Languages in Contact and Conflict: Contrasting Experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium

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Page i Languages in Contact and Conflict Contrasting Experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium Edited by Sue Wright with Helen Kelly MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon · Philadelphia ·Adelaide

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Languages in Contact and Conflict : Contrasting Experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium Wright, Sue Multilingual Matters 1853592781 9781853592782 9780585171692 English Sociolinguistics--Netherlands--Congresses, Languages in contact--Netherlands--Congresses, Sociolinguistics-Belgium--Congresses, Languages in contact--Belgium-Congresses. 1995 P40.5.L382N485 1995eb 306.4/4/09492 Sociolinguistics--Netherlands--Congresses, Languages in contact--Netherlands--Congresses, Sociolinguistics-Belgium--Congresses, Languages in contact--Belgium-Congresses.

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land Education Department, Centre for Applied Linguistics and Language, Griffiths University. Linguistic Minorities Project (1985) The Other Languages of England. London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul. Mullard, C. (1984) Anti-Racist Education: The Three O's. Coventry: National Association for Racial Education. Taylor, M. and Hegarty, S. (1985) The Best of Both Worlds? Windsor: NFER-Nelson. Thompson, L. (1993) The Cleveland study: A study of bilingual children in a nursery school. Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Minority Languages, University of Wales, Cardiff, to appear in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. (1994) Ecolinguistic biographies: Social networks in an urban nursery school. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on the Maintenance and Loss of Minority Languages, Nordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, available on ERIC Document Reproduction Service, Ref. ED 364 116/FL 021 722. Troyna, B. (1991) Underachievers or underrated? The experience of pupils of South Asia origin in a secondary school. British Educational Research Journal 17, 361-76.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Languages in Contact and Conflict: Contrasting Experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium/Edited by Sue Wright 1. Sociolinguistics-Netherlands-Congresses. 2. Languages in contact-Netherlands-Congresses. 3. Sociolinguistics-Belgium-Congresses. 4. Languages in contact-Belgium-Congresses. I. Wright, Sue P40.5.L382N485 1995 306.4'4'09492-dc20 94-47320 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-278-1 (hbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7SJ. USA: 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007, USA. Australia: P.O. Box 6025, 83 Gilles Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. Copyright © 1995 Sue Wright and the authors of individual chapters. This book is also available as Vol. 1, No. 2 of the journal Current Issues in Language and Society. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press, Exeter.

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Page iii Contents Sue Wright: Preface

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Sjaak Kroon and Ton Vallen: Multilingualism and Education: An Overview of Language and Education Policies for Ethnic Minorities in the Netherlands 5 Linda Thompson: A Response to Kroon and Vallen: A Parallel Overview of the Education Policy for Bilingual Children in Britain 32 Dennis Ager: A Response to Kroon and Vallen: Questions of Citizenship, Nationality and Social Cohesiveness

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Ludo Beheydt: The Linguistic Situation in the New Belgium

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Peter Hans Nelde: Language in Contact and Conflict: The Belgian Experience and the European Union 65 The Debate

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Preface Sue Wright Institute for the Study of Language and Society, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET This issue of Current Issues in Language and Society is based on papers given by four scholars from the Netherlands and Belgium in the Spring terms of 1993 and 1994. Sjaak Kroon and Ton Vallen examine new developments in the Dutch Government's policy responses to the linguistic minorities constituted by recent immigration; Ludo Beheydt and Peter Nelde discuss the theoretical implications of linguistic groups in contact and conflict with one another and the political reality which frames the lived experience of Belgium Although the linguistic situation in the two countries is clearly different, the geographical proximity of Belgium and the Netherlands, their shared history until 1830, their common language and their coupling in the designation 'the Benelux countries' might have led us to expect them to exhibit at least some similarities in the areas which interest us here; that is to say, the situation of linguistic minorities and majorities and the prevalent philosophies and policies concerning language and language education in multilingual societies. However, as we prepared for the seminars, listened to and discussed the papers and edited the final work, it was the salience of the numerous differences which told. Considering these has brought us to reflect upon the following aspects of the Western European tradition which both countries share and which they have interpreted quite differently. The Nation-StateOne People, One Language The strong European tradition of linguistic nationalism dating back to the 19th centurythe basic tenet of which, is that the nation-state should contain within its boundaries one people, one language, one cultureis waning. 1 Churchill (1986) reports this as a growing trend, in Western Europe at least. Quoting an OECD report, he identifies the Netherlands along with Sweden and Denmark as being in the vanguard of this process. Certainly with regard to policies for new immigrants with mother tongues other than those of the host country, tolerance towards and support for multilingualism and multiculturalism are evident in the new policy documents. Belgium, on the other hand, is locked, as it were, out of this trend into the earlier scenario. The federal state which came into being in March 1994 is the culmination of the 'minority' autochthonous group's struggle (a minority which was at times numerically superior to the majority) to achieve the 19th century dreamone people, one language, one political entity. Now that this has been achieved there is little space for the 'other' minorities, those constituted by recent immigration; the equality of treatment achieved by the autochthonous minorities is still so recent, the disputes so near in the past, that the state has not accorded

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such minorities the same language rights that they experience across the border in the Netherlands. Indeed the Belgians have been cautioned by the European Union, for failing to implement the very limited linguistic rights enshrined in Community Law. Thus, we have the paradox that a resolutely monolingual state, the Netherlands, is taking steps to accommodate linguistic difference, whereas Belgium, the bilingual state, is not yet in a position where it feels it can accommodate new linguistic minorities in a more generous manner. This underscores the point that groups struggling for their rights tend to have limited objectives, usually restricted to acquiring these rights for themselves. It is an academic perspective to imagine that people fight for rights in the abstract; it is normally only their own freedom which interests them, not the parallel rights of other groups. Public Opinion In a democracy, educational policy objectives derive from what majority public opinion desires or will tolerate. As we read Kroon & Vallen's discussion of the policy document, Ceders in de tuin, we are not really surprised that the Dutch are debating such provision; it fits comfortably with their reputation. They are, after all, the people who were renowned in the early 1980s for spending a third of their income on social welfare (a generosity funded in part by the bonanza of natural gas but a policy also stemming from a national consensus on disadvantage and poverty) (Lewis, 1987). In the Belgian situation the policy objectives again derive from majority public opinion. Here in fact there are two 'majority' opinionsDutch and French. The rivalry between the two groups and the Dutch struggle for parity have had a deleterious effect on the aspirations of other minorities. 2 'Mother tongue teaching and the appointment of bilingual teachers... are virtually impossible because of political obstacles'. (Boos-Nünning et al., 1986: 33). However, because of traditional respect for the decision of the majority, the right of the majorities to impose their will appears to legitimise the scant regard paid to the linguistic groups constituted by recent immigration and their related language rights. This raises questions of the nature of democracy itself and the extent to which its organising principle should be the rule of the majority or the protection of minorities from majority excesses. Permanence of Residence. In their attitudes towards post-war immigration, European states have tended to fall into two groups: those who for a long time imagined that immigrants were temporary residents who would return to their countries of origin, to be replaced by new workers, and countries who recognised at an early stage that migration was definitive and who accordingly made plans for assimilation. An OECD report puts Belgium into the first group along with Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the Netherlands into the latter group along with France (Churchill, 1986). Public opinion has tended to accept mother tongue provision where it was commonly held that the recipients of such education would

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eventually leave the state. Where minority groups are clearly permanent residents in the state, then majority opinion (in Europe at least) has proved far less accommodating towards education in any medium but the majority language. As Kroon & Vallen's letter-writers exemplifythe majority desires the linguistic integration of minority linguistic groups who arrive. In the Ceders in de tuin document there are clear efforts to influence public opinion for a greater degree of cultural diversification; the question of language is, however, still not clearly resolved. 'Own language and culture' is neither part of the mainstream curriculum nor a maintenance programme, nor does it provide access to the mainstream curriculum through the mother tongue. Its role, and one which is undoubtedly very useful, is to show that the host society caresa littleabout the language and the culture that the child is bringing to school. One of the major problems in compensatory language education, as Dennis Ager argues in his response to Kroon & Vallen's paper, is the difficulty a majority population experiences in making the jump from helping the individual child who is disadvantaged to helping a whole group by positive discrimination. Most people have no difficulty in accepting the former, for it is legitimated by what already happens for handicapped or educationally retarded children (although, of course, the dangers in such parallels should not be underestimated). By contrast, many people experience unease at positive action when applied to a whole group indiscriminately. Such action smacks of privilege or preferential treatment. Equity The principle of equity is also a powerful force in the European tradition we pride ourselves on our commitment to the ideal of human rights for all. In Europe we can identify a set of stages in which the principle of linguistic equity in the education system is broadened to include linguistic and cultural minorities on their own terms rather than on those of the host society. First comes the struggle to obtain recognition of the linguistic group's special educational needs; then the phase where any language provision is welcomed; next the period of consolidation and adaptation where language provision is targeted to help individual development and social promotion of the group; finally there is a period of coexistence where the question of rights is no longer an issue, because these are legally and practically entrenched. It is interesting that Belgium has attained the final level for the three autochthonous languages but has had to separate them to achieve it. The Belgian situation does not, even for these languages, show us a model of how to achieve pluralism. In the Netherlands, it is quite clear that for new linguistic minorities the country is squarely in the second phase and debating the third. It is also likely that some of the temporary measures introduced as a palliative to social disadvantage will move on to become established rights. Finance There are two practical questions which are in the background, even in the

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theoretical discussion. The first is the legal status of any of the policy actions envisaged. How will they be enforced? There is a continuum from the power of law (legislation) to the power of money (financial incentives). And, all these policies have a 'real' costwhat the state must renounce if it introduces minority language provision. In a situation of scarce resources, who suffers? Conversely, what is the social cost of doing nothing? Cost effectiveness analysts attempt to determine 'externalities' i.e. those costs which would not appear on a balance sheet. The negative costs are immensely hard to quantify but are no less significant for that. And there are opportunities for social gain which are lost when language resources disappear. They may be symbolic, but nonetheless conducive to good relations with the providing states, or there may be real economic advantage in maintaining channels of communication in the language of the providing countries. None of these problems, situationsor opportunitiesare peculiar to the Netherlands and Belgium; the multilingual populations of Europe face a very similar future. The interest here is to see the very different responses to the multilingual situation in adjacent areas of the continent. Finally There is no debate for the Kroon paper since it took place at a time before we decided to tape the discussiona great pity since the group waxed very eloquent on the subject. We do have, however, a written response from two of the audience from that day, Linda Thompson of Durham University and Dennis Ager of Aston. Future seminars and issues of the journal will include John Edwards on language issues in Quebec, Charlotte Hoffman on the Catalan sitution, Lawrence Venuti on translating cultures, Teun van Dijk on discourse and society, Bernard Spolsky and Richard Benton on language revitalization, Linda Thompson and Alison Sealey on child language and Michael Clyne on Australian language policies. Anyone interested in participating as part of the audience of these seminars should contact us. Please write to Helen Kelly, Department of Languages and European Studies, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK. Notes 1. Although of course we note how the idea has recently regained some currency in Eastern Europe. 2. Although a beneficial effect for the tiny German group who benefit, as an autochthonous minority, from all the rights wrested by the Dutch. References Boos-Nünning, U., Hohmann, M., Reich, H. and Wittek, F. (1986) Towards Intercultural Education. London: CILT. Churchill, S. (1986) The Education of Linguistic and Cultural Minorities in the OECD Countries. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Lewis F. (1987) EuropeA Tapestry of Nations. London: Unwin Hyman.

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Multilingualism and Education: An Overview of Language and Education Policies for Ethnic Minorities in the Netherlands. Sjaak Kroon and Ton Vallen Research Group on Language and Minorities, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands Abstract In common with other Western European States, the Netherlands has become a country of permanent settlement for immigrants. The proportion of the Dutch population which might be considered to be of immigrant origin depends on the criteria adopted for assessing status, but remains high whichever system is used. This has caused the multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual nature of modern Dutch society to become an issue of central importance in the Netherlands. In particular, educational provision has led to debate. Government policy has promoted intercultural education for all pupils and, within well-defined limits, objectives have been largely accepted and sometimes achieved. The question of language education has, however, proved more problematic and all the classic problems common in multilingual societies have been encountered. As the Dutch now discuss and implement elements of the Ceders in de Tuin report, the 1992 policy document, there is a questioning of the belief that it is mostly socio-economic factors which are the decisive factors in the underachievement noted amongst school children from ethnic minority groups. Underpinning the report is the Dutch commitment to belief in integration with respect for difference, a position which makes necessary a rigorous analysis of the assimilation/pluralism debate and the Netherlands' stance. 1 Introduction Despite a considerable wealth of literature in the Netherlands, both on language and education policies concerning ethnic minorities and on possible future developments in this area, this field is perhaps not really one which will stimulate large numbers to read intensively. In part, this is undoubtedly due to the fact that such policies are regarded as the territory of government, civil servants and a handful of academics who treat the subject in dry, abstract dissertations which do not always have a direct relationship with everyday language usage and (language) education practice. Such a viewpoint, however, can be criticised on several counts. After all, everybody has their own judgements and makes their own statements about language, about the quality and value of their own language use and that of others, and about the aims, norms and values of (language) education. And although this does not mean that everybody is, therefore, involved in language and education policy, it does mean they are involvedas a rule, perhaps, unconsciously soin language and education politics. Statements like 'those foreigners should first of all learn Dutch properly...' and 'when I was at school it wasn't such a mess in the classrooms

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and at least we learned how to spell' are political judgements about language and education that are often heardnot only from the mouths of politicians and administrators. What is more, the positions that national and local authorities, advisory bodies, school boards, teachers, etc. adopt (or, perhaps consciously, do not adopt, for that too is politicsbut not policy!) towards language/education policies and politics determine public opinion and public judgement to a large extent. Similarly, their positions have great influence on the key questions What is possible in the life of a language community and in (language) education? What will be accepted or tolerated? And, last but not leastWhat is to be funded? Moreover, since governors and policy makers in turn are evidently influenced by public opinion, the circle is complete. In short, language and education policy/politics are not at all abstract; they form part of people's everyday reflection on the practice of language and education. This becomes clear when official statements or decisions concerning language issues are made. One may cite the many pens that are regularly taken upfor example, the number of letters to the editor in Dutch newspapers, commenting on language-political issues such as the pros and cons of dialect, the use of English as a language of instruction in university education, ethnic minority language teaching, sexism in language, the 'failure' of language teaching, correct pronunciation, etc. (cf. Kroon & Vallen 1989a: 17-19). The type of statement that is generally made in this context, shows that although every personas a language user and education 'consumer'is a language and education expert from a political point of view, s/he is at the same time a language and education 'layperson' from a policy point of view. Against this background we will first provide a brief sketch of the immigrant situation in the Netherlands before discussing some general aspects of Dutch education policy with respect to ethnic minorities. Then we will discuss the policies concerning intercultural education, ethnic minority language teaching and teaching Dutch as a second language and the facilities for implementing these policies. Included in this discussion will be statements made in a recent policy report about these subjects, entitled Ceders in de tuin (Cedars in the Garden) (CALO, 1992). And finally, in the last section we will raise some general points of criticism about Ceders in de tuin before giving a brief summative assessment and evaluation together with a forecast of what may now happen. 2 The Netherlands as a Country of Immigration When estimates are made of the number of immigrants in the Netherlands, the main criterion is very often that at least one of the parents should have been born in another country. This means that there are at the moment some 2.2 million inhabitants of immigrant origin, which corresponds roughly to 15% of the total Dutch population. This percentage is about the same as that during the Dutch Golden Age, i.e. the 17th century (Lucassen & Penninx, 1985). Within this large and diverse group of immigrants in the Netherlands (as in most other Western European countries), two sociocultural subgroups can be distinguished:

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(1) Immigrants and their children who come from Western or comparable industrialised countries and whose sociocultural backgrounds differ hardly, if at all, from those of the majority of the native Dutch population. This group (which would include people from Germany, France, Belgium and Britain amongst others) has, generally speaking, little or no difficulties in terms of their social participation in Dutch society. (2) Immigrants and their children whose socio-cultural backgrounds differ considerably from those of the native Dutch population (e.g. people from Turkey, Morocco, Surinam, the Antilles and the Moluccas). Most people in this subgroupwhich constitutes the majority of the Dutch immigrant populationexperience considerable problems in terms of their participation in a number of diverse social areas. In this contribution we are mainly concerned with the latter group. Although there have been quite a number of discussions about content and terminology, this group is, in our opinion, best described as 'ethnic minorities'. The concept of 'ethnicity' refers, in this context to the fact that these groups consider themselves to be different from other groups (self definition), and are considered to be different by other groups (other definition), on the basis of specific characteristics (e.g. common racial, cultural, religious, language or historical characteristics). The concept of 'minority' is a relational one that refers to the fact that these groups find themselves in a disadvantaged position in many social domains when compared to the sociological majority (e.g. in education, employment, housing and political decisionmaking). In many cases this disadvantaged position is partly the result of disfavouring by the majority group (Kroon & Vallen, 1989b). Incidentally, it should be noted that both these concepts are dynamic quantities; the question to what extent and on the basis of which criteria a certain group considers itself an ethnic group, and also the extent of discrimination against a minority compared to a majority, are determined by the dynamics of social development (for a more elaborate discussion of these two concepts and their implications, see Tennekes, 1986; Vanhoren, 1992). If we include the illegal immigrants who currently live in the Netherlands (roughly estimated at between 50,000 and 150,000 people) and use the definition of ethnic minorities mentioned above, about 1 million inhabitants of the Netherlands roughly 6.5%-7% of the population can be considered as belonging to ethnic minority groups (first and second generation). Almost half of these come from the former Dutch colonies of Surinam, the Dutch Antilles and the republic of Indonesia, including approximately 40,000 Moluccans. The other half comes, for the most part, from the Mediterranean, mainly from Turkey and Morocco. Spaniards, Italians and immigrants from the former Yugoslavia are present in much smaller numbers, although of course this last group and groups of immigrants from other Eastern European countries have recently increased substantially. Finally, there has traditionally been a relatively large number of Chinese in the Netherlands (currently estimated at some 60,000). The highest concentrations of ethnic minorities are found in the industrial areas and big cities (for further details see Eurostat, 1991; Extra & Verhoeven, 1992). As can be concluded from Table 1, the numbers of immigrants and of members

