompanying the abovementioned EC Communication, presents a good overview of existing EU activ-ities supporting multilingualism. The EC Communication (2008) was welcomed and endorsed by resolutions from both the Council of the EU (2008) and the European Parliament (2009), with the emphasis on lifelong learning, competitiveness, mobility, and employability. In 2011, the EC reported back on progress since 2008 and provided a full inventory of EU actions in theﬁeld. The High Level Group on Multilingualism: Final Report (2007), published at the initiative of the EC, also mentions that it is necessary to use the potential of immigrants as a source of language knowledge and as a good opportunity for companies to proﬁt from these immigrants’ cultural and linguistic abilities in order to gain access to markets in the immigrants’ countries of origin.

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and secondary education are the reports Key data on teaching languages at school in Europe (Eurydice/EuroStat2012) and Integrating immigrant children into schools in Europe (Eurydice2009), as well as two Eurobarometer reports on language skills of European citizens and their attitudes toward languages (Eurobarometers 2001 and 2006). Theﬁnal report to the EC by Strubell et al. (2007) also contains key data on student enrolments in language classes in primary, lower, and upper secondary education in EU countries; moreover, the report offers an analysis of cross-national results and trends and concludes with a range of recommendations.

Council of Europe

The CoE’s work on language education is coordinated by the Language Policy Unit (LPU) in Strasbourg and the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) in Graz. The LPU has been a pioneer of international cooperation in language educa-tion since 1957, acting as a catalyst for innovaeduca-tion and providing a pan-European forum in which to address the policy priorities of all Member States. The results of the LPU’s programs have led to a number of recommendations and resolutions of the Committee of Ministers and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE, which provide political support for its policy instruments and initiatives. Following on from this, the LPU organized the European Year of Languages 2001 with the European Commission, the aims of which continue to be promoted in the annual European Day of Languages.

The programs of the LPU are complemented by those of the ECML, an Enlarged Partial Agreement of the Council of Europe set up in 1994 in Graz (Austria). The ECML’s mission is to promote innovative approaches and disseminate good practice in language learning and teaching. The Centre runs four-year programs of projects organized in cooperation with European experts in theﬁeld of language education. An important initiative, supported by the Council of Europe and coordinated by the ECML, has been the Valeur project 2004–2007. Its ambitions were to bring together information on educational provisions for nonnational languages in more than 20 -European countries, to focus on the outcomes of these provisions for students by the time they have left school, to identify good practices and draw conclusions about how provision can be developed, to promote a greater awareness of the issues involved, and to create a network for developing new initiatives (McPake et al. 2007).

Work in Progress

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trends in policies and practices for multilingualism across 25 European countries and regions (including three non-EU countries, i.e., Switzerland, Ukraine, and Bosnia-Herzegovina). The overall objectives of the LRE project were to:

• Facilitate the exchange of good practice in promoting intercultural dialogue and social inclusion through language teaching and learning.

• Promote European cooperation in developing language policies and practices across several education sectors and broader society.

• Raise awareness of the EU and CoE recommendations for promoting language learning and linguistic diversity across Europe.

The resulting outcomes go beyond our current state of knowledge with regard to language policies and practices in Europe from four different perspectives: • The high number of participating countries and regions 25

• The spectrum of chosen language varieties in the constellation of languages in Europe: foreign, regional or minority, immigrant, and national languages, the latter with a special focus on support for newcomers

• The range of chosen language domains within and beyond education to include business, public services and spaces in cities, and the media

• The open-access publication and dissemination of the outcomes of this study in 20 languages, including Turkish and Arabic, as major languages of immigration in Europe

The following language varieties are addressed in the LRE project: • National languages: ofﬁcial languages of European nation-states

• Foreign languages: languages that are not learned or used at home but learned and taught at school or used as languages of wider communication in noneducational sectors

• Regional or minority (RM) languages: languages that are traditionally used within a given territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population

• Immigrant minority (IM) languages: languages spoken by immigrants and their descendants in the country of residence, originating from a wide range of (former) source countries

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Domain 1 explores the availability of nationwide or region-wide official docu-ments and databases on language diversity in each of the participating countries/ regions. The availability of such documents and databases may contribute signifi-cantly to the awareness of multilingualism in a given country/region and can inform language education policy. The division of this domain into official documents and databases is closely related to the common distinction in studies on language planning between status planning and corpus planning. In our study, the section on documents refers to efforts undertaken to regulate the use and function of different languages in a given society, and the section on databases refers to efforts undertaken to map the distribution and vitality of the spectrum of languages in a given society.

