ETHNIC, LINGUISTIC, RELIGIOUS, REGIONAL, ETC.
We will firstly look at the principles and values that inspired French education policies with respect to ethnic, linguistic, religious, regional minorities, and will then look at real practice and the measures that could enable us to develop an intercultural education that recognises both the adhesion of citizens to the same values, respects the same laws and, above all, recognises differences whatever their origin.
The legislation in this domain has been listed in appendix 2. 1 – THE REPUBLICAN SCHOOL MODEL
The demand by minorities or specific social bodies for the right to different treatment compared to other citizens has been a bone of contention in France ever since the French Revolution in 1789 and the universal declaration of the rights of man. As all people, by their very nature, are free and equal humans, the new political representatives of France, in the name of this value of universalism, recognised the same rights for all individuals, independent of their community of birth and their social, ethnic or religious background, and at the same time abolished anything that might link these same individuals to a specific social entity. On the one hand, the same citizenship rights were recognised for members of the “third estate” (as opposed to the noblesse and the clergy, the Catholic church), Jews and black slaves. On the other hand, the corporations that governed professions under the Ancien Regime (previous monarchical system) were abolished, and priests who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Republic and remained under the foreign papal authority of Rome, were banned from continuing to preach to their flock.
This historical background inspired the compulsory, secular and free republican school model, permanently institutionalised by the Ferry law in 1882 and regarded as sacred ever since, even today considered as a golden age.
During the 3rd Republic, claims by regional minorities were bitterly fought, embodying resistance to a republican citizenship which was developed as a value of a universality assimilated with uniformity. To be a good French citizen, you had to speak
French. Little schoolchildren who spoke in their regional dialect, pejoratively termed as “patois,” were corrected by a whack on the fingers with a ruler.
Even today, attachment to republican values and equality means that we continue to promote a diploma gained at the end of secondary schooling via a national exam, the baccalauréat, rather than a certificate delivered by the individual schools, while we recruit public sector workers and secondary and higher education teachers via a national exam, or an academic exam for primary school teachers, using the same type of tests. Criticism regarding the “baccalauréat”, i.e. that it’s very expensive and takes up too much of the staff’s time, falls on deaf ears. The contradiction between legislation which obliges schools to work on local projects and the impossibility for their heads to recruit local teachers, who would be best equipped to manage the project being developed by the team in place, is largely ignored.
Some things have improved, however. Nowadays, pupils can choose their regional language as an option at school. As we already saw, with the creation of ZEPs along the lines of positive discrimination, republican equality was officially refuted in 1981 in its role as the only means of ensuring “equal opportunities” and compensating for existing social inequalities.
After reminding us that “During my primary school days, there was the school of the “devil” and that of the “clerics,” Jean-Manuel Queiroz (2001) analyses the deconstruction of the original republican model, adapted to a society which has been replaced by another for which it was no longer tenable. His research is supported by that of Gabriel Langouët and Alain Léger (1991, 1994, 1997) on private schooling in France. “One of the results shows that 75%, of French families today, whether their children go to private or secular schools, agree that it is normal that there are two school networks : the public and the private. This is new. We are no longer at war. The same study also identified material proof of this mental evolution: the unsuspected extent of what could be termed as ‘school zapping’ practices, whereby many families change ‘networks’ during the course of schooling, at times for reasons of commodity, but mainly for exclusively school-based reasons. And the parents whose children move from one network to another, say: ‘Being able to choose is a good thing.’”
J-M Queiroz draws “indications from the fact that we are no longer in the great period of this intrinsic liaison between the secular republic and the secular school. We are in another period.”(p. 195-196). The task for education researchers and education movements is thus to construct “a new
secular myth (… ) in totally new conditions which take social and cultural realties into
account,” in other words, a “lycée” that is not simply designed for “the sons of the rich.” As we have already seen, in line with the aims of the French education system, 80% of an age group in these secondary schools must be able to pass the baccalauréat. The question therefore
becomes “how can we invent (…) a new means of transmitting knowledge that integrates the pupil as a
person rather than the old abstraction that secular ideology imposes ? How can universalism be squared
with the reality of multiculturalism, withoutalso accepting something we have excellent reasons for, the ‘communitarism tradition’ ? How can we do this without agreeing with the‘anti-pedagogy’ faction who
see in it the renunciation of real teaching and a scandalous alignment with the specific cultures of our pupils, their ethnic specificities, that of mass ‘unculture’ ” (lack of culture) (p. 200-201).
Dominique Schnapper (2000), like J-M Queiroz, argued that this was what led the original education system to adapt to the concrete realties in the society of its time. Now we should do the same with today’s society as, linked to the European and global economy, school is no longer the same and has become massified.
“Social integration developed in France around the idea of individual citizenship. It is as if political society was influenced by Rousseau’s general ideology which was hostile to intermediary bodies. However, he acted according to a regulatory principle which was conveyed by institutions and social practices, not by a description of the reality.”
It is true that state schools strictly observe this regulatory principle.
“Neither regional specificities nor national origins nor the religious beliefs of the pupils were taken into account. They were all treated uniformly and equally as future citizens and all received the same teaching (…). By treating all children in the same way, without taking their origins or social characteristics into account, the republican school formed citizens who shared the same language and the same historical and cultural references” (p. 11).
Nonetheless, “the institutions did not manage the ‘citizen’ but real individuals. The universal principles were inevitably adapted to specific cases.” (p. 13).
The same applies to schools today as those of yesterday: “Universal principles are asserted but, given the massification of education, how can we avoid adapting them to specific populations as we have always done in the past ?” (p. 18).
Under the 3rd Republic, the State negotiated the dates of holidays, a day off on Thursdays, replaced by Wednesdays, so that catechism could be taught by the Catholic Church, and with the agreement of the Regional Education Authority inspectors, the teachers in Lorraine integrated the Jewish calendar into the school timetable. The departments of Alsace and Lorraine still retain the special status they were given after becoming part of Germany, following the defeat of France.
“We have to keep the universal republican” principle of a school that transmits the founding idea that political legitimacy and the source of social ties rely on “the free and equal community of citizens” as, for the author, this is the closest formula to democratic values (Schnapper, 1994). It has fewer perverse effects than the idea of communitarism, but it must also, inevitably, be continually improved.
Intercultural education, which was inconceivable at the time of the 3rd Republic when school stopped at the end of primary level for all except a minority of privileged
children, has become a requirement, both with the target of more than 2/3 of all children reaching the level of baccalauréat, and the multiplicity of different cultures, particularly Islam, which is now the second religion in France by the number of adherents. France is the European country with the largest immigrant population from muslim countries.
We are going to try to identify some of the ways intercultural education is introduced in schools in France, which reflects a position that is both respectful of the historical and cultural French context, the necessary basis for French society and its education system, and the multiplicity of cultures that make up France today.
2– TOWARDS AN INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION IN FRANCE