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Table 1 Population figures based on nationality and birth country of person, father and mother and combination of birth-country person/father/mother on January 1, 1990 (Source: Roelandt, Roijen & Veenman, 1991: 25). Groups Nationality BirthBirthBirthBirthcountry: country: country: country: person father mother p/f/m Dutch 14250656 13725771 13361591 1322815512667804 Greeks 4456 5236 7535 5455 9200 Italians 16745 14134 27185 16114 31403 Former Yugoslavs 12824 14475 19275 20594 24232 Portuguese 8040 7885 10181 9582 11542 Spaniards 17429 17560 23380 21729 28724 Turks 191455 141250 202897 199396 205898 Antilleans/Arubans 0 56063 49613 52510 81079 Surinamese 14609 157054 205010 205799 236995 CapeVerdians 2341 7957 11956 11848 12254 Moroccans 147975 115488 164058 159657 167810 Tunisians 2441 2647 4040 2944 4606 Chinese 6163 21319 33551 30988 35899 Vietnamese 5194 7170 7901 8110 8735 Other 212246 598565 764401 919693 1366393 Total 14892574 14892574 14892574 1489257414892574 Total excl. Dutch 641918 1166803 1530983 1664419 2224770 of ethnic minorities are not the same in all statistics and surveys, because the criteria used for identifying these groups often vary a great deal and are constantly under debate. It makes a considerable difference whether one uses nationality (passport), birth-country, birth-country of father, birth-country of mother or a combination of the last three as the criterion. Compared to the nationality criterion, the combined birth-country criterion leads to a remarkable fall or rise in the number of indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants of the Netherlands respectively (Extra, 1992). Despite the fact that the Dutch government has recently adopted a more stringent immigration policy, new immigration, family reunifications and higher numbers of refugees and asylum seekers have all resulted in an increase in the population of more than 50,000 people per year (CALO, 1992). Recent prognoses have shown that this number will continue to grow over the next few years as a result of a further increase in the number of asylum requests granted, the opening of the internal European borders and developments in Central and Eastern Europe and in other regions of the world. It is estimated that around the year 2000 roughly one third of the population under the age of 35 who live in the

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medium-sized and large cities of Western Europe will be of immigrant origin (Widgeren, 1975). And already we can see that about 50% of the first year intake into primary education in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague (as in other European cities) consists of ethnic minority children (for more information about Berlin, see e.g. Kroon, Pagel & Vallen, 1993). Like the other EU countries, the Netherlands does not have the type of immigration policy pursued in Canada and Australia for example. But it should be observed that for the past thirty years the Netherlands has had a considerable surplus of immigrants over emigrants (61,000 people in 1991 and 71,000 in 1992) and that the majority of immigrants have settled or will settle permanently in the Netherlands. This has, defacto, caused the Netherlands to evolve (along with most other Western European States) from a country of immigration, (possibly temporary) into a country of permanent settlementa fact which has been recognised by the government and by most (democratic) political parties. But it is often noted that there have so far been very few adequate, well-considered and coherent policy measures in this area. Moreover, even after thirty years there are still politicians who claim that Europe has been 'taken by surprise' by this new social development; such statements are evidence of ostrich policy and cynicismto say the leastrather than of realism. Since the 1983 Minderhedennota (Minorities Policy Plan) the following target groups are distinguished in Dutch policy on minorities: (1) caravan dwellers; (2) members of ethnic minorities who are legal inhabitants of the Netherlands and who are of Moluccan, Surinam or Antillean origin, as well as foreign employees and their family members from the Mediterranean; (3) gypsies and refugees (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, 1983). It is striking that the Government merely lists the target groups of its minority policy, rather than defining them or explaining why certain groups are and others are not considered main target groups. One could imagine why the very large group of immigrants from the former Dutch East Indieswith the exception of Moluccanswas left out of consideration (but see films like My Blue Heaven and the literary works of Marion Bloem). However, the fact that the Chinese and second-generation Moluccans, Surinamese and Antilleans did not constitute main target groups was remarkable then and remains so, especially in the light of the situation in 1993; an official amendment to this list should have been made long ago. A possible reason for limiting the target groups to the aforementioned populationsapart from budgetary considerationsmay be that governments tend to place the emphasis entirely or as much as possible on socioeconomic disadvantages, which obstructs their view of the ethno-cultural differences which are so important to many minorities. For those minority groups whose differences cannot be (directly) interpreted in terms of disadvantages (e.g. the Chinese) this has meant that they are left out of consideration in the minority policy's allocation of special facilities and services. As we shall see below, however, there are perhaps signs of a change in this respect in the teaching of ethnic minority languages.

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3 Government Policy on Education for Ethnic Minorities It would be inappropriate and impossible to describe here in full detail the Dutch government's policy on education for ethnic minorities. The reader who wants a comprehensive overview of policy since the 1960s can refer not only to the relevant policy papers but also to the volumes of such journals as Migrantenstudies, Samenwijs, Stimulans (Migrant Studies, Coeducation, Stimulus) and the former journal Gastonderwijs (Guest Education) and from there trace the core publications. Similarly, he or she may find Entzinger (1990), CALO (1992) and Lucassen & Köbben (1992) very useful. In the section below, however, we will limit ourselves to an overview of the main developments since the 1980s, in the areas of intercultural education, the teaching of ethnic minority languages, and Dutch as a second language. In doing so we will restrict ourselves mainly to primary and secondary education. An overview of the organisation of the Dutch education system is given in Figure 1.

Figure 1 The Dutch education system (Source: Ministry of Education and Science Docinform nr. 332 E).

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Without wanting to trivialise everything that has happened in previous decades, it should be observed that the multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual nature of Dutch society has only gained political recognition over the past fifteen years. This recognition has been translated into concrete policy measures (including education). Although in the 1970s the various academic disciplines, social organisations and educational practictioners repeatedly and emphatically pointed out that most immigrants would settle permanently in the Netherlands and that therefore more numerous and structural facilities were required, it took a report by the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbelid WRR (Advisory Council on Government Policy) to persuade the Government to change its position. This advisory report, which appeared in 1979 under the title Etnische Minderheden (Ethnic Minorities), explicitly discarded the notion of 'temporariness': The Government's policy will have to assume the possibility of permanent residence in the Netherlands. This entails the acceptance of the fact that there has been a continued growth in the ethnic and racial diversity of Dutch society. Society as a whole (and therefore the majority as well) will have to adapt itself to this changed situation (WRR, 1979: XXXIX). On the basis of this position, the WRR distinguished three fields requiring a government response in policy terms: problems of disadvantage among the ethnic minorities, problems of culture and identity, and problems for the native majority population. In the early 1980s the Ministry of Education and Science and the Home Office published policy plans on ethnic minorities (cf. Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, 1981 and Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, 1983). The first document, published by the Ministry of Education and Science, is particularly important for our purpose, in that it formulates two of the main aims of education policy: (1) education should prepare and enable members of minority groups to fully function and participate in Dutch societysocio-economically, socially and democraticallywhile offering them the possibility of doing so from their own cultural background. (2) education shoulde.g. by means of intercultural educationstimulate the acculturation of minorities and the other members of Dutch society. Acculturation here means a bipartite or multipartite process of getting to know each other, accepting and respecting each other and having an open mind towards each other's cultures or elements thereof (Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, 1981: 6). In the implementation of these main aims, education policy focuses on four points, one of which is connected with the establishment of a direct stimulation policy on immigrants as part of the general education priority policy. Of the remaining three, two are directly and one is indirectly connected with (elements of) language education. In brief, it is stated that education should contribute to eliminating the ethnic

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minorities' disadvantages in society in general and in education (e.g. through special attention and facilities for Dutch as a second language); that education should take into account the identity of ethnic minorities (e.g. through the teaching of a minority's own language and culture); and that education should contribute to the formation of a harmonious, multi-ethnic society (e.g. through intercultural education). Between 1980 and 1990 various reports and plans were written by the Ministry of Education and Science. At the same time the general minority policy was expanded and elements of it were implemented. By the end of the 1980s, however, it became increasingly clear thatdespite much effortthe social position of the ethnic minorities had hardly improved; there were high unemployment rates, disappointing school results, limited social participation, etc. These findings induced the Government to commission the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid to draw up another report on its minority policy. This 1989 report entitled Allochtonenbeleid (Allochthon Policy) strongly emphasises the fight against social disadvantage (WRR, 1989). It includes, for example, the proposal that it should be made compulsory for unemployed adult immigrants to learn Dutch, and that if this obligation is not fulfilled, their unemployment or social security benefits should be withdrawn. The preservation of language and culture was deemed less important and should not, according to the WRR, be given priority. It was even suggested that lessons in a minority's own language and culture were a waste of time and would be better replaced by lessons in Dutch as a second language. Contrary to what had happened in 1979 the government this time reacted rather reservedly to the new report, as is clearly shown in a 1991 policy paper by the Ministry of Education and Science on ethnic minority language teaching (Wallage, 1991). The same reserve is apparent in the October 1992 report Ceders in de tuin which deals with the future policy on educating immigrant pupils (CALO, 1992). This report was drawn up by a commission which had been appointed by the State Secretary for Education and Science and which was chaired by former PvdA (Labour) Minister of Education and Science, Van Kemenade. We shall return to this report and to the Wallage 1991 policy paper below. For now we will restrict ourselves to the general position assumed by the Van Kemenade Commission. 1 The commission has pointed out that it is of paramount importance for the education of ethnic minorities that three separate strands be distinguished: a policy to counter disadvantage, a policy towards newcomers and a policy on first language teaching. On the basis of results from research, the Commission states that the observed disadvantages of ethnic minorities in education are primarily caused by factors related to their socio-economic status (especially the parents' low education levels) and by their limited command of Dutch. Furthermore, the Commission is of the opinion that the underachievement of immigrant pupils in education is not influenced by the supposedly lower average intelligence levels of immigrant pupils (as alleged by certain tests) in comparison with native pupils in comparable socio-economic circumstances. Nor are they influenced by ethnic, cultural or religious differences between immigrant and native pupils, or by the

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attention which education pays to the immigrant pupils' first languages. Different groups of immigrant children (i.e. with different origins and backgrounds) show a differentiated and divergent picture of underachievement in education and the different degrees of underachievement are already discernible in the pre-school period. Thus, since the immigrant pupils' underachievement cannot be ascribed to ethnic-cultural differences, the commission has pleaded for a strict separation of disadvantage policy and cultural policy and for substantial and financial support in these two areas, especially in those regions and cities where it is most needed (i.e. the Educational Priority Policy areas). In the following sections we will discuss in more detail the developments that have taken place in the late 1980s and early 1990s with respect to intercultural education, the teaching of ethnic minority languages and the teaching of Dutch as a second language. 4 Intercultural Education A new Primary Education Act has been in effect in the Netherlands since 1985. With regard to intercultural (or multicultural) education it contains the important statement that education starts from the principle that pupils grow up in a multicultural society (Section 9, Subsection 3). Similarly, in the legislation on secondary education which was introduced in 1989, it is stated in Section 27 that a school curriculum must contain a justification for the way in which attention is paid to the fact that pupils grow up in a multicultural society. Thus, these sections of the law have made intercultural education one of the overall principles of all education for all pupils, of ethnic Dutch origin as well as immigrant or immigrant origin. This principle was worked out in greater detail in policy papers in 1984 and 1986 and in an implementation paper of 1988. The 1986 policy paper (Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, 1986) states that the aim of intercultural education is to teach pupils to deal with similarities and differences that are related to aspects of ethnic and cultural background with an eye to functioning equally and jointly in Dutch society. From this general aim the policy paper derives three sub-aims: (1) The acquisition of a knowledge of each other's backgrounds, circumstances and culture (both by the native population(s) and the ethnic groups in our country), and the mutual acquisition of an insight into the way in which values, norms and circumstances determine people's behaviour. (2) The peaceful coexistence in our country of groups of different ethnic and cultural origins. (3) The prevention of and combat against prejudice, discrimination and racism based on ethnic and/or cultural differences among all population groups (Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, 1986: 4). This list of worthy aims cannot conceal the fact the Government does not make it clear exactly how intercultural education might be realised in schools. This difficult task is left to teachers in their everyday practice. Although intercultural education is still veiled in obscurity and subject to a great deal of change, it now

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looks as if four basic principles have been commonly accepted in the Netherlands: (1) Intercultural education should not be a separate, isolated school subject but a principle that applies to all teaching and all subjects. (2) Intercultural education is not only meant for pupils from ethnic minority groups; all pupils grow up in a multicultural society. (3) Intercultural education should be aimed at the 'here and now': Dutch children, Turkish children and children from other ethnic minority groups are growing up in the 1990s for the multicultural society of the 21st century. In that sense, the history of the Ottoman Empire, the Arabisation of Morocco or the history of the slaves in Surinam are only marginally relevant. (4) Intercultural education is not an umbrella term or synonym for everything that is related to the education of ethnic minorities (e.g. second language teaching, minority language teaching) and even less so for such matters as international student and pupil exchange programmes, training programmes abroad or course programmes in intercultural communication at universities and polytechnics. However, it is of course advisable to organise such activities within the framework of, or in connection with, intercultural education. But other than this, opinions and ideas are very divided and there is a great lack of clarity and certainty. The most fundamental discussion a few years ago involved the supporters of the 'intercultural interpretation' and those of the 'anti-racist interpretation'. The former advocate so-called 'encounter education', which aims at the harmonious coexistence of pupils from the various ethnic groups at school and consequently in society later on. The 'anti-racists' by contrast use the ethnic minorities' structurally weak social position as a starting point and consider the fight against prejudice, stereotyping and racism as the central theme in intercultural education. For some time there was a polarisation of these two streams which has led to numerous theoretical-ideological polemics, which were not constructive, especially for education. However, over the past few years the discussions have become slightly milder in tone and the two sides seem to have found some common ground; after all there are now anti-racist educational tools and suggested curricula, and the intercultural education tools now contain anti-racist elements (for an overview, see van de Guchte, 1989). With respect to intercultural education as a whole (and this certainly does not only apply to the Netherlands) it must be said that grosso modo theory has been developed further than practice. What is more, theory development in this area (as in many other areas) is only marginally relevant to everyday practice. And, finally, the discussions about the theory and practice of intercultural education today seem not only 'milder' but also less frequent than in the recent past. We have the impression that this lull in discussion goes hand in hand with a certain stagnation in educational practice; an impression which seems to be confirmed by the Van Kemenade Commission. The amount of attention that is paid to intercultural education in the report by the Van Kemenade Commission is highly disappointing. It devotes barely half

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a page to a discussion of legislation, concluding that the aims have been very vaguely defined, and that this has led to a wide variety of interpretations of the form and content of intercultural education. Furthermore, it has been observed that although some materials have been developed, and some schools in both the primary and secondary sectors have started working on implementing them, the vast majority do nothing about intercultural education, despite the fact that it is intended for all pupils at all schools. It is said that similar problems are encountered abroad, but suggestions for improving the situation or for starting new initiatives are not included in the report. It is striking, for instance, that no attention is paid to initiatives to give an intercultural interpretation to specific school subjects such as Dutch and the factual subjects (see e.g. van Hoeij, van der Vegt & Wilmink, 1990). Kloprogge's (1992) contribution in Part 2 of the Van Kemenade report contains a more detailed discussion of the analysis presented in Part 1; again the emphasis is on the lack of initiatives in the field of intercultural education and on the vagueness and ambiguity of the aims of projects that do exist. And, finally, it is rightly observed that because the attention paid to growing up in a multicultural society is anchored in educational legislation, a noncommittal approach is no longer possible. In the light of the vagueness of its aims, however, education is set what is in fact an impossible task: It should become active in an area which the government itself is unable to clarify adequately and in which projects and development activities offer little or no support (Kloprogge, 1992: 11). 2 5 Ethnic Minority Languages in Education One of the results of an intercultural view of (language) education is that children from ethnic minority groupsif they or their parents so wishare offered the possibility of using their mother tongue at school, e.g. as a means of communication or as an auxiliary language of instruction. At the same time they have the possibility of receiving instruction in an immigrant (standard) language (or target language) of their own or their parents' choice. The government and academia have used very mixed arguments for the teaching of ethnic minority languages as a school subject. In the early days, the return to the country of origin was considered the main motive for so-called 'Education in the Own Language and Culture'. Later on, the following arguments were advanced: the promotion and preservation of the pupils' contact with their parents and other relatives; the development and support of their own identity or of a positive self-image in the immigration country; the opportunity for them to identify with the school and increased motivation towards academic achievement. Over the past few years, however, the cultural component has gradually receded into the background (as a result of which the new term which has been increasingly used since Wallage (1991) is 'Own Language Teaching') and it is particularly emphasised that first language teachingprovided it is part of a well-considered curriculum and properly attuned to the other school subjects can make a positive contribution to the development of a well-balanced bilingualism, to the development of the second language (i.e. Dutch) and to the