Domains 2–4 of the survey focus on education for non-adult learners provided by the state, including the common distinction between lower and upper secondary education which may refer to age-related differences and/or differences related to type of schooling. In each of these domains, the organization of language teaching is addressed in addition to the qualiﬁcations and training of teachers, for each of the four language varieties. The key distinction between organization versus teachers is widely used in the EU context. The responses in these sections are based on publicly available data as well as from ofﬁcial sources.

Given the signiﬁcant diversiﬁcation in postsecondary education at the national and cross-national level, domain 5 focuses on further (vocational) versus higher (university) education. As a result, this domain yields highly binary and comple-mentary data on postsecondary education. Domains 6–8 cover three crucial domains outside and beyond education. Responses in domains 5–8 are based on collected and reported data in the urban contexts of three cities per country or region. Domain 5 explores language provision in a small sample of vocational and university education institutions. Domain 6 focuses on languages in the audiovisual media and the press. Domain 7 concentrates on languages in public services and public spaces in terms of institutionalized language strategies, oral communication facili-ties, and written communication facilities. The focus of domain 8, languages in business, is on company language strategies, internal communication strategies, and external communication strategies; in each country/region, a sample of 24 companies was aimed at.

Table 2 Composition of the LRE survey across language domains

N Language domains N questions 1. Languages in ofﬁcial documents and databases 15 2. Languages in preprimary education 34 3. Languages in primary education 58 4. Languages in secondary education 60 5. Languages in further and higher education 30 6. Languages in audiovisual media and press 14 7. Languages in public services and public spaces 31 8. Languages in business 18

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Extra and Yağmur (2012) present major LRE outcomes for domains 1–4 on (pre-) primary and secondary education. A remarkable outcome is that the largest numbers of ofﬁcially offered RM languages in education emerge in Southeastern and Central European countries. In Western Europe, Italy and France are the clearest exceptions to this general rule, as they offer a wide variety of languages. In Western European countries, IM languages often have a more prominent appearance than RM lan-guages but enjoy less recognition, protection, and/or promotion. Follow-up studies on the LRE project have been planned in a number of European countries and regions.

Problems and Difficulties

A detailed overview and analysis of EU policies on multilingualism is provided by Cullen et al. (2008), who report that there is still signiﬁcant reluctance or resistance with respect to additional language learning– apart from learning English. This view is supported by 2009 Eurydice/Eurostat data which shows a marked increase in the learning of English, but not other languages. Only one in ﬁve Europeans can be described as an active additional language learner, say Cullen et al. (2008), and language skills are unevenly distributed geographically and culturally. Most of the activities aimed at promoting multilingualism take place in the formal education sector, more particularly in the domain of secondary education. Cullen et al. (2008, pp. iii–iv) arrive at the following main conclusions with respect to the political and policy context of promoting multilingualism in the EU:

• Multilingualism and linguistic diversity are sometimes conﬂicting policy agendas. Language learning policy has tended to be inﬂuenced by “harder” priorities, like economic competitiveness and labor market mobility, and linguis-tic diversity policies by“softer” issues like inclusion and human rights. Multilin-gualism policy has been more highly prioritized than linguistic diversity policy in terms of concrete actions.

• The action of the European Parliament reﬂects a consistent and persistent effort to maintain minority language protection and linguistic diversity support. Since the late 1970s, the European Parliament has issued a series of communications and resolutions that call for the Commission to take action in order to promote the use of minority languages and to review all community legislation or practices which discriminate against minority languages. However, a major problem is that none of these initiatives are binding for the Member States.

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in the mother language, in the regional (or State) language, in Hindi as the language of general communication, and in one of the classical languages– Sanskrit, Pali, Arabic, or Persian. Revised in 1961, the proposal was named the three-language formula (TLF), which included instruction in the regional language, in Hindi in non-Hindi-speaking areas or in another Indian language in non-Hindi-speaking areas, and in English or another European language.

As yet, the promotion of trilingualism as an EU policy goal for all European citizens has not been taken up strongly at the level of European nation-states, and for various reasons, the development of an educational policy regarding RM and IM languages was, and continues to be, a complex and challenging task. In view of the multicultural composition of many European schools, this task involves the organiza-tion of multilingual rather than bilingual educaorganiza-tion (García et al.2006). Experiences with, and the results of previous research into, an exclusively bilingual context are therefore only transferable to a limited degree. Bilingual education in ofﬁcial state languages and RM languages has been an area of interest and research in Europe for a long time. More recently, local and global perspectives are taken into consideration that go beyond bilingualism for RM groups and focus on plurilingualism and plurilingual education. Apart from ofﬁcial state languages and RM languages, the focus is commonly on the learning and teaching of English as a third language from a perspective of glocalization and in this way on promoting trilingualism from an early age on in the context of, e.g., the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain or Friesland in the Netherlands (Cenoz and Jessner2000; Ytsma and Hoffmann2003).