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cognitive development of the children in question. Not only these arguments but also the widespread failure of the 'second language only approach' has led to the fact that educationalists and linguists have become increasingly in favour of some form of bilingual education. It should be noted, however, that most advocates of a bilingual approach do not take bilingual education to mean a few hours of own language and culture teaching a week. Against the background of the reality of a multilingual society they are of the opinion that the monolingual tradition in education and the 'monolingual habitus' of teachers are becoming increasingly dysfunctional and will therefore require fundamental change (see e.g. Gogolin, 1990). So a few 'own' language (and culture) lessons a week will not suffice; more radical changes will be required which affect the core curriculum and the role and function of (native and immigrant) teachers within that curriculum. For some time now there have been statutory regulations for the use of Frisian and of indigenous Dutch dialects in the Dutch education system. In primary education in the province of Friesland, Frisian is taught as a compulsory subject and there are about eight Frisian language schools which in fact teach the subject, Dutch as a second language. In addition in those areas where most of the pupils have acquired Frisian and Dutch dialects as their first languages, these language varieties are allowed as an educational medium. And, following on from this, the same legal status applies to non-indigenous ethnic minority languages. The fundamental problem in this case, however, is that the linguistic composition of classes with these children is seldom homogeneous. The legal framework for the teaching of ethnic minority languages as part of the regular curriculum has existed in the Netherlands since the mid 1970s. The population groups who have mainly availed themselves of this possibility are the Turks and Moroccans, while other Mediterranean and Latin-American groups have continued to use the option of providing this education outside school hours. As we noted above, own language and culture teaching in those days was aimed at the pupil functioning in the country of origin after remigration. But when it became increasingly clear in the 1980s that the majority of immigrants would stay in the Netherlands permanently, this led to a gradual change in the aims and organisation of the teaching of ethnic minority languages and, some time later, to a change in legislation. The official situation that came into existence via the aforementioned new Primary Education Act is described below. It should, however, be noted that there are likely to be some further changes in the near future. Section 11 of the Primary Education Act states that for children of non-Dutch origin the authorities (i.e. the school board) may on certain conditions include as a separate subject in the curriculum the teaching of the (official) language and culture of the home country. Besides the already available possibility of using ethnic minority languages as auxiliary languages of instruction in education, it is also permitted to supply 2.5 hours of 'own' language and culture teaching to immigrant pupils. A further 2.5 hours may be supplied outside the regular curriculum, although this option is hardly used at all (CALO, 1992). As far as own language and culture teaching is concerned, pupils have a right to education in the official standard language of the country of origin, with the exception of

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Moluccans and Turkish Armenians who may use their own preferred variety (Moluccan Malay and Aramaic respectively). However, the right to own language (and culture) teaching only applies to those ethnic minority groups which are explicitly recognised as target groups in the official minority policy discussed above (see section 2) and the official language of whose country is not Dutch. This means that e.g. Chinese children (because of the fact that the government apparently considers their parents to hold a relatively high socio-economic position) and Surinamese and Antillean children (because of the fact that the government still considers Dutch to be the official language of these two former colonies) are excluded, in spite of the fact that the majority of them do not acquire Dutch during their primary socialisation (70% of the Antilleans in the Netherlands, for instance, speak Papiamentu at home; see Narain & Verhoeven, 1992). Another condition is that the parents of the children in question should apply for own language and culture teaching, which is different from the Frisian situation in that all schools in Friesland are obliged to teach Frisian irrespective of the demand. This difference may seem discriminatory and unjust, not only because there are many more immigrants than Frisians in the Netherlands but also because there is hardly any empirical evidence for educational problems on the part of children with a Frisian language background, whereas such evidence abounds in the case of children with immigrant language backgrounds (Wijnstra, 1980). Apparently, political and cultural arguments are used in the case of Frisian, but much less so in the case of ethnic minority languages (Extra, 1989). In Table 2 an overview is given of numbers and proportions of participants with respect to Education in Own Language and Culture in primary education. The legal regulations for secondary education are similar to those for primary education, except that the availability has so far been limited to Turkish and Arabic as optional subjects. In addition, these two languages can only be taken by Turkish and Moroccan children respectively. Since the 1992 school year there have been official final examinations in these subjects, while in primary education in 1993 there are for the first time national tests (i.e. tests developed by the National Institute for Educational Measurement) in Turkish and Arabic (Aarts & de Ruiter, 1992). As we said in Section 3, the State Secretary for Education and Science proposed important changes in the field of ethnic minority language teaching in a 1991 policy paper. In our opinion these changes will bring about improvements; they could strengthen the position of ethnic minority language teaching and could open up possibilities of truly bilingual education. The paper, which has been adopted by Parliament, contains the following important elements: (1) An extension of the possibilities for the bilingual support of immigrant children in forms 1, 2 and 3 of primary education, wherebyin a change to the current practicenot only the national language of the country of origin but also the children's actual mother tongue may be used as the language of instruction. (2) Education in the national standard language of the country of origin as a subject in forms 4-8 of primary education, wherebyin a change to the

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Table 2 Numbers and proportions of participants in Education in Own Language and Culture (EOLC) in primary education (Source: Minderhedenbeleid, 1993: 18). 1990 1991 N N % N N % pupils participants participants pupils participantsparticipants EOLC EOLC EOLC EOLC Turkish 38294 31328 82 40187 32297 80 Moroccan 38867 27506 71 40728 28266 69 Spanish 2721 914 34 2614 965 37 Greek 815 318 39 887 241 27 Italian 2529 262 10 2469 274 11 Yugoslav 2989 807 27 3046 554 18 Portuguese 1506 508 34 1355 615 45 Tunisian 671 69 10 854 209 24 Moluccan 4755 1726 36 4613 1656 36 CapeVerdian 2462 1031 42 2817 1128 40 Other 23865 0 0 26263 0 0 Total 119474 64469 54125833 66205 53 current practicethe emphasis is mainly on language rather than culture, and whereby the current restriction of such education to certain politically defined groups will in future be abolished. (3) Education in an ethnic minority language in secondary education as an optional subject with a final examination, as one among many other subjects. For the time being this option is limited to Turkish and Arabic, but it may in future be extended to include other languages and may be made available to native Dutch pupils (Wallage, 1991). The recent report by the Van Kemenade Commission contains some important considerations and recommendations on first language education for immigrant pupils: The literature so far contains no conclusive evidence to suggest that first language teaching not only produces better learning results in that particular language but also in the pupil's command of the second language. Conversely, there is no empirical evidence either to suggest that the teaching of and in the first language forms a barrier to achieving learning results in the second language or in other areas. From the point of view of combating underachievement first language education is not urgently required; more important in this respect are the improvement of immigrants' socio-economic positions and the learning of Dutch as a second language. From the cultural-political and economic points of view, it is very important that the living immigrant languages spoken in the Netherlands should be

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retained and kept alive. This will ensure that the traditional cultural diversity of Dutch society is maintained and promoted. At the same time immigrant groups will see their own cultural position reinforced within pluralistic Dutch society and their self-confidence will grow. In addition, Dutch society can benefit economically from an extension of its language repertory with citizens who are fluent not only in English, French and German but also in such important world languages as Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Turkish, Italian and Hindi. Education should carry a cultural policy in which equal treatment is given to the various languages and in which no distinction is made between the various foreign languages in use among immigrant groups in the Netherlands. In other words, this vision does not distinguish between the German of Germans who live in the Netherlands (permanently) and the Turkish of Turks who live in the Netherlands (permanently). The Teaching of Immigrant Living Languages (TILL) should be an independent and recognised school subject at any school where there is a demand for it (on the part of pupils and/or parents). It should be considered a recognised part of the curriculum with 2.5 hours per week. School boards are obliged to provide this education under the following conditions: (a) the lessons are taught by qualified teachers responsible to the school and in accordance with the legal quality requirements; (b) the lessons may not be at the expense of the regular curriculum; (c) the teaching of the languages of immigrant groups may not be marginalised; it is to be treated the same as other school subjects and to include a performance assessment; (d) the teaching of the languages of immigrant groupsif provided should also be accessible to native pupils. (CALO, 1992: 50). These requirements can be met e.g. by creating room for this teaching in the curriculum. This may be achieved by using the legal possibility of lengthening the school day. The provision of classes in the living immigrant language in any school will have to be determined on the basis of organisational, pedagogical and financial considerations. The minimum number of pupils required for such a class to be formed should be flexible (at the moment this number is eight). The recommendations put forward by the Van Kemenade Commission (and especially those concerning the Teaching of Immigrant Living Languages TILL) have in recent months been the subject of widespread discussions. Nearly every day there are positive as well as negative reactions and it may of course be concluded that the Commission's proposals have quite a few snags and catches (see the final section). The report and Wallage's 1991 proposals clearly show that a different course is being taken for Education in Own Language Culture than was planned in the 1989 report of the Advisory Council on Government Policy (see section 3). How much of all the proposals and plans will be realised can only be assessed once they have been through parliament later in 1993. 4

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6 Dutch as a Second Language. Contrary to what one would expect and in contrast with the amount of government attention directed to intercultural education and ethnic minority language teaching, Dutch as a Second Language (DSL) has so far been treated in a niggardly way in the national government's policy (see Fase, 1989; Kroon & Vallen, 1989a,b). There is no legislation in the Netherlands in this area, nor are there any special structures or regulations to facilitate the teaching of DSL. The first policy paper aimed explicitly at the teaching of DSL only appeared at the end of 1988 and counted no more than eight pages (Notitie, 1988). It contains some general measures for improving the quality of the teaching of DSL. The fact that DSL teaching is treated so marginally in Dutch policy is all the more surprising if one considers that as early as 1981 the Ministry of Education and Science mentioned this precise component as being a central focus of attention in their education policy for ethnic minorities (see section 3). And that makes sense; after all a knowledge of the dominant majority language is one of the main prerequisites for the immigrant's social success in the host society. At the moment schools have roughly three ways of obtaining additional teaching periods and/or funding for DSL. First of all there is the so-called facilities regulation, which forms part of a general set of regulations to combat educational underachievement among children from disadvantaged groups (native and immigrant). These regulations are called Onderwijsvoorrangsbeleid (Educational Priority Policy). Its starting point is that the same curricula and exams should apply to immigrant children as to native Dutch children. Ifin view of this factimmigrant children require additional support, the school board can ask the teachers to supply it. To make this possible the government each year provides a considerable number of primary schools with funds for additional teaching hours. To determine the number of such additional hours complex pupil counts take place in which pupils are 'weighed' individually on the basis of socioeconomic and ethnic-cultural criteria and get an additional 'weight' on top of the 'normal' pupil-weight of 1. An overview of this weighing system is given in Table 3. Table 3 Weighing system for additional teaching hours in primary education (1993) Weight Category of pupils 1.9 Children from ethnic minority groups (the target groups in the minority policy), in combination with a low socio-economic position (the parents' profession or level of education) 1.7 Children of caravan dwellers and gypsies 1.4 Children of bargees 1.25 Children of native parents with low educational or professional levels 1.0 Other children

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The total 'weight' of a primary school determines the number of additional teaching hours and, as a result, it also determines indirectly the number of teachers employed in any one year. The broad definition of the 1.25 pupil weight has meant that more than 40% of all native primary school pupils fall in this category. Together with the pupils who fall in the 1.4-1.9 categories, this means that some 80% of all Dutch primary schools currently receive Educational Priority Policy aid. The Ministry of Education and Science is working on a change in the identification procedure of 1.25 category pupils and the Van Kemenade Commission too has recommended drastic changes in this area. Secondary education too has a facilities regulation. However, this regulation (of so-called CuMi-facilities) is aimed exclusively at immigrant pupils who belong to well-defined minority groups, who are of school age, and who have not spent their entire primary school time in the Netherlands. This scheme does not work with additional teaching hours but with task units. The allocation of such task units is based on a yearly deployment plan drawn up by the school. The number of task units allocated to different categories of pupils is given in Table 4. Table 4 Facilities regulation for additional task units in secondary education (1993) Task Category of pupils unit 0.9 Immigrant children who have been in the Netherlands for less than 4 years; 0.4 Immigrant children who have been in the Netherlands for 4-8 years; 0.2 Immigrant children who have been in the Netherlands for more than 8 years; 0.4 Surinamese, Antillean and Aruban pupils who have been in the Netherlands for less than 4 years, as well as for Moluccan pupils and 'caravan dwelling pupils'. For those pupils who enter Dutch education directly from their countries of origin after the official counting date, 2.35 task units are allocated as soon as a school has at least 10 such pupils (CALO, 1992: 16-17). It is the responsibility of the school authorities (i.e. school boards) to check if the available additional facilities for primary and secondary education are actually applied for and, if they are, how they are used for those pupils who have earned/deserved them. Many schools are known to fail to use the additional teaching hours or task units specifically for combating the educational under-achievements of the target groups. Instead they 'misuse' them for introducing general measures that apply to all children (e.g. reducing the size of classes or employing (additional) remedial teachers). At many schools some individual staff members do not even know that additional teaching facilities are available for specific target groups. At the moment there is no thorough a postiori justification or check on the deployment of these facilities, let alone an a priori

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earmarked allocation of such facilities by the Government. But if the recommendations by the Van Kemenade Commission are implemented, this situation is going to change soon (see below). In fact the current situation is very unclear; what exactly is being done during the additional hours, by which teachers, with Table 5 Proportions of Turkish, Moroccan and Other immigrant children in the different types of secondary education in 1990/1991 (Source: Minderhedenbeleid, 1993). Turkish Moroccan Other Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys IBO 19.63 21.79 24.00 27.66 13.81 16.83 LBO 37.34 37.44 38.98 37.91 27.99 31.00 Subtot. 56.97 59.23 63.07 65.57 41.80 47.82 AVO 9.03 9.58 8.31 8.34 12.43 11.95 MAVO 23.49 19.39 22.18 19.19 24.09 19.76 HAVO 5.56 5.99 3.74 4.10 10.55 9.69 VWO 4.82 5.70 2.69 2.78 11.11 10.76 Unknown 0.13 0.11 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.03 Subtot. 43.03 40.77 40.77 34.43 58.20 52.18 Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 Legend: IBO: individualised junior secondary vocational education; LBO: junior secondary vocational education; AVO: general secondary education (transition year); MAVO: junior general secondary education; HAVO: senior general secondary education; VWO: pre-university education (see Figure 1). what qualifications, with what teaching materials and for the benefit of which pupils? As can be seen from Table 5, it has now become clear that the efforts so far have led to little substantial improvement in the educational position of immigrant children. Table 6 gives some additional information about the results of some groups for Dutch Language and Arithmetic in primary education in relation to period of residence in the country. The fact that the government is well aware of these disappointing results for immigrant children was already clear in the policy paper mentioned above (Notitie, 1988) and especially in the problem areas it identifies and the recommendations it makes for improvement. The four main problem areas identified in the paper are: the insufficient knowledge and insight on the part of teachers into second language teaching and second language acquisition; the insufficient availability and/or quality of teaching materials for second language teaching at all levels of education; the specific and varying problems that immigrant children entering the system encounter in the field of Dutch as a second language; the lack of national coordination and direction with regard to the developments in second language teaching.

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Table 6 Scores for Dutch Language and Arithmetic in Form 8 of primary education for different (ethnic) groups related to period of residence in the Netherlands (Source: Minderhedenbeleid, 1993). Period of residence in the Netherlands Group Subject 1-4 years 5-15 years Always Moroccans Language 39.0 45.0 48.4 Arithmetic 16.0 19.8 22.0 Turks Language 38.8 45.0 46.2 Arithmetic 15.2 21.1 21.6 SurinameseLanguage 46.8 49.4 51.1 Arithmetic 19.3 20.9 23.1 1.25 pupils Language 54.4 Arithmetic 26.0 These observations have led to a series of measures which aim at the organisation of special support classes in primary and secondary education, at the development of new teaching materials and the implementation of good existing materials, at the development of new techniques, at (refresher) courses for teachers, at support programmes, at improvements in teaching methodology, etc. At the same time a new project group has been commissioned to stimulate, monitor and coordinate national and local DSL initiatives and to supply expert and financial support to new initiatives and experiments. This DSL project group receives an annual budget from the Ministry of Education and Sciences of between 5 and 10 million guilders. Schools can send in DSL project applications to this group either individually or in consortia. In many such cases applications have been accepted and financially supported. The Project Group Dutch as a Second Language has now operated fairly successfully for over three years and has instituted important experiments and improvements. Thus, the second option that schools have to acquire additional facilities for DSL teaching (in the form of additional personnel or means) consists of temporary, additional support from the DSL project group. The third option to receive additional support - some permanent, some temporaryresults from the Dutch Government's social innovation policy. Within the framework of this policy a large part of the national budget is allocated to municipalities and especially to the major cities (as is the case in Sweden). These cities can use this money where they think it is most needed. The amount of money allocated to individual cities is determined partly by the size of their ethnic minority communities. Schools with a certain percentage of immigrant pupils can apply to their local authorities for additional facilities, including for example specific facilities for DSL teaching. Additional short term grants for social innovations are sometimes made to stimulate specific aspects of innovation. In the cities with fast-growing immigrant populations such an allocation

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was made in 1992, aimed at refresher courses for teachers of Dutch as a second language. Because of the disappointing results of the policy to counter disadvantage, and the DSL policy so far, the Van Kemenade Commission now proposes to abandon the weighting regulations at primary schools and the task unit regulations of the CuMi-facilities in secondary education. In the Commission's opinion the financial resources which this would free up should be used together with other budgets in this area to: allocate facilities more specifically and, as a result, fight educational underachievement more effectively in primary and secondary education, in agreed priority areas (in whose definition only socio-economic indications should be used); enhance specific facilities for DSL teaching; make finance available for the independent teaching of the languages of immigrant groups in primary and secondary education and in adult education (see Section 5). The concrete proposals of the Commission on DSL teaching are rather disappointing, since they pay no attention at all to the largest group of educationally underachieving immigrants, i.e. those who enter the educational system at the start. With respect to pupils who enter the system directly from their countries of origin it is proposed that individual learning routes (of 12-16 months) should be mapped out to produce a sufficient command of Dutch to make their integration into regular schools or the job market possible. The support facilities will then ensure that these pupils' progress in regular education is monitored for another year. The complete set of proposals put forward by the Van Kemenade Commission shows that it is aiming at a strategy similar to that applied in Sweden and, therefore, that it expects a great deal from a decentralisation policy. Although there is a national education policy, local authorities in priority areas receive additional finance and accept greater responsibilities. Schools in these areas will every year have to clarify through the curriculum their plans to reduce educational underachievement and other problems, and every school must provide information in its annual report about the results achieved. Schools that perform well can then qualify for additional finance, whereas schools that have for several years and without reasonable explanation (of whatever kind) achieved poor results will receive lessa policy which will ultimately harm the innocent pupils. It is, as we write in 1993, still unclear whether the decentralisation policy propagated by the Van Kemenade Commission will be well received by government and parliament. And if it is, it remains unclear whether the policy proposals on the fight against educational underachievement in general and on the teaching of the languages of immigrant groups and of DSL can be implemented and whether they will in the long run prove more effective than the current policy. At any rate, in the eyes of many, this is by no means a foregone conclusion.

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7 Critical Comments, Evaluation and Perspective It looks as if the report Ceders in de tuin will play an important part in future policy decisions about reducing the educational underachievement of certain subgroups of pupils, about intercultural education and about the teaching of ethnic minority languages and of Dutch as a second language. What this report says on these subjects has already been summarised and evaluated in the relevant sections above. Here we would like to add a few remarks about three general aspects of the report. (1) The Van Kemenade Commission draws the conclusion that the poor socioeconomic position of parents is a decisive factor in the disadvantaged educational position of immigrant children and that there is no difference in this respect between native and immigrant children. This conclusion will undoubtedly be true in part, but the question remains whether an immigrant parent's socio-economic position and level of education works the same way and can therefore be measured with the same yardstick as that of a native parent. The Commission is probably aware of this, witness its proposal to replace the current criteria for assessing the socio-economic status of the parents of all pupils with a more differentiated scale which relates to the education levels of both a pupil's parents. And although this justifiably creates more differentiation at the 'lower end' of the education scale, the question still remains whether the results of such differentiation will explainwholly or in partthe dramatic differences in scores on Dutch language and arithmetic between native and immigrant pupils who under the current criteria fall within the same socio-economic category (see Table 7). Before the Commission's proposal is implemented further research would have to clarify this situation. Table 7 Scores for Dutch Language and Arithmetic in primary education. Means per pupil category and Form. Population mean: 50 (Source: Tesser, Mulder & van der Werf, 1991). Indigenous Indigenous Non-indigenous high/middle SES low SES low SES Form Language Arithmetic Language Arithmetic Language Arithmetic 52.9 51.4 50.9 48.9 43.8 43.4 4 52.4 52.3 48.4 48.3 40.7 42.6 6 52.5 52.3 48.5 39.3 39.3 42.1 8 (2) The proposals on the teaching of the languages of immigrant groups, which are a logical result of the justifiable distinction between disadvantage policy and cultural policy, are likely to be a key factor in the development of policy and in that sense will help to improve the position of these languages and to reduce prejudice both within and outside education. However, the Commission remains vague about the concrete implementation of its plans at school and classroom level. And that is precisely the problem. Because of the

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connection with the longer school day this language policy does not manage to free schools from the isolation in which 'own' language (and culture) teaching currently finds itself. Education's traditional monolingual core curriculum is after all not affected. This fundamental problem is not solved by also allowing native pupils to take part in 'own' language classes. And schools with many immigrant children usually also have many native pupils from less privileged milieux who in turn do not have the easiest of times at school and who will, therefore, be little inclined to take an additional subject. It is regrettable that the Commission has not tried to formulate any proposals concerning truly bilingual education (including 'own' language teaching) at schools with many immigrant children from e.g. one or two ethnic minority groups, and that it has not made any suggestions to start experiments in this area. (3) To improve the educational prospects of immigrant children it is important that there should be coordinated activities not only as regards the children but also their parents. As the education levels of immigrant parents and children rise, the aspiration level and intellectual climate within families will change, which could in future bear fruit for many generations to come. As far as the area of adult education is concerned, Ceders in de tuin does not make any really substantial proposals. It would have been sensible if for example an attempt had been made to link current, fairly successful (pre-school and extracurricular) family intervention activities (such as the HIPPY inspired 6 Op-Stap programme, (cf. Bekkers, van Embricqs & van Loggem, 1992) with education programmes for parents. Many mothers who now take part in family intervention programmes for children often appear to be stimulated to take part in a training programme themselves. This intrinsic motivation should be used and it is therefore disappointing that the Commission has not realised this, but has instead opted to support the development of centre-based programmes (CALO, 1992: 22). It is not at all clear whether the latter approach will prove more effective. What is more, these programmes come suspiciously close to the traditional approach of the old compensation programmes, which have mostly failed. Finally, it is much more difficult in a centre-based programme to activate children and their parents together, since this type of less individual approach often discourages uneducated adults from participating (cf. Rispens & van der Meulen, 1992). In politics and policies on language education there is always the dilemma of desirability versus feasibility; to what extent are certain desirable innovatory proposals feasible within society and within a set time frame? More concretely this means in our case that the following question should be asked: what is the theoretical starting point when we assess the extent to which multi-ethnicity, multiculturalism and multilingualism are accepted in education? On the theoretical continuum of starting points the one extreme is that of unconditional assimilation while the other is that of unconditional pluralism (Entzinger, 1990). Assimilation means that immigrants are expected to adapt in every way to the host society and to give up their own identity, language and culture: 'To be Dutch with the Dutch'. Completely assimilated are only thosein theorywhom

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one can no longer hear, see or notice to have once been 'different'. Assimilation as a result of a (more or less explicit) minority policy is still a sort of ideal image for many states. The American idea of the melting pot, which assumed that the melting of various cultures, ethnic groups and languages would produce a society of 'new people' (but see Glazer & Moynihan, 1970), as well as the Dutch idea of mutual acculturation, which assumed that not only minorities but also the majority would adapt (as it were 'of its own accord') are ultimately based on an assimilatory starting point. Of course neither of these two involve assimilation in its most stringent form, since both envisage that the minorities would blend in with the majority out of their own will without the need for intervention. And even though neither has workedas the ethnic riots in such American cities as Los Angeles and the abandonment of the Dutch acculturation policy have shownthere are still calls from time to time for assimilation as the solution to all problems. Pluralism entails that the people in a society function alongside each other without having to give up their ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity. In a pluralistic society all people have the inalienable right to retain their own culture, language and traditions to such an extent as they themselves desire. The most important reason for the fact that there can be hardly any actual, i.e. state-sanctioned, pluralistic societies is probably that consistently implemented and practised pluralism is more than a society can take in the eyes of those in power (the majority). For a societyin the real sense of the wordto exist and survive it is deemed necessary that there be a certain degree of social cohesion, which is in part brought about by a certain degree of assimilation. The official Dutch political reaction to the multicultural society is somewhere halfway between assimilation and pluralism. It can be characterised as 'integration while retaining one's own identity'. In concrete terms this position sometimes bears the marks of assimilation and sometimes those of pluralism. This can be best illustrated by looking at two examples. The Dutch Slaughter of Animals Act for a long time contained some sections which prevented the ritual slaughter of animals. Fully in line with an assimilation policy, the police were therefore given strict orders to take action against ritual slaughter. But with the increase in the number of Islamic Dutch people this law could no longer be maintained and was changed. In future it was permitted under certain conditions to have sheep ritually slaughtered. And Dutch society has been able to cope with such a change towards pluralism without any problem. Similarly the Education Act contains the important stipulation that children are of school age until they are sixteen years old; they are obliged to attend school until they have reached that age. Now it is has been noted that this school age is not entirely respected in some families, for example orthodox Islamic families, especially with regard to their daughters. For a variety of reasons (e.g. religious, materialistic, etc.) parents sometimes keep their elder daughters at home, sometimes for shorter or longer periods, sometimes even permanently. But whereas the Slaughter of Animals Act was changed, nothing of the sort happened with the school age as part of the Education Act. 8 The responsible authorities and, if necessary, the police ensure that the Education Act is

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implemented. The latter example shows where the state draws the borders of acceptability. Absolute pluralism might possibly lead to social disintegration in that it might create an ethnically determined lower class. Neither decisionto adapt the Slaughter of Animals Act and not to adapt the Education Act threatens the general aim of the Dutch government's minority policy, i.e. the creation of a society in which the members of ethnic minorities living in the Netherlands hold a position of equality and have the full scope to develop themselves. What does this position of 'integration while retaining the own identity' mean for language education in a multilingual society? Or in other words, how much pluralism does a multilingual pupil need and how much assimilation can he/she take? From what we have said, it will be clear that, as far as ethnic minorities' native languages are concerned, we believe that these languages deserve a clear, recognised and established position in education, first of all as a subject among other subjects (e.g. for example teaching Turkish or Arabic as 'own' languages to Turkish or Moroccan pupils). For the time being there is, however, the restriction that these are subjects whichbecause of the mother tongue teaching methods usedcannot be taken by all pupils. At a later stage, and after an assessment of the possibilities and needs, it should be possible to teach these languages as optional subjects to other pupils (but as second languages not as mother tongues). The second option is that ethnic minority languages are used as languages of instruction in a bilingual model. And even though the Dutch practice so far has only been a transitional approach (L1 to increase the language competence in L2), we argue nonetheless in favour of more experiments with a maintenance approach. This entails the use of the mother tongue as the language of instruction (alongside the teaching of and in the majority language) during the whole of primary education and, if possible, in secondary education. Our position towards minority languages at school is therefore a pluralistic one; a school should be able to cope with a certain degree of multilingualism and should use it positively. Its most important aims in doing so would be of a cultural-political and pedagogical nature: the preservation of ethnic minority languages, and native language competence as a basis for second language learning. As far as second language education is concerned, we would like to remark here that as long as the majority language is not the immigrant child's mother tongue but a second language, it should be taught as such. Not using bilingual strategies in the teaching of Dutch as a second language can only lead to underachievement by immigrant children at school. This has been made painfully clear by the long-standing practice internationally of monolingual education aimed at assimilation. Of course immigrant children should learn the majority language of the immigration country with a view to their social participation and integration. But it should not be done unthinkingly or at any cost. Equal social participation requires more than a command of the second language alone; such command is a necessary but not a sufficient prerequisite, as the recent outbursts of xenophobia, discrimination and brutal racism

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throughout Europe clearly indicate. A command of the majority language alone does not offer sufficient protection against this type of attack by members of the majority. Besides the teaching of ethnic minority languages and second language education, intercultural education is the third strand in the formation of language education in a multilingual society. Intercultural education should contribute to the fight against lingocentrism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988). Lingocentrism means the belief that one's own language and language use are superior to those of others, and is usually associated with feelings of superiority and contempt, whether conscious or not, towards the speakers of those other languages. This intercultural principle should, incidentally, not only be applied in specific, planned lessons in intercultural language study or language awareness, but also in the teaching of ethnic minority languages and in second language education. In this way intercultural education can contribute to a situation in which ethnic minorities may be integrated while retaining their own identity, as well as to the creation of a better understanding on the part of the majority. And the latter is probably the most urgently needed at the moment. Notes 1. Remarkably, the Home Office has appointed a Temporary Scientific Commission for Minority Policies shortly after the Van Kemenade Commission had finished its report and even before the Minister and State Secretary for Education and Science have given their official reaction to the report. The chairwoman of this new Commission is the former State Secretary for Education and Science, Ginjaar-Maas, who is currently an MP for the VVD (Liberal Party). 2. In the preliminary reaction on Ceders in de tuin by the State Secretary for Education and Science, which became available on March 22, 1993, it is suggested, in order to overcome the implementation problems of intercultural education, to establish a national Project Group for Intercultural Education (cf. Wallage 1993). 3. It should be noted here that the teaching of the languages of immigrant groups is not intended as a replacement for foreign language education. If it does take place in the traditional modern foreign languages department, it will be alongside rather than instead of foreign language education. 4. In the preliminary reaction of the Secretary of State of Education on Ceders in de tuin most of the recommendations with respect to ethnic minority language teaching are adopted. The 1991 policy paper on Own Language Teaching remains in force and it is for example proposed to include pupils of Chinese, Antillean and Surinamese origin in the provisions for Own Language Teaching in primary education (cf. Wallage 1993). 5. In the preliminary reaction of the State Secretary for Education and Science on Ceders in de tuin some of the recommendations with respect to DSL are accepted whereas others are clearly rejected. The latter for example applies to the recommended decentralisation policy; the former to the recommended distinction between culture policy and disadvantage policy and the restructuring of the facilities regulations in primary and secondary education as part of a disadvantage policy (cf. Wallage 1993). 6. HIPPY is an acronym for Home Intervention Programme for Preschool Youngsters. This programme has been carried out in Israel since the end of the sixties. 7. It should be noted that the natural opposite of full assimilation is of course not full pluralism but full segregation, or in other words, apartheid. But since we want to limit

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ourselves here to a discussion of real possibilities within civilised societies, we shall not discuss this variant. 8. However, since a few months it is possible for Islamic parents to request that their daughter(s) be moved to an allgirls class, and if there are sufficient requests, schools can form such classes. Despite this, however, the Education Act remains unchanged. References Aarts, R. and de Ruiter, J.J. (1992) Handleiding Toets Turkse Taal en Handleiding Toets Arabische Taal. Arnhem: CITO. Bekkers, B., van Embricqs, R. and van Loggem, D. (1992) (red) De gezinsinterventieprogramma's: OpStap, Opstapje, Klimrek. In J. Rispens and B.F. van der Meulen (red) Gezinsgerichte Stimulering Van Kinderen in Achterstandssituaties (pp. 175-86). Amsterdam/Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. CALO (Commissie Allochtone Leerlingen in het Onderwijs) (1992) Ceders in de tuin. Naar een nieuwe opzet van het onderwijsbeleid voor allochtone leerlingen. Deel 1. Zoetermeer: Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen. Entzinger, H. (1990) Overheidsbeleid. In H.B. Entzinger & P.J.J. Stijnen (red) Etnische Minderheden in Nederland 244-64. Meppel/Amsterdam/Heerlen: Boom/Open Universiteit. Eurostat (1991) Demographic Statistics on the European Community. Luxemburg: Statistical Office of the EC. Extra, G. (1989) Ethnic minority languages versus Frisian in Dutch primary schools. A comparative perspective. In Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 10 (1), 59-72. (1992) The context of ethnic communities and ethnic community languages in the Netherlands. Paper presented at the Erasmus Conference 'Home Language and School in a European Perspective'. Leeuwarden, October 29, 1992 (mimeo). Extra, G. and Verhoeven, L. (1992) Immigrant groups and immigrant languages in Europe. In G. Extra and L. Verhoeven (eds) Immigrant Languages in Europe (pp. 3-18). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Fase, W. (1989) Overheidsbeleid Nederlands als tweede taal in Nederland. In S. Kroon and T. Vallen (red) Etnische minderheden en Nederlands als tweede taal in Nederland en Vlaanderen. Nederlandse Taalunie Voorzetten 23. Den Haag: Stichting Bibliographia Neerlandica, 25-38. Glazer, N. and Moynihan, D.P. (1970) Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. 2nd Edition. Cambridge: MIT Press. Gogolin, I. (1991) Der monolinguale Habitus der multilingualen Schule. Hamburg: Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft der Universität Hamburg. Guchte, C. van de (1989) Intercultureel betekent veel. Een leeswijzer over intercultureel onderwijs. Enschede: SLO. Hoeij, J. van, Van der Vegt, N. and Wilminkm, H. (1990) (red) Intercultureel onderwijs per vak bekeken. Suggesties voor docenten in het voortgezet onderwijs. Den Bosch/Enschede: LPC/SLO. Kloprogge, J. (1992) Onderwijsbeleid voor minderheden; een queeste naar doelen, middelen en effecten. In CALO (1992) Ceders in de tuin. Naar een nieuwe opzet van het onderwijsbeleid voor allochtone leerlingen. Deel 2: Voorstudies. Zoetermeer: Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, Hoofdstuk 4, 1-30. Kroon, S., Pagel, D. and Vallen, T. (1993) (Hrsg.) Multiethnische Gesellschaft und Schule in Berlin. Münster/New York: Waxmann. Kroon, S. and Vallen, T. (1989a) Nederlands als tweede taal: politiek, beleid en perspec-