It is remarkable that the teaching of RM languages is generally advocated as a matter of course for reasons of fairness, social cohesion, group identity, or economic beneﬁt, while such reasoning rarely is an argument in favor of teaching IM lan-guages. The 1977 guideline of the Council of European Communities on education for“migrant” children (Directive 77/486, dated 25 July 1977) has become nowadays completely outdated. It needs to be put in a new and increasingly multicultural context, and it needs to be extended to pupils originating from non-EU countries who form the large part of IM children at European primary schools. Besides, most of the so-called“migrants” in EU countries have taken up citizenship of the countries in which they live, and in many cases, they belong to second- or third-generation groups. Against this background, there is a growing need for overarching human rights for all European citizens, irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, religious, or language background. For similar inclusive approaches to IM and RM language rights, we refer to Nic Craith (2006) and May (2011).

Future Directions

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accepting the role of English as lingua franca for transnational communication across Europe. Against this background, a number of principles should be spelled out for the enhancement of trilingualism at primary and secondary schools in continental European countries in which one language functions as ofﬁcial state language (Extra and Gorter2008; Extra and Yağmur2004). Other principles need to be worked out for the UK in which English functions as ofﬁcial state language and for those European countries in which more than one language functions as such. According to Table 1, presented in the Introduction, the latter holds for Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Malta.

Institutional support structures for RM languages exist at both the national and European level. Such institutional support structures are much weaker for IM languages, and support tends to be bottom-up from parents at the local or national level. Although IM languages are often conceived of and transmitted as core values by IM language groups, they are much less protected than RM languages by afﬁrmative action and legal measures in, for example, education. In fact, the learning and certainly the teaching of IM languages are often seen by majority language speakers and by policy makers as obstacles to integration and as a threat to the national identity. As a result, a rarely addressed paradox in the European versus national public and political discourse on diversity of languages becomes visible: • Linguistic diversity at the European level is commonly conceived of as an

inherent property of European identity and prerequisite for integration, accom-panied by such devices as celebrating linguistic diversity or diversity within unity. • Linguistic diversity at the national level, in particular with respect to immigrant languages, is often conceived of as a threat to national identity and obstacle for integration.

A clash of paradigms emerges in those areas where RM languages and IM languages appear in strong co-occurrence. Good examples of such areas are Barce-lona and Catalonia at large (Carrasco2008, p. 28).

The abovementioned principles on trilingualism for all European citizens are aimed at reconciling bottom-up and top-down pleas in Europe for plurilingualism and are inspired by large-scale and enduring experiences with the learning and teaching of English (as L1 or L2) and one Language Other Than English (LOTE) for all children in the State of Victoria, Australia (Extra and Yağmur 2004). The Victorian School of Languages in Melbourne has led to an internationally recognized breakthrough in the conceptualization of plurilingualism in terms of making provision feasible and man-datory for all children (including a minority of L1 English-speaking children), in terms of offering a broad spectrum of LOTE provision (in 2015, more than 50 languages were offered in primary and secondary education), and in terms of government support for this provision derived from multicultural policy perspectives.

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requires that a language policy be introduced for all school children in which the traditional dichotomy between foreign language instruction for the majority of indig-enous pupils and home language instruction for IM pupils is put aside. Given the experiences abroad (e.g., the Victorian School of Languages in Melbourne), language schools can become centers of expertise where a variety of languages are taught, if the students’ demand is low and/or spread over many schools. In line with the proposed principles for primary schooling, similar ideas could be worked out for secondary schools where learning more than one language across European nation-states is already an established curricular practice. The abovementioned principles would recognize plurilingualism in an increasingly multicultural environment as an asset for all youngsters and for society at large. The EU, the Council of Europe, and the UNESCO could function as leading transnational agencies in promoting such con-cepts. The UNESCO Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity (updated in 2002) is very much in line with the views expressed here, in particular in its plea to encourage linguistic diversity, to respect the mother tongue at all levels of education, and to foster the learning of more than one language from a very early age.

Cross-References

▶Language Policy in Education: Practices, Ideology, Management

▶Language Education, Pluralism, and Citizenship

▶Language Policy and Education in Russia

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Language Policy and Education in the New Europe

Tilburg University