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tieven. In M. Kienstra (red) Onderwijs aan anderstaligen. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 17-42. (1989b) Etnische minderheden en Nederlands als tweede taal: begripsbepaling en demografische gegevens. In S. Kroon and T. Vallen (red) Etnische minderheden en Nederlands als tweede taal in Nederland en Vlaanderen. Nederlandse Taalunie Voorzetten 23. Den Haag: Stichting Bibliographia Neerlandica, 13-24. Lucassen, L. and Köbben, A. (1992) Het partièle gelijk. Controverses over het onderwijs in de eigen taal en cultuur en de rol daarbij van beleid en wetenschap. Amsterdam/Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Lucassen, L. and Penninx, R. (1985) Nieuwkomers. Immigranten en hun nakomelingen in Nederland 1550-1985. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. Minderhedenbeleid (1993) Jaaroverzicht Minderhedenbeleid 1993. Tweede Kamer der Saten Generaal, vergaderjaar 1992-1993, 22 809, nrs. 1-2. Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken (1983) Minderhedennota. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen (1981) Beleidsplan culturele minderheden in het onderwijs. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. (1986) Notitie intercultureel onderwijs 1985. Tweede Kamer der Staten Generaal, Vergaderjaar 1985-1986, 18701, nr. 4. Narain, G. and Verhoeven, L. (1992) Ontwikkeling van tweetaligheid bij allochtone kleuters. Tilburg: Faculteit Letteren KUB. Notitie (1988) Uitvoeringsnotitie Nederlands als tweede taal. Voorstel t.b.v. de besteding van 5 miljoen. Zoetermeer: Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988) Multilingualism and the education of minority children. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and J. Cummins (eds) Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle (pp 9-44). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rispens, J. and van der Meulen, B.F. (1992) (red) Gezinsgerichte stimulering van kinderen in achterstandssituaties. Amsterdam/Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Roelandt, Th., Roijen, J. and Veenman, J. (1991) Minderheden in Nederland. Statistisch Vademecum 1991. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. Tennekes, J. (1986) Nederland een multiculturele samenleving? In Migrantenstudies 2 (3), 2-22. Tesser, P., Mulder, L. and van der Werf, G. (1991) De eerste fase van de longitudinale OVB-onderzoeken. Het leerlingenonderzoek. Nijmegen/Groningen: ITS/RION. Vanhoren, I. (1992) Over wie praten we nu eigenlijk? Verkenning van de criteria voor doelgroepafbakening in beleid voor en onderzoek over etnische minderheden. Steunpunt Migranten-Cahiers 1. Leuven: KU-Leuven/Hoger Instituut voor de Arbeid (HIVA). Wallage, J. (1991) Eigen taal als onderdeel van een geintegreerd talenonderwijs. Zoetermeer: Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen. (1993) Beleidsreactie bij het advies 'Ceders in de tuin'; naar meer schoolsucces voor allochtone en autochtone leerlingen. Zoetermeer: Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen. Widgeren, J. (1975) Migration to Western Europe. The social situation of migrant workers and theirfamilies. UN/SOA/SEM/60/WP2. Wijnstra, J. (1980) Education of children with Frisian home language. In Applied Psychology 29, 43-60. WRR (1979) Etnische minderheden. Rapporten aan de regering 17. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. WRR (1989) Allochtonenbeleid. Rapporten aan de regering 36. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij.

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A Response to Kroon and Vallen: A Parallel Overview of the Education Policy for Bilingual Children in Britain Linda Thompson University of Durham, Leazes Road, Durham DHI 1TA Language-in-education planning is the process involved in demonstrating how the ideals, goals and content of a language policy can be realised in practice. In case a country does not possess a clearly formulated and stated language policy, ...it is possible to infer a policy from the state's social, demographic, and economic structure, its international relationships, and general developments in policy nationally (Ingram, 1990: 1). Like the Netherlands, Britain is a multilingual, multi-ethnic society. This heterogeneity has not always been welcomed or even acknowledged. In schools this lack of recognition has resulted in the lack of clearly stated policy for the education of children from groups constituted by recent immigration many of whom are bilingual. The aim of this response is to provide a critical overview of the development of education provision for young bilingual children that has taken place in Britain, with a view to illustrating the difficulties encountered in implementing some of Kroon & Vallen's proposals. I should like to state clearly from the outset that I applaud the sentiments and politics of their position, but I urge caution based on the British experience to date. Britain's Linguistic and Cultural Heritage The social, ethnic and linguistic composition of present day British Society is the legacy of former British social, economic and political policy. The 1987 Language Census found that 172 different languages were spoken by children in Inner London Education Authority schools. There are acknowledged difficulties in compiling an accurate and up-todate overview of the precise heritage of these groups and the languages they speak. At present the most recent overviews are to be found in Taylor & Hegarty (1985) and Alladina & Edwards (1991). However, categorisations of the groups, for example Asians is frequently too gross to be meaningful (cf. Thompson, 1993). Since the mid-nineteenth century, there have been a variety of cultural, linguistic and religious groups settled in Britain. However, no major educational discussion of their needs began until the mid-1960s with the arrival of migrants from the group of countries, now known as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. From the outset therefore, the presence of bilinguals from these countries

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provoked a different type of response from society at large and education authorities in particular. The Development of Education for Bilingual Children in Britain. The assimilationist approach Throughout the 1960s, the education provided for bilingual children was characterised by its emphasis on assimilation into the dominant British culture through the English language. Its focus on teaching English as a second language (ESL), was frequently at the expense of the wider curriculum and always at the expense of pupils' home language(s). The teaching methodology was 'borrowed' from the British secondary school tradition of foreign language teaching, despite the inappropriateness of this approach for primary-aged pupils, some of whom were as young as five years. By 1966 the need for intensive ESL teaching was recognised under Section XI of the Local Government Act 1966. This enabled LEAs to claim a grant, at the rate of 75%, of the salary paid to each teacher employed for this purpose. One outcome of this separate funding was the establishment of TESL provision outside mainstream education. LEAs established peripatetic teams of ESL teachers to serve in primary schools and Language Centres (where older children were placed on arrival in Britain). This form of ESL provision was in keeping with assimilationist philosophy and was seen as the key to the newcomers' rapid adaptation to the British way of life. Pupils' existing language skills were disregarded. This led the Swann Report to comment: It seems to have been assumed that the children's own languages would simply die out and be replaced by English. (DES, 1985: 388) In retrospect, this policy was discriminatory in effect, if not in intent. ESL teaching was made available selectively, and only to children whose community language was accorded language status and had a written norm, but left unserved groups (for example, those of Caribbean origin) whose home language was not considered to be in these categories. The emphasis on assimilation focused only on language. It did not however extend to religious practice in what was becoming a secularised Britain. The central importance of places of worship (for example, the mosque, gudwara etc.) played an increasingly important role in the everyday lives of these communities. This influence soon spread beyond the initial religious focus, to include cultural transmission and the reinforcement of ethnic group identity. For example, the teaching of home or community languages frequently look place in religious centres. This wider role, encompassing ethnic, cultural, linguistic as well as religious aspects of life meant that places of worship assumed an increasingly significant role in the maintenance and reinforcement of ethnic identity within some of the settled communities.

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Language Teaching The 1970s witnessed significant developments in the official recognition of the language needs of bilingual children. In 1975 the move from the assimilationist approach to the education of bilingual children towards integrationist thinking, sprung from an unexpected source. The 1975 Bullock Report presented the findings of a committee of enquiry into the teaching of reading in primary schools. The committee felt unable to isolate the teaching and learning of' reading from other aspects of language learning, for example, oracy and writing. The Bullock Report, A Language For Life, addressed in its recommendations, the language needs of children still perceived at that time, as 'of immigrant origin' and was critical of language teaching which required a child to 'cast off the language of his (sic) home as he (sic) passes the school threshold' (DES, 1975: Chapter 5: 20). The report suggested that: the school should adopt positive attitudes to its pupils' bilingualism and wherever possible should help maintain and deepen the[ir] knowledge of the[ir] mother tongues. (DES, 1975) The report also described bilingualism as, 'an asset... something to be nurtured (DES, 1975: 293) and suggested that schools were in a unique position to fulfil this nurturing role (DES, 1975: 294). This statement, together with a further recommendation for schools to formulate a language policy which included ESL provision, constituted a recommendation to schools to broaden their perception of ethnic minority educational needs, and to offer a wider curriculum that included broader cultural elements. Although the report raised awareness of the existing linguistic skills of ethnic minority pupils, there was little sign of the education system or society at large valuing these abilities as relevant to the pupil's educational achievement and progress. However, another factor combined with the Bullock Report to give impetus to the move away from educational policy dominated by assimilationist philosophy. This was the change in status of black ethnic groups from an immigrant workforce to a settled community of British citizens. The shift in status changed both society's and the groups' perception of their educational and social needs. This change was reflected in the British education system, when assimilationist education gave way to the development of Multicultural Education and the subsequent change in educational provision for bilingual children which ensued. This national trend was supported by international developments of the late 1970s. In 1976 a draft EC directive on the language education of migrant workers was issued to interested parties throughout the European Community. It proposed that member states should offer free tuition in the national languages of migrant workers as part of the curriculum for full-time education. However, in 1977, only one year after the draft was first published, a significant modification was made which only required member states to promote mother tongue teaching. (An expanded discussion on the specific UK response to the modified directive will be presented in the next section).

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The pluralist approachmulticultural education The development of the concept of multicultural education broadened educational provision beyond English language teaching to include cultural and religious teaching. (Multi-faith celebrations and world religions joined the school curriculum). More significantly, it expanded language teaching to include mother-tongue teaching (as it was then called) and bilingual support, as part of ESL provision. Multicultural education placed increasing emphasis on developing the child's full range of linguistic competences. ESL teaching became sensitive to the existing linguistic background of pupils for whom English was a second language. Their community languages were seen as a linguistic resource for ESL and other teaching. However, this wider view of the role of language in the educational experience of ethnic minority pupils impinged only marginally on ESL provision, much of which, in terms of its underlying aims and assumptions, remained unchanged from the earlier days of assimilationist thinking. English remained the medium of instruction in all primary classrooms as well as the medium used for testing educational achievement, particularly in the field of language development, reading, writing and oracy, as well as for assessing verbal reasoning or intelligence testing. Thus, bilingual children were compared and assessed in their educational achievements with their monolingual, English-speaking peers. In this comparative context, their seeming lack of achievement (as measured in English) was perceived by educationalists as problematic. Bilingualism remained an unacknowledged resource which still did not feature as significant in educational assessment profiles or pupil records. The development of the home language, in those schools where community languages were taught, was seen only as a means of accelerating children's learning of English, their second or subsequent language, rather than a learning activity of intrinsic worth and value. Multicultural education has now been criticised by both educationalists and ethnic minority groups for failing to meet the needs of ethnic minority pupils in a number of ways. It was perceived as simply another form of compensatory education, essentially no different in form from the assimilationist programmes which preceded it. It also failed to address the institutional practices and procedures identified in the Swann Report (DES, 1985) as the real causes of educational underachievement among some bilingual children. An alternative perspective on the educational underachievement of certain groups of pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds was argued in a recent article by Troyna (1991), who suggests that bilingual pupils are underrated rather than underachieving. Current institutional practices identified by the Swann Report as disadvantageous to bilingual pupils remain in place even now. These include the testing and assessment procedures (SATs) which are now carried out annually as part of the 1988 Education Reform Act. Bilingual children are currently assessed through tests in English and their performance compared with mean scores that had been standardised on monolingual English speaking pupils. In retrospect it seems that the multicultural education movement with its focus on a marginal curriculum for black, ethnic minority children and which taught aspects of their everyday lives (characterised as the tokenism of samosas, saris

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and steel bands) was, no less than its predecessor, the assimilationist approach. Through this misfocus, the multicultural education movement failed to improve bilingual children's performance in mainstream curriculum activities. Rather, it focused on a separate, marginal curriculumembroidery for Asian girlsand Black Studies. In this way, the multicultural education lobby continued, almost by default, the separatist philosophy and practice of the assimilationist approach. This situation, although disappointing, is perhaps not altogether surprising, since none of the DES documentation on the education of ethnic minority children addressed educational needs from within mainstream resources. Hence the need for change within educational institutions was not perceived as central or essential. A society's values can be seen encapsulated within its education provision. Britain was still not acknowledging the multilingual nature of its population and this attitude was reflected in the education system. In 1977, only two years after the publication of the Bullock Report, the European Economic Community issued a directive on 'The Education of the Children of Migrant Workers' (July 77/4861). Article 3 stated that it required member states: in accordance with their national circumstances and legal systems and in co-operation with the state of origin, to promote the teaching of the mother-tongue and culture in accordance with normal education. (Council of European Community, 1977: 02) EC Member states were required to comply with the directive from 25 July 1981, and the Commission issued a report on the implementation of the directive on 10 February 1984. In Britain, Circular No. 5/81 issued on 31 July of the same year, outlined the DES guidelines on compliance with Article 3. It stated: for the local education authorities in this country, [the directive] implies that they should explore the ways in which mother-tongue teaching might be provided, whether during or outside school hours, but not that they are required to give such tuition to all individuals as of right. (DES, 1981: 02) Thus it could be inferred that the British education system was not making adequate provision for the self-perceived educational needs of bilingual pupils. A follow-up EC Report in 1984 on the implementation of the 1977 Directive showed that Britain was, at that time, lagging behind other member states in complying with the Directive, with only 2.2 % of the primary school aged children from homes where languages other than English were spoken receiving home language teaching at school, compared for example, with 80 per cent of the children of the same age in the Netherlands. Furthermore, Article 3 met with a mixed response from within minority communities. It was regarded (from both inside and outside these groups) as separating ethnic minority groups and differentiating their right to educational provision. On the one hand those linguistic minorities from EC states who were not living in the EC state of their birth (and for whom the EC Directive was originally intended) were entitled to home language teaching while resident in their host community, while those linguistic minority groups, many of whom

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were British citizens and living in the EC state of their birth (Britain), enjoyed no such entitlement. Thus the settled migrant communities in Britain felt disenchantment on two fronts: firstly, with their exclusion from the EC Directive and secondly, with the multicultural education initiative which they perceived as conceptually unsound in both its theoretical foundation and its practical implications. This dual disenchantment coincided with a developing political awareness within black ethnic minority groups whose newly found confidence accompanied their change in status from that of immigrant to that of settled citizen. The dissatisfaction felt amongst educationalists representing ethnic minority educational rights stemmed from the disregard of education planners for the theoretical and practised models of bilingual education that existed both elsewhere throughout the EC and internationally. It was felt from a number of sources that the multicultural education initiative needed revision. The revision and development which followed gave rise to the Anti-Racist Education movement. The anti-racist movement Mullard (1984) presents the case for anti-racist education as a development within the Black Consciousness Movement of the mid 1960s. He argues that the development from immigrant education to multicultural education is in line with the socio-economic development of immigrant groups and that anti-racist education grew from the economic and structural-cultural experiences of black people in a white society. He presents the argument for anti-racist education as the re-articulation of black ethnicity through the structural-cultural experiences of black people in British society (Mullard, 1984: 24). In terms of language teaching, if black ethnic identity is to be developed within anti-racist education, the languages of ethnic communities need to be an integral part of mainstream educational provision. The Swann Reporteducation for all? In 1985 a report of major significance for the education of bilingual children was published. The Report, Education For All, contained the recommendation of the Swann Committee, established in 1979 and whose terms of reference included: recognising the contribution of schools in preparing all pupils for life in society which is both multi-racial and culturally diverse. (DES, 1985: vii) Although the primary focus of the committee was on children of Afro-Caribbean origin and their educational underachievement in relation to their peers, the report inevitably included a broader discussion of the educational needs of other children of the former migrants. Swann's response to educational provision for bilingual pupils was that: essential to equality of opportunity, to academic success and broadly, to participation on equal terms as a full member of society, (it) is a good

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command of English and (that) first priority in language learning ...must therefore be given to the learning of English. (DES, 1985: 426) Although committed to English as the language of education, the report stated suggested changes in provision. The Report favoured a move away from separate ESL teaching and recommended that the needs of bilingual learners be met within mainstream school as part of a comprehensive programme of language education for all children (DES, 1985: par 5.2). The Swann Report acknowledged the importance of fostering positive ethnic identity. They recommended a broader base for doing this through cultural and religious teaching as well as through language use. The committee did attempt to incorporate a broader definition of bilingualism. However, on the subject of bilingual education, the report did little to advance thinking amongst educationalists. It stated: we cannot support the arguments put forward for the introduction of programmes of bilingual education in maintained schools. (DES, 1985: Par 3.15) The report was equally unequivocal in its response to the provision for languages other than English. While recommending that community languages and home languages should be valued in the mainstream curriculum, enriching the linguistic awareness of monolingual pupils, the committee remained firmly opposed to any separate provision for language maintenance classes or bilingual forms of education. They stated that mainstream schools should not seek to assume the role of community providers for maintaining ethnic minority community languages (DES, 1985: Par 3.18). The committee did however, make two important exceptions. Firstly, they recommended bilingual support to help pupils make the transition between home languages and English. Secondly, they recommended that community languages should be included in the language curriculum of secondary schools where there was likely to be sufficient demand. The statement recommends that: all pupils in those schools where community languages are in demand should be encouraged to consider studying them. (DES, 1985: Pars 3.19 and 3.20) While this support was welcome it was generally felt to have failed to go far enough in its support of community languages within mainstream secondary foreign language provision. It confines the community languages, which include Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali and Panjabi, to those schools where there is a concentration of pupils interested in learning them. This contrasts sharply with the provision and resourcing of the other languages included in the foreign language curriculum and automatically affects the status of these community languages in comparison with those already established within the foreign language curriculum. It also still leaves some community languages outside the official school curriculum. Bourne (1990) discusses the developments one might have hoped for in the

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wake of the Swann Committee's recommendations, but reports that ever-increasing constraints limited the further development of provision for bilingual pupils. The omission from the Swann Committee's recommendations pertaining to home language teaching and bilingual support was a disregard of the evidence which exists indicating the central role of languages (first and subsequent) in the learning process. A separate professional report carried out by HMI for the DES, Mother Tongue Teaching in School and Community (DES, 1984), took a slightly different view on the education issues raised by the topic. Their report stated that progress in community language teaching would depend on: establishing a firmer base of accurate knowledge of pupils' existing language skills in their mother-tongues. (DES 1984: 24) The report perceived a gap in existing knowledge (at that time) of the language use of bilingual children and suggested a linguistic description of bilingual children's language repertoire was needed before more concrete recommendations could be made. In their survey report of four LEAs (Ealing, ILEA, Manchester and Walsall) the HMI took a slightly different view from Swann in the question of first language provision within mainstream education. HMI (1984: 7) 'strongly endorsed' the six principles identified by one of the authorities in its documented policy statement. One principle endorsed by HMI is particularly significant. They state: it is educationally desirable that bilingual children in primary schools should be given the chance to read and write their mother-tongues and to extend their oral skills in these languages. (DES, 1984: 7) Current Policy. Since 1988 there has been a national curriculum in Britain. The Cox Report was the discussion document which preceded the introduction of the National Curriculum for English. The terms of reference of the Cox Committee (DES, June 1989) stipulated that the Committee concern itself with the English curriculum for all pupils, whatever their first language. The supplementary guidance to the working group stressed that: the framework (for English) should ensure, at the minimum, that all school-leavers are competent in the use of Englishwritten and spoken, whether or not it is their first language. (DES, June 1989: Par 10.1) The Working Group was also informed that it: should also take account of the ethnic diversity of the school population and society at large, bearing in mind the cardinal point that English should be the first language and medium of instruction for all pupils in England. (DES, June 1989: Par 10.1) In their recommendations (DES, June 1989) the Cox Committee reaffirmed the Swann Committee's belief that: the key to equality of opportunity, to participation on equal terms as a full

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member of society, is a good command of English. (DES, 1985: Chapter 7, par. 3.16) The Cox Report included a chapter on bilingual children (DES, June 1989: Chapter 10). However, it should be noted that pupils in Welsh medium schools in Wales were to be excluded from the supplementary guidance from the Secretary of State for Education. This exclusion clause once again differentiated between groups of bilingual UK and EC citizens. Dissatisfaction with this differential treatment is now evident from an unexpected source. Parents in Wales are to appeal to the House of Lords after a five year campaign against Dyfed (a Welsh local education authority) county council's bilingual education policy, under which English speaking children in predominantly Welsh speaking areas are required to attend Welsh language schools. The appeal (reported in 'The Independent' 11 July, 1994) is based on the right of the child to be educated in the home language. If successful, the implications will spread beyond Wales. This is but one example of the anomalies of statutory provision to exist within the 1988 Education Reform Act. English in the National Curriculum The programmes of study for English (and other core subjects of the National Curriculum) are linked closely to agerelated attainment targets and pupil assessment. This inevitably means that if all children are to be taught and assessed in the English language, bilingual children are still to be compared with their monolingual English speaking peers. It will also mean that the full range of their linguistic repertoire will continue to be unrecognised in their learning and formal school assessments. Irrespective of the Cox Committee's disclaimer of inconsistency and unreasonable discrimination, it is likely that the assessment profiles of ethnic minority pupils (a statutory requirement of the 1988 legislation) will record a lower level of performance. Since the assessment will be carried out in English, this will preclude from the assessment other language skills which the pupils may possess. It will not therefore be a comprehensive record of their linguistic repertoire and may result in an inaccurate record of their linguistic competence. This is one way in which the Cox Report and the subsequent legislation can be interpreted as unreasonably discriminatory. In addition, the proviso under Section 19 of the 1988 Education Act, allows disapplication of the provisions of the National Curriculum. This enables headteachers to exempt some pupils from the assessment requirements for English if it is considered that those pupils have language difficulties so severe as to render the assessment unworkable. In practice this could lead to some children being separated from their monolingual peers for assessment purposes. Since assessment procedures are to be linked to attainment targets, which in turn are linked to programmes of study, this could also lead to some pupils being separated for teaching purposes. Section 19 (of the 1988 Education Act) is a conundrum. It allows for preclusion from the curriculum by which the Act ensures entitlement. Assessment takes place at the age of seven (Y2). Even if pupils are not excluded from the assessments (SATs),

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it seems reasonable to speculate that some bilingual children will achieve a comparatively low level of performance in their assessment. This achievement will be marked on education records, with the result that the institutional practices and procedures identified by Swann as being discriminatory to ethnic minority pupils, have been perpetuated and enshrined in the 1988 legislation. To reiterate Troyna's (1991) point, bilingual pupils will remain underachievers simply because their abilities are underrated. The 1988 Reform Act gives each child an entitlement to education. One of its stated aims is to prepare pupils for adult life. This has frequently been represented to mean preparation for the work place. However, there is a broader meaning to preparation for adult life which encompasses active citizenship. The success of the 1988 Education Reform Act is still to be assessed. Its success should not only be judged by the ways in which it creates an appropriately trained workforce but also by the ways in which it develops individuals to take their place in society as citizens who are equipped to exercise their rights and play an active role in their society. In order to achieve this, British schools will need to meet the challenges of both the 1976 Race Discrimination Act and the 1988 legislation. Thus the challenge identified by Swann (DES, 1985: 90) of 'evolving an education system which ensures that all pupils achieve their full potential' should once again be under active consideration by the teaching profession, educational policy makers, politicians but above all by the community groups who speak these languages. Progress in education provision from assimilation through multicultural education and anti-racist education reflects the change in status of certain ethnic minority groups from immigrants to British citizens. However, despite its heterogeneous, multilingual population, Britain unlike, for example, Canada, Wales and Australia, does not have an official language policy. In the description and analysis of the education provision for bilingual children in British schools since the 1960s up to and including the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988, presented here, the inherent value system of education policy makers is clear. English is now firmly established as the only official language of mainstream education in England. Foreign languages are taught in secondary schools but these are almost exclusively defined in terms of modern European languages. French and German are taught extensively while Urdu and Panjabi are to be found only in areas where these languages are present in the community as home languages. I should like to suggest that this is a misfocus and a mistake, even though I am mindful of the constraints necessarily caused by limited resources. And the Future? The financial support for the education of bilingual children has not been met in full from within the mainstream education budget. Section XI funding, as it is known, is a budget administered by the Home Office. It has been used in the past to fund a number of bilingual support teachers for children in mainstream schooling. However, in 1993 the government announced changes to the existing arrangements. Over a period of three years (1993-96) there will be a gradual

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reduction in the contribution towards Section XI funding to LEAs. The government contribution will gradually be reduced from 75% to 57%, with a further reduction to 50%. Discussions about policy are needed. However, it is necessary to be remember Kroon & Vallen's point that language and education policy are not at all abstract; they form part of people's everyday lives. Recent research in UK nursery school (Thompson, 1993, 1994) suggests that current education policy with its emphasis on English as the only official language of the school curriculum exerts a powerful influence on the linguistic repertoire of individual children. Findings to date suggest that there is a quantifiable shift away from the community language (in this case Mirpuri, vernacular Panjabi) towards English after only one term in school. To return to Ingram's (1990) statement. Britain does not at present possess a clearly formulated and stated language policy. However, it is possible to infer a policy from the education provision. The current situation is that the full linguistic repertoire of some pupils is not being reflected in classroom teaching. It is also ignored as an individual, societal and national resource. By preferring to concentrate resources and teaching in a number of ways that fail to acknowledge bilingualism as a positive intellectual, social and educational advantage for pupils, education provision is undervaluing, undermining and underselling significant groups within British society. At present there is an unofficial system of English immersion teaching. This has come about almost by default. What is needed for the future is planned education provision that accords the teaching and learning of language(s) and culture(s) a more central role within compulsory education. Without a policy statement it is impossible to monitor the impact and changes that are taking place. It is also difficult to ensure that all children are receiving the education best suited to their needs and those of society. References Alladina, S. and Edwards, V. (eds) (1991) Multilingualism in the British Isles. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bourne, J. (1990) Moving into Mainstream. London: NFER-Nelson. Council of the European Community (1977) The Education of the Children of Migrant Workers (July 77/4861). Article 3. DES (1975) A Language for Life (The Bullock Report). London: HMSO. (1981) Circular No. 5/81. London: HMSO. (1984) Mother Tongue Teaching in School and Community. London: HMSO. (1985) Education for all (The Swann Report). London: HMSO. (1988) Report of the Committee into the Teaching of English (The Kingman Report). London: HMSO. (1989) English for Ages 5 to 16 (The Cox Report). London: HMSO. European Communities (1984) Report on the Implementation of Directive 77/486/EEC on the Education of Children of Migrant Workers: COM (84) Final. Brussels, 10 February. Ingram, D. (1990) The Teaching of languages and cultures in Queensland: Towards a language in education policy for Queensland Schools. Queensland, Australia: Queens-

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land Education Department, Centre for Applied Linguistics and Language, Griffiths University. Linguistic Minorities Project (1985) The Other Languages of England. London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul. Mullard, C. (1984) Anti-Racist Education: The Three O's. Coventry: National Association for Racial Education. Taylor, M. and Hegarty, S. (1985) The Best of Both Worlds? Windsor: NFER-Nelson. Thompson, L. (1993) The Cleveland study: A study of bilingual children in a nursery school. Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Minority Languages, University of Wales, Cardiff, to appear in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. (1994) Ecolinguistic biographies: Social networks in an urban nursery school. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on the Maintenance and Loss of Minority Languages, Nordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, available on ERIC Document Reproduction Service, Ref. ED 364 116/FL 021 722. Troyna, B. (1991) Underachievers or underrated? The experience of pupils of South Asia origin in a secondary school. British Educational Research Journal 17, 361-76.

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A Response to Kroon and Vallen: Questions of Citizenship, Nationality and Social Cohesiveness Dennis Ager Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET I start from the premise that both the previous contributors see the purpose of work on language and education policy as a contribution to social cohesiveness and that in their policy making the Dutch and British Governments havevery broadlythe same aims. Now, if immigrants are to form part of society, they should be entitled to acceptance by the hosts, and they themselves should feel comfortable as guests; they, and certainly their children, should, eventually, integrate into society as full members without any of the connotations of 'host' and 'guest'. We are talking of a process of socialisation: starting from a point in which immigrants are outside, and ending at a point at which they are inside and no longer can be identified as 'they': 'they' have become 'we'. In this equation, there are, therefore, a number of factors: the society itself, the hosts, the guests, the notion of 'comfortable' and the notion of 'acceptance'. There are some general considerations in each of these factors, but their realisation may well be different from one society to another. In the case of the European countries receiving immigrants, the most obvious difference lies in the sending countries of Kroon & Vallen's Group 2 ('sociocultural backgrounds differ considerably from those of the native Dutch population'): in Britain, mainly India, Pakistan and south-east Asia; in France, mainly North Africa; in the Netherlands, mainly Turkey, Surinam and Morocco. But the common factors are also clear, as Kroon & Vallen point out: permanent settlement, concentration in towns and cities, (initial) social and economic disadvantage, problems of cultural difference, problems of identity. Underlying the whole question is what is meant by the 'host society': is it a static realisation, bounded by existing history, traditions and ways of meaning, or can society itself change to become a cultural mosaic, with an identity different from what it was? The answer to this will depend on the strength of the cultural identity of the existing society before immigration took place: strong cultural identities will resist change (France), weak cultural identities (does this include USA, Britain, the Netherlands?) will adapt. I want to comment on one aspect of the notions of 'acceptance' and 'being comfortable', to link these to notions of nationality and citizenship, and to look at the consequences for social cohesiveness. The two key ways of defining nationality (or Gemeinschaft, or membership of the affective nation) conflict. On the one hand, jus soli indicates bodily presence in the 'host' society or actual absence from it; on the other jus sanguinis depends

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on birthof self, of father, mother or some combination of these. Most European countries adopt a definition which mixes the two: Germany tending towards accepting anybody of German origin as a full member, Britain tending the other way. The concept of citizenship Gesellschaft, access to the rights and duties of social membershipalso has two extremes: rights accorded to individuals and rights accorded to groups (cf. Edwards, 1994). It is the consequences of the interaction of these two mindsets that are then played out in overall policy towards immigrants and their children, against the prime requirement that the endpoint is social cohesiveness. At one extreme, policies which stress the individual nature of citizenship and presence in the relevant territory should be most cohesive; at the other, maintaining group identity and determining citizenship by birth alone maintains static difference and prevents social cohesiveness:

This diagram could be interpreted as saying that pluralism and multicultural policies can never produce cohesiveness, and that assimilation is the only policy that could. Certainly pluralism necessarily means that society is formed of groups who recognise themselves as (permanently) different, and must therefore tend towards a static, unmoving and fragmented representation of difference: 'preserving' immigrant identities, as in a museum. Assimilation, equally unmoving, equally tending towards preservation of an identity defined in the past, has the sole advantage that it offers one identity rather than a range, and is necessarily cohesive in this sense. The Netherlands, like Britain, clearly falls below the line, insofar as ethnic minorities are concerned, and seems to be situated towards the right-hand side, in defining minorities by birth. The consequence is that rights and social membership are offered to groups: the Turks, the Moluccans, the Moroccans, rather than towards individuals based on their progress through society. These groups then necessarily tend to solidify and erect barriers around themselves, mirroring the barriers that have been placed around them by the 'hosts': they gain advantage from being identified as a group, and society can deal with them as such. France comes above the line, maintaining that membership of the Republic is a matter for individuals and refusing to accept the existence of 'particularisms' or group membership as categories within the Republic (cf. Silverman, 1992). France should therefore be the most socially cohesive of all the European nationsa society in which free individuals voluntarily desire to join society. That this

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is in practice not so is attributed by some commentators to the fact that the assimilation policy hasn't been strong enough: Even though it may shock, I repeat: schools must impose the dominant culture. Hence we should stop teaching Arabic in primary schoolsa policy instituted while Giscard was President, based on the premise of return, and which was continued by the Socialists slavishly following difference theories. This was a major error. (Jazouli, A. Nouvel Observateur, 2.12.1993: Author's translation) 'Acceptance' of immigrants by the host society is much easier in the case of individuals than in the case of groups, as the failure of 'anti-racist' policies and their rejection by majority members amply demonstrates. Categorising every member of a racial minority as equally deserving of (for example) social payments or affirmative action in job selection merely leads to a sense of unfairness, however unjustified, by those who do not qualify. On the other hand, 'feeling comfortable' is a group notion, at least for first generation immigrants: retaining links with the mother country, retaining language and cultural habits means that the immigrant moves within an atmosphere which is familiar. Second generation immigrants, and certainly third generation and beyond, only feel 'comfortable' when either the host society has changed or they have (part-) assimilated, so 'comfort' becomes individual. On this basis, it is only by preserving first-generation status that the group notion can be preserved as such. Pluralism is hence necessarily a way of preserving permanent immigrant status for the group, rather than a way of creating a cohesive society. Taken to its logical conclusion, the desire for social cohesiveness presents a stark choice: either that a policy of integration and assimilation is the only one that works, and that immigrants must lose their identity in order to become individuals and in order to adopt the ways of meaning which existed before they got there, and which remain unchanged; or that society must adapt while immigrants don't: that immigrants retain their own culture and identity, while society changes to recognise that identity as part of its own. The contrast between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is fundamental. Presumably the purpose of language policy towards ethnic minorities is to ensure that 'they' link in to 'our' society on the Gemeinschaft level, rather than that of Gesellschaft: that 'they' move from being contractually bound to being emotionally bound. Keeping 'them' permanently outside, by preserving an artificial form of 'their' language and culture, divorced from its roots and maintained by those who may have political, religious or commercial motives for maintaining this false identity, and corralling all immigrants within this group, is divisive and unfair for both minority and majority individuals, as Edwards (1994: 68) notes: 'the greater injustice may be caused to minority group members because of the indiscriminate way in which individual rights are fulfilled by race-conscious policies premised on the idea of group rights'. In the light of this, the Dutch policy on language education seems to represent the same mix of aims as that of most other European countrieswith the striking

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exception, again, of the French. Put starkly, language policy can concentrate on (host) language as a second language, easing the transition towards assimilation; or concentrate on Languages and Cultures of Origin, maintaining these for the immigrant group, and teaching them to the host society as well, in order to ease the transition of society to its new form. Doing all of these, as seems to be suggested in Kroon & Vallen's conclusionsand is in fact widespread practice shows how confused European societies have become over what they are doing and why they are doing it. As Kroon & Vallen say, however, the experience of racism, xenophobia and violence has hit societies whose policies are based on assimilation just as much as it has affected those whose policies were rooted in pluralism and tolerance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the authors detect a 'lull in discussion and a stagnation in educational practice': nobody knows what to do. References Edwards, J. (1994) Group rights v. individual rights: The case of race-conscious policies. Journal of Social Policy 23 (1), 55-70. Silverman, M. (1992) Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France. London: Routledge.

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The Linguistic Situation in the New Belgium. Ludo Beheydt Université Catholique de Louvain, Place de l'Université 1, 1348 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium Abstract The linguistic groups which constitute the autochthonous Belgian population have a long tradition of conflict and antagonism. For centuries there has been a power struggle between Dutch and French speaking sectors, resolved partially by the application of the principle of territoriality, which divided the country into three areas: Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and German-speaking. In each of these areas only one language has official status and speakers of the other national languages resident there have no linguistic rightsnor do speakers from linguistic minority groups constituted by recent immigration. The polarisation of the linguistic communities has led to the 1994 constitution which states that Belgium is now a federal state. Whether this represents the end of the process or merely a step towards an even greater independence for the constituent territories remains to be seen. Introduction Belgium was a unitary constitutional monarchy until 1993 when it became a federal state. The first article of the new Belgian Constitution, which was signed by King Albert II on February 18th 1994, states that 'Belgium is a federal state consisting of communities and regions'. To understand this enigmatic first article and the consequences of it for the linguistic situation a brief historical survey is in order. The complex, asymmetrical subdivision of the country in three communities (Article 2), three regions (Article 3) and four linguistic areas (Article 4) is the result of a political compromise that is based on the attempt to reconcile two basic principles in language policy: on the one hand the personality principle which states the right of the individual to his or her mother tongue and, on the other hand, the territorial principle which states that one language is the official language of a specific territory. In Belgium the tension between these two principles has eventually led to the federalisation of the state. But before we go into the historical background a word must be said about the languages of Belgium. The Languages of Belgium For a proper understanding of the linguistic situation it is essential to know that Belgium is officially a trilingual country, where three languages Dutch, French and German enjoy equality which is guaranteed by a series of language laws. Of the 10 million inhabitants approximately 60% are Dutch-speaking Flemings. So Dutch and not Flemish as is sometimes falsely assumed

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(Grosjean, 1982: 13)is the official language of the Flemish Community (Vlaamse Gemeenschap). By decree of December 10th 1973 (Belgisch Staatsblad, 1974: 5038) 'het Nederlands' (Dutch) was declared the official language of the Flemish Community. This official choice has been further institutionalised by a Language Union Treaty signed between Flanders, Belgium and the Netherlands on September 9th 1980. This Language Union has as its primary goal the development of a common language policy for Dutch in the Netherlands and in Flanders. However, the recognition that Dutch is the official language of Flanders does not mean that there are no differences between Flemish Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch. In general one could say that the difference between the Flemish variant and the Netherlandic variant is comparable to the difference between British English and American English. The most striking difference is in pronunciation. Under the influence of the media a separate spoken standard variant has developed in both countries (Beheydt, 1991a, 27-28). Yet this difference in articulatory setting does not hamper mutual understanding and, in fact, many Dutch watch Flemish television and just as many Flemings watch Dutch television. There are some lexical differences too between the two variants, but due to the media and education, the common standard variants are becoming more generalised. As to syntax, the differences are so minimal that they are hardly worth mentioning. Actually the Flemings and the Dutch accept the same dictionary Van Dale and the same grammar Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst as the common norm for their language. Although this norm is not officially imposed, it seems to be largely accepted by the language community. The Van Dale dictionary is used as the supreme arbiter in education and also in language games in the media; the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst is taken as the guide for grammar books in the schools. All this does not mean that standard Dutch is spoken in all circumstances. On the contrary, local dialects are still widely in use, and more so in Flanders than in the Netherlands: 'in Flanders, until well into the 20th century, the Dutch dialects led a fragmented and isolated existence, while the standard language was a foreign tongue, French. As a result the dialects of northern Belgium borrowed liberally from the foreign tongue, and even today the Standard Dutch spoken and written in Flanders has not yet 'entirely shaken off the effects of interference from French' (Vandeputte, 1981: 41). Nevertheless it would be wrong to speak of Flemish as a separate language. Flemish does not exist as a unitary language, it only exists as a conglomerate of dialects. In this respect it is at least striking that most Francophones in Belgium continue to call the language of the Flemings 'le flamand' (Flemish) and not 'le neerlandais' (Dutch). French is the official language of some 40% of the Belgian population. It is spoken by the 3,275,923 inhabitants of Wallonia, the south-eastern part of Belgium, and by a large majority in the officially bilingual area of the Brussels Metropolitan Region, which has 951,217 inhabitants. Belgian French is very close to French French and usually follows the norm of the official French Académie Française. There are slight deviations from the 'parler de Paris' in pronunciation and in vocabulary (so called 'belgicismes'), but

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in general the Communauté française de la Belgique loyally follows the French model in its language policy. Also its most respected grammar, Grévisse follows the French norms and the Larousse and the Robert, in that order, are considered the authoritative dictionaries. Yet, recently some controversy seems to be growing between the Communauté française de la Belgique and the Académie Française. The official spelling reform proposed by the Académie Française has not been made obligatory in Belgian education and a recent decree of the French Community in Belgium (June 1993) concerning the feminisation of professional names has met with severe criticism from the French Academy, who called the feminisation of certain words 'abusive and shocking' (Lettre du sécrétaire de I'A.F. Maurice Druon). German, which is mainly spoken by the 67,000 inhabitants in two Cantons, Eupen and St-Vith, and by some 40,000 persons in the villages along the German border (Malmédy and Arlon), has not developed as a separate standardised variety in Belgium. The Germanophone minority in Belgium follows the language policy of the neighbouring Federal Republic of Germany. And the authoritative German Duden grammar and Duden dictionaries are also considered as the normative guides in Belgium. However, this does not mean that the German of the Belgian Germanophone media is not recognisable as a separate variant. Due to intense contact with French, Belgian German has many 'gallicisms', literal German translations of French structures (e.g.'seine Kandidatur einreichen'). Historical Survey In 1830, when the new kingdom was formed, French became the cement of the centralist young state and although the Constitution stated that the use of languages in Belgium was free, a law enacted on September 19th 1831 decreed that for Belgian laws only the French text would be official. By that law the language of about 50% of the population of the new country was at once reduced to a secondary status, as about half of the inhabitants were Flemish monolinguals at that time. These Flemish monolinguals constituted some 97% of the population of Flanders, the north-western part of Belgium. In Wallonia, the south-eastern part of the country, French was generally considered to be the standard language of the whole country. An important disadvantage for the Flemish population was the fact that in 1830 it did not yet have a standard language. The language of the Flemings was a conglomerate of dialects which lacked a covering standard. The only conceivable standard language for the Flemings that actually existed was Dutch, but Dutch, being the official language of the former Dutch rulers, certainly did not qualify as a possible official language in Belgium. Moreover the Flemish elitethe higher bourgeoisie and the nobilitywas also Francophone, just like the Walloon bourgeoisie and nobility. So the leaders of the new Belgium were all Francophone and it seemed only natural that French would become the exclusive official language of the new nation. As one of the members of the National Congress stated: 'La Belgique sera latine ou elle ne sera pas' (Rogier).

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This official dominance of French was made concrete in a gradual Frenchification of education, administration and justice. The Flemish population did not openly react to this Frenchification as it already had enough trouble to survive in the starvation years from 1840-1850. Thus the Belgian upper class was confirmed in its nationalistic views that it was possible to base a nation on an official language that was not the language of the whole nation. In the beginning only a small and idealistic minority of the lower middle class and civil servants in Flanders reacted against French dominance. This so-called Flemish Movement which had language at the heart of its struggle 'fostered a Flemish national consciousness as part of a larger Belgian consciousness' (Wils, 1992: 1). But, as is typical of most ethnic revivals (Barth, 1969), the cultural movement of the Flemings soon became a socio-economic emancipation force. The Flemish Movement gave the Flemings an ethnic identity based on two central values: the common language and the common 'great past'. It managed to create a Flemish national consciousness which eventually led to a greater use of Flemish in more domains. By the end of the 19th century, more precisely in 1898, the political pressure of the Flemish Movement had become so powerful that the Belgian Parliament had to accept the so-called Equality Law; this law put Dutch and French on an equal footing for parliamentary debates and for the promulgation of laws. This Equality Law was based on one of the two fundamental principles of the present-day Belgian state, viz. the personality principle. Every citizen was now free to choose in which language he was to be educated or to be heard by the administration, justice, etc. This Equality Law, important though it was, did not immediately turn Dutch into a full-fledged national language. The largely Francophone establishment continued to use French as the only standard language, also in Flanders. However, under growing pressure from the Flemings, primary education in Flanders became gradually Dutchified. Towards the end of the 19th century the Flemish Movement leaders adopted the territorial principle as their new guideline and strove for a monolingual Flanders, where the language of the region would be the official language. That the leaders of the Flemish Movement should have resorted to the territorial principle is not surprising, as gaining exclusive control over a specific territory is one of the few possibilities for a minority language to defend itself. It is hence understandable that the dominant Francophone group was initially fiercely opposed to this territorial principle. The French-speaking upper class in Flanders in particular was afraid of being minorised by Flemish upstarts. Inspired by the internationalist ideas of the enlightenment they assumed that the progress of the nation could only be based on the general acceptance of a prestigious language of culture like French. The hierarchy strongly resisted the cry for Dutchification and when the Flemish Movement demanded a University in Dutch the Belgian bishops reacted that: Les Flamands qui voudraient flandriciser une université belge n'ont pas assez réfléchi au rôle supérieur auquel doit prétendre une université. [Flemings who would like to flandricise a Belgian university have not

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sufficiently reflected on the superior role to which a university ought to aspire.] (Instructions Collectives, 1906) The politicians too remained largely opposed to the territorial principle, especially the Francophone Liberals, who were afraid of losing a great number of their Francophone Flemish voters. But when the massive presence of the migrant workers in the industrial centres of Liege and Charleroi started to threaten Walloon territorial integrity, they gave in and between 1928 and 1932 a series of language laws were enacted which once and for all confirmed the territorial principle. The first great victory for the Flemish Movement was the Dutchification of Ghent University (1930), followed in 1932 by a series of language laws concerning the use of the mother tongue in primary and secondary education in accordance with the new principle 'language of territorylanguage of education'. By the end of 1932 the cultural homogeneity and the unilinguality of Flanders and Wallonia were officially settled on the basis of the territorial principle. Only the language boundary had not yet been fixed and, if it had been up to Wallonia, it would never have been fixed. Still, in the first half of the sixties the linguistic integrity of the regions got legal protection: the language boundary was fixed in law in 1963. Following the territorial principle the country was divided into an officially unilingual Dutch-speaking area (Flanders), an officially unilingual French-speaking area (Wallonia) and an officially German-speaking area (9 communities). Some adjustments had to be made to the provincial boundaries to make them coincide exactly with the language boundary. A special regulation had to be elaborated to settle the linguistic status of the Brussels area. Brussels became an officially bilingual island in the otherwise unilingual Flemish territory. As a political compromise and as a concession to the linguistic minorities along the language boundary (25 communities) and on the periphery of the Brussels area (6 communities) 'language facilities' were provided which meant that administrative contacts would continue to be possible in French and Dutch and that, at primary level, education in the mother tongue would be provided. Today, in most of the Flemish 'facility communities' there is a Francophone majority and the facilities, once considered as a temporary measure, contribute to the Frenchification of the Brussels area. The State Reform Although the language laws of the sixties had apparently settled the language question, not all problems were solved and soon strong Flemish demands for full cultural autonomy and Walloon demands for economic autonomy were expressed. The linguistic struggle became a strife between two communities and a more profound state reform was imposed. On both sides of the language boundary there was a growing awareness that the unitary structure of the centralist state was no longer tenable. In four waves of constitutional revisions a totally different, federal state was created. What makes this federalisation process so remarkable and so unique in the European context is that it has been achieved without blood-shed and without civil wars. Nowadays the Belgian state reform

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is being studied as an exemplary model of peaceful federalisation and successful ethnic revival. The first reform was started in 1970 by the famous words read in Parliament by the then Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens: 'The unitary state [...] is overtaken by the events and the communities and the regions have to be integrated in the new structures of the state'. With these words he introduced the specific 'double structure' which was to make Belgian federalism unique in the whole world. The Constitutional revision of 1970 differentiated between three cultural communities (the Dutch Cultural Community, the French Cultural Community and the German Cultural Community) and three regions (the Flemish, the Walloon and the Brussels Regions). The communities were based on the personality principle, whereas the regions were based on the territorial principle. The two bigger cultural communities (the Dutch and the French) got their own council with legislative power in cultural matters, but without executive power. Thus the cultural autonomy of the communities was granted. In 1980, under pressure from Wallonia, regionalisation was started. The second constitutional revision gave the Flemish and the Walloon Regions their own parliament with legislative power and their own government with executive power in so-called territorial matters like environment, economy, energy, employment, housing, etc. The cultural communities were transformed into communities and were granted additional authority in 'personal' matters such as welfare and health. They also received legislative competence and executive power. Only in a third phase of Constitutional Revision, between 1988-1989, was Metropolitan Brussels made a separate Region with its own legislative and executive powers. Finally, after long negotiations, a fourth state reform resulted from the St. Michael's Agreement of September 29th 1992 and the final vote over the state reform in the national Parliament on July 14th 1993 made Belgium a federal country with directly chosen separate parliaments. The Flemish Council (for both the Community and the Region), the Walloon Regional Council and the French Community Council acquired constitutive autonomy through this latest reform. To fit into the new regional model the old province of Brabant will be split into Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant along the language border in 1995. What is most typical of the Belgian federal state is its asymmetry. With the new constitution, the already existing asymmetry between Flanders and Wallonia in political, economic, linguistic and cultural respect is now completed by the institutional asymmetry. Politically, Wallonia has always been a socialist stronghold (Huyse, 1981) and although recent events have somewhat weakened the socialist position, it remains a predominantly socialist country. Flanders, which has been a Christian Democratic region since the Second World War, has recently become a more Liberal one. Economically too, there is a great difference between Flanders and Wallonia. Wallonia is facing difficult times: the coal, steel and textile industries that were once the pride of a flourishing region have mostly been closed down and the new

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diversification has not really had an impact yet, so that at this moment the Walloon economy is at the level of the poorest French and Italian regions. Flanders, on the other hand, controls the newer industries, has two important harbours and converted its outdated industries already years ago, so that it is now the far stronger partner in the federal state. Culturally, there is a growing alienation between Flanders and Wallonia (Lijphardt, 1981). Since Belgium opted for territorial unilingualism 'both Flanders and Wallonia function as monolingual entities each paying little attention to the language of the other' (De Vriendt & Van de Craen, 1990: 41). Before the 1960s Belgium had a cultural unity, since the cultural elite of Flanders still took an active part in the French culture. Now that the position of French has lost much of its influence in Flanders and Flanders is orienting more to the culture of the Netherlands, the gap between the two communities is widening. The New Linguistic Situation The present-day linguistic situation in Belgium is officially defined by the following articles of the new Constitution: Article 4: Belgium comprises four linguistic areas: The Dutch language area, the French language area, the bilingual area of Metropolitan Brussels and the German language area. and Article 129: paragraph 1: Moreover, the Councils of the Flemish and the French Community settle, with the exclusion of the federal legislator, each for itself, by decree, the use of languages for 1. administration 2. education in the officially organised, subsidised or recognised institutions 3. social relations between employers and their personnel, and also the by law and regulations prescribed acts and documents of the enterprises and Article 129: paragraph 2: These decrees have legal power, in the Dutch language area and in the French language area respectively These articles clearly define Belgium as a trilingual country consisting of three unilingual areas and one bilingual one in which the communities can independently determine their own language policy within the territorial borders. Now the future of the multilingual federal state will of course largely depend on the evolution of the linguistic situation, the attitudes of the population and the adopted language policies in the separate communities. Hence it seems interesting to look at these aspects in the respective linguistic communities. With a population of 5,924,628 inhabitants (Stativaria, 10/12/1993) the Dutch-speaking Flemings form a 60% majority of the Belgian population. They use Dutch as their language of education, administration and justice. In Flanders

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there is still a relatively small percentage of foreigners. In December 1993 only 4.69% of the population had a foreign nationality. Of this 4.69% only 2.1% belong to the category 'poor' foreigners, i.e. foreigners originating from a poor country outside the European Union and Western Europe with a gross national product below the world average. So 2.59% belong to the group of 'rich' foreigners. Only in some communities in the province of Limburg does the concentration of foreigners exceed 10%. Still, the number of foreigners, 'rich' as well as 'poor' is increasing, but not dramatically. Due to the combined language laws, education in the monolingual areas must only be provided in the language of the territory and there is no legal possibility to organise education in a language other than the language of the region. Indeed, article 4 of the language law of July 30th 1963 leaves no doubt about that: The language of education is Dutch in the Dutch language area, French in the French language area and German in the German language area, except in the cases defined by articles 6 to 8. This article, which runs counter to the European Union language policy, has met with severe criticism from the European Commission. The Treaty of Rome guaranteed the linguistic freedom of all European citizens. Actually, unlike the Belgian language policy, the European language policy is based on the personality principle. Already in the 1970s the European Commission explicitly declared that all Europeans must be able to keep their own language and culture wherever they reside in Europe and that education must take account of this fundamental right. That implies that all European children should have the right to follow so-called Education in the 'Own' Language and Culture. But Belgium does not grant that rightit has even had several warning notices from the European Community because of its nonobservance of that rule. Up till now, neither the Flemish nor the French community have organised education in the 'Own' Language and Culture. The Flemish Community has not followed the European policy in that respect in order to defend its newly won linguistic integrity (cf. Lorwin, 1972: 408-9). The Flemish cling to the territorial principle because they fear that the systematic application of the personality principle would clear the way for a further Frenchification of their territory. Indeed, 'the need of a minority language to defend itself by gaining exclusive control over a specific territorial niche' (Laponce, 1984: 31) is a well-known phenomenon. Moreover, the Flemish attitude in this respect ought to be evaluated against its historical background. In fact, the Flemish Community has gone through a typical process of ethnic revival (Fishman, 1985). Flanders may indeed be considered a textbook case of successful ethnic revival with the language as the core symbol of and driving force behind the social, economic and political emancipation (see also Roosens, 1986). In the beginning the Flemish Movement was a cultural and philologic movement of some lower middle class intellectuals who demanded nothing more than the recognition of their mother tongue within a bilingual country: 'The mid-nineteenth century Flamingant, or supporter of the

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Flemish Movement, could not even imagine a unilingual Dutch Flanders' (Garrett, 1986: 103). The Flemish Movement did not start as an ethnic movement as initially there was not even a Flemish ethnic identity. But, an ethnic identity is a psycho-social construct that can be created and promoted (Roosens, 1986). And that is exactly what happened with the Flemish identity in the 19th century. Especially one book, 'The Lion of Flanders' (1938) by H. Conscience contributed to the creation of that Flemish identity. This book about the 'great past' of the Flemish people made the Flemish conscious of the 'higher value' of being a Fleming. U. van de Voorde, a future leader of the intellectual Flemish elite, stated with hindsight: If our people have ever had a book from which they havefor generationsextracted the spiritual food for nationalistic feelings, then it is Conscience's 'Leeuw van Vlaanderen' and no other. (Quoted in De Graeve, 1933: 125) By linking ethnicity and language the Flemish Movement became politicised. In that respect too, the Flemish Movement followed the course of the typical ethnic revival. As has been convincingly shown by Barth (1969) ethnic self affirmation always goes together with the defense of social and economic interests. In the Flemish Movement we clearly observe how the linguistic movement becomes a socio-economic movement. By the end of the 19th century the intellectual leader A. Vermeylen (in Hermans, 1992: 186) declares in his Critique of the Flemish Movement: The Flemish Movement must not be a linguistic movement, but rather a social striving in the broadest sense of the word. L. de Raet, the Flemish economist, adds to this that the Flemish Movement can only attain its goal along economic paths (1906, quoted in Hermans, 1992: document 29)). Thus the Flemish Movement turned into a pressure group for Flemish emancipation and for linguistic and cultural recognition in Belgium. The Flemings have attained their goal in a peaceful way and following democratic paths and now Flanders is an autonomous Community and Region within a federal state. The historical heritage of the language strife still greatly influences the linguistic attitude of the Flemings. The Flemings have had to fight for their language. The place of Dutch as an official language had to be conquered over French, a mighty and recognised language of culture. Only in 1973 did Dutch become the official language of the Flemish Community. It is hence understandable that the Flemings are, as yet, not very tolerant in their linguistic attitude. Now that they have successfully acquired the right to their own language, they are firmly determined to defend it against any possible aggressor. In that respect the language has kept its great symbolic value and it is in this light that one should interpret the recent riotous behaviour of some Flemish ministers in the European context. The Flemish Minister of Defense, L. Delcroix, recently requested the use of Dutch in the Eurocorps, the European army. The Flemish

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Premier, Van den Brande, has strongly opposed the decision to restrict to five the number of official languages in the European Trade Bureau. Moreover, it is that same Minister Van den Brande who continues to insist on the strict observance of the original clause in the Treaty of Rome which guarantees that each member country can use its own language in its dealings with the European Community. With an appeal to Title IX, article 128 of the Treaty of Maastricht which states that the 'Community contributes to the development of the cultures of the Member States with respect for the national and regional diversity of these cultures', the Flemish members of the European Parliament continue their opposition to the restriction of the number of working languages in the European Union. What about the position of the second and third national languages in the autonomous Flemish Community? Since the enactment of the Language Law of July 30th 1963 the only language of education is the language of the region. However, that same law provides for the possibility to organise lessons in the second language. Article 9 states that in the unilingual territories the second language may be taught in primary school from the 5th year on, for at most three hours a week. In secondary schools the law provides for lessons in the 'second language' for four hours a week. In 1969, under pressure from changing attitudes, the then still unitary Catholic Board of Education introduced the individual free choice of the 'second language'. So from then on pupils could choose English or German as a second language instead of Dutch or French. It sufficed that eight parents requested one of these languages to be taught as a second language. For French and Dutch the request of one parent was still sufficient. Thus both official languages kept their privileged position in education. Of course, the provisions of the Language Law came as a hard blow to the Francophone population in Flanders, as their children were no longer allowed education in French. But they adapted quite quickly to the new situation and in the meantime they have managed to raise their children bilingually. In fact the Francophones in Flanders are the 'real' bilinguals in Belgium. Nowadays a minority of 2-3% of the Flemish population is still French-speaking, but in general they feel somewhat isolated and abandoned by the French Community (Beheydt, 1993a). As for the Flemings, the newly won autonomy in education initially made them turn their backs on French. Up till the sixties the Flemings were the 'true' bilinguals in Belgium, as French was the language of upward mobility. But cultural autonomy brought along a demotivation to learn French, so that by the end of the sixties a new generation of Flemings had developed a negative attitude towards French and the bilingual proficiency of the Flemishat least as far as French was concernedhad greatly declined. Only very gradually is a younger generation of Flemings again becoming aware of the importance of the knowledge of the second language in the Belgian context. Recent figures indicate that the free choice of French as a second language and the participation in French courses for social promotion is steadily growing again (Debrock, 1991). So perhaps in Flanders a new balance is being sought between the hard-won right to the own language and the social necessity of knowing at least the second language.

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In the French Community things are more complicated. As the French Community consists of the French-speaking Brussels population situated in an enclave in the Flemish territory on the one hand and of the French-speaking population of Wallonia on the other hand, it is difficult to present a unitary picture of the Francophone part of the population. Wallonia, an area of 16,844 km2 with 3,275,923 inhabitants (National Institute for Statistics, 31st December 1991), is almost entirely French-speaking except for a small minority of 67,000 German-speaking Walloons in the eastern part of Wallonia. The official language of administration, justice and education is French except in the two German-speaking Cantons and although the percentage of foreigners exceeds that of Flanders no Education in the 'Own' Language and Culture is provided. Wallonia has been and continues to be a unilingual region. After the fixing of the language boundary, the French Community which is responsible for language matters, enacted the 'decree Spaak' (1978) which was to safeguard the linguistic integrity of the French language. It was especially directed against foreign influence in official documents and it imposed French as the obligatory language for commercial contracts. From 1985 on, the French Community made official the defence of the French language in two new institutions: the Conseil de la langue française and the Service de la langue française. The 'Council' has to advise the Government of the French community on language matters and the 'Service' should foster activities to promote and defend the French language. In 1990 the French Community also deemed it necessary to create a Commission de surveillance de la législation sur la langue française. The task of this committee is to keep a watchful eye on the application of the linguistic legislation. As to the position of Dutch in Wallonia, the French Community has not particularly favoured the second national language. In fact the prestige of Dutch in Wallonia is far less evident than the prestige of French in Flanders 'à cause du préjugé dont est frappé le néerlandais chez les francophones' [due to the prejudice of the Francophones against the Dutch] (Boileau, 1968: 655). That prejudice is most clearly expressed in the words of the former Walloon leader J. Destrée, who declared in the House of Representatives in 1913: 'There is in Wallonia an instinctive and profound repugnance to Flemish' and he added that the obligation to learn Flemish would be an 'intolerable servitude' (J. Destrée, quoted in Lorwin 1972: 396). Although a lot has changed since Destrée's times, especially due to the unequivocal choice of the Flemings of Dutch as their standard variety (see Beheydt, 1991b), Dutch is still not considered a fullfledged language of culture by many Francophones. Their attitude is often one of disdain or disparagement. A reflection of this attitude is found in a number of decrees. Already in 1976 a decree was enacted making the study of foreign languages optional in primary education and offering English and German as possible 'second languages'. A later decree (the so-called Bourgeois decree) ended the privileged position of Dutch in secondary education by requiring eight parents to request Dutch, for it to be taught. However, a rapid change seems to be taking place. Younger Walloons realise that Belgium is still in need of proficient bilinguals. The political as much as the

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economic world is bilingual. Unlike thirty years ago, Walloon politicians have to know Dutch if they want to play an important role in national politics. A trusted Walloon figure-head like M. Wathelet has become the new example of the bilingual French politician. The recent Walloon urge to learn Dutch, which contrasts strikingly with the former refusal to learn Dutch is not an idealistic inspiration but rather a token of pragmatism. When a 1987 survey by the French Community in Belgium on The Use of Languages in Work Situations established that in 65% of the Walloon enterprises knowledge of Dutch is required (against English in 'only' 47%) and that in big enterprises this figure is higher (75%) than in small enterprises (51%), when, moreover, higher functions necessitate the knowledge of Dutch more often than lower functions, it becomes understandable why the learning of Dutch has recently received a new impetus. The difficult economic situation and growing European unemployment have in turn further fostered foreign language learning. German, the third official language in Belgium, is spoken by about 1% of the population, which makes its speakers the best protected language minority in Europe. Officially they belong to the Walloon Region, but in linguistic and cultural respects they have their autonomy. Already in 1973 a Council for the German-speaking community, which consists of 25 directly elected members, was established. In 1980 they became part of the Walloon Region but they kept their cultural autonomy. Education in the German-speaking Region is in either French or German and the second language is either German or French. In their attitude the Germanophones are often called 'the last Belgians' as they do not cultivate a separate identity but strongly support Belgian unity. Brussels. The most difficult Region to describe is the Brussels Metropolitan Region. The Brussels Region consists of 19 municipalities of the metropolitan agglomeration and is an officially bilingual French-Dutch area. Since the state reform of 1988-1989, Brussels has its own Regional Council (a parliament) and its own government, the Government of the Brussels Metropolitan Region. Cultural and personal matters have been assigned to the Flemish and the French Communities. Certain Community powers, however, like education, are exercised by specific institutions of the Brussels Region. There are about 950,000 inhabitants in the Brussels region but it is very hard to estimate the proportion of Dutch-speakers and French-speakers. Yet, estimations are the only way of obtaining figures, as the controversial language questions were legally removed from the ten-yearly population census in 1962. The removal of this language census was a demand of the Flemings who saw in it a tool in the Frenchification of this area. Nowadays, French estimations indicate 87% Francophones compared with 13% Neerlandophones, whereas Flemish estimations find 75% Francophones and 25% Neerlandophones (Beheydt & Jucquois, 1992: 45-6). At any rate, the Brussels area is, in large majority, French-speaking and Brussels gives the impression of a Francophone city. The Frenchification, especially of the Brussels periphery, is still continuing as many French-speaking middle class citizens move out of the city to exchange the crowded urban centre for the more spacious and green suburbs.

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This phenomenon has become notorious among the Flemings as the olievlek or 'oil-stain' (Lorwin, 1972: 404; Garrett, 1986: 108; McRae, 1986:307; Wils, 1992:33), 'a double form of pollution destroying the physical and human environment of the Flemish countryside' as McRae put it (1986: 307). Indeed, not only did the rapid urbanisation destroy the rural character, using the personality principle the Francophones refused to adjust to the language of the region and took a reverse adjustment of the indigenous Flemish population for granted, so that 'By the mid-sixties it was clear that Brussels had evolved into an overwhelminglyeven militantly Francophone city where Dutch speakers, for cultural and social reasons, were constantly under pressure to conform' (Wils, 1992: 33). Whereas in the sixties the Dutch-speaking Brusselers were predominantly on the defensive against the Francophone threat, they are now much more afraid of the Eurocratic and the Non-European immigrant threat (De Puydt, 1993; Van Impe, 1993). The invasion of a host of well-to-do European civil servants and the explosive growth of Euro-Brussels has created a new problem for the indigenous population, especially in the periphery. Recent figures indicate 13.9% western foreigners in the Brussels Region (132,000 inhabitants) (Deschouwer & Mariette, 1993). As one Flemish member of the Europarliament recently complained in an open letter to the Flemish Minister President: 'The European Community which has settled down in Brussels with some 15,000 civil servants (to be multiplied by a factor of 2 or 3 when we count their family members), has never shown any good will to integrate with the Flemish Community' (Letter by J. Vandemeulebroucke, 12.03.93). The Flemish Movement resents this massive intrusion of wealthy Eurocrats who drive away the original population (Van Impe, 1993). The increase in non-European immigrants, especially Turks and Moroccans, is also considered as a threat to the Flemish culture in the Brussels Region, as indeed these immigrants hardly ever learn Dutch and generally use French in their contacts with the administration. Moreover, a militant Francophone pressure group, with strong political support (Front Démocratique Francophone) and the Liberal P.R.L., also continues their actions against the Dutch-speaking minority. In February 1994 a new movement 'Bruxelles français' was started to 'counter the Flemish state' (Le Soir, 23.02.1994) and politically militant Francophones like G. Clerfayt (F.D.F.) and A.M.Lizin forcefully declare that the Europeanisation will ultimately annul the achievements of the Flemish Movement, including the administrative monolingualism of Flanders and the bilingualism of Brussels. So far, Brussels remains legally and officially bilingual. The language laws of 1962-3 restricted this official bilingual status to the nineteen municipalities of the Brussels Region thus containing the 'oil-stain', but as a concession to the Francophones, six disputed municipalities on the periphery around Brussels were granted special 'facilities'. Though these municipalities remained an integral part of Flanders, the French speakers were allowed to use French in all public services and could also organise French primary schools. In the Brussels Region education can be either in French or in Dutch. Article 5 of the 1963 Language Law stipulated: 'In the agglomeration Brussels-Capital the language of education is either Dutch or French according to the choice of the

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head of the family, if the latter lives in the district referred to'. It was thereafter decided that the head of the family was to make a 'language declaration' upon enrolling a child in school and that this declaration would be verified by ministry inspectors of both language groups. The Francophones protested against this verification and demanded individual freedom to choose the language of the children's education (invoking the so-called 'droit du père de famille'), a right which was granted to Brussels residents in 1971. In return the Flemings were allowed to set up a systematic construction programme for new schools. The choice of one language in education does not exclude the learning of the other language however. In the bilingual region of Metropolitan Brussels, the teaching of the 'second language' is obligatory in primary schools, for three hours a week in the second grade and for five hours a week in the third and fourth grades (Article 10, Language Law, 1963). But again these legal provisions do not fully guarantee bilingual education in the whole of the Brussels Region. As De Vriendt & Van de Craen indicate, 'one should not forget that only 15.3% of the overall number of pupils in Brussels are Dutch-speaking. It is significant that even in 1989 there were no Dutch-speaking schools in 8 of the 19 Brussels municipalities' (1990: 43). Even on the official side efforts are made to by-pass the legal provisions. Under the influence of the recent coalition between the outspoken Brussels Francophone parties (F.D.F. and P.R.L.) the French Community recently decided to no longer consider Dutch as the 'second language' in French Education in Brussels. But as the Flemings considered this decision a violation of Flemish interests the Flemish Council has blocked this decision, which is henceforth referred to a common consultative body. As to the importance of French-Dutch bilingualism in Brussels, hardly any doubt can exist. The already mentioned survey by the Communauté française de Belgique about the use of foreign languages in the work situation revealed that in 92% of Brussels enterprises Dutch is the most required second language. Obviously, as Brussels is majority Frenchspeaking, the knowledge of French is even more necessary for Flemish speakers. Survey results by the newspaper Le Soir indicate that the overwhelming majority of the Brussels population itself finds it necessary to study the second language and expects bilingualism in public services and personnel (De Vriendt & Van de Craen, 1990: 45-6). It is not surprising then to find that more and more French-speaking parents are sending their children to Flemish schools in Brussels. The Flemish schools are well taken care of by the Flemish Community and classes are usually less numerous. Apart from the active bilingualism the children acquire there, they also find themselves in classes with fewer immigrant children, a factor which apparently plays an important role in the parents' choice of a school. The Flemings in Brussels, though a shrinking minority, continue their resistance to Frenchification. Backed by the Flemish Community (much more so than the Brussels Francophones by the French Community) they are increasing their cultural activities. At the same time the Flemish authorities have made Brussels their sole capital. So, what is happening in Brussels is typical of the phenomenon described by Barth (1969) that the intensity with which a

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group manifests itself as an ethnic group, increases when it finds itself a minority in an environment. Flemings in Brussels become more conscious of their ethnic belonging under the influence of the majority French presence. Moreover, as they now belong to a middle class group which has acquired a certain socio-cultural prestige they are not so interested in Frenchification as a means to upward social mobility as their predecessors of the less-favoured social groups were. Conclusion All in all, the federalisation of the Belgian state has not definitively settled linguistic strife in Belgium. It has created a temporary and subtle balance based on two conflicting principles, the territorial principle (mainly) and the personality principle. This balance which can be best characterised as 'unionist federalism' (fédéralisme de l'union) continues to be influenced by economical changes, ethnic attitudes, migration waves and European disturbances. In today's Flanders the cry is already being heard for more independence ('separatism' used to sound like a curse in Belgian politics, but nowadays it is even alluded to by respectable Flemish parties). Wallonia, which still badly needs Flemish socioeconomic solidarity, regrets the loss of power in the 'Belgique de papa' and dreams of a stronger unionism than is granted by the present federalisation. In this conflictual compromise between the Communities the language continues to play a major role and constitutes the most important symbolic value in the respective strifes. It is symptomatic, to say the least, that even today the two Communities refuse to sign a cooperation agreement (De Standaard, 9 III 1994) and that it is easier in Flanders or in Wallonia to get an invited Japanese orchestra or theatrical group subsidised than one from the other Belgian Community. As for Brussels, this multilingual enclave is becoming a European administrative centre where English is increasingly used as a lingua franca, where French is becoming the language of the lower middle class and of the immigrant population and where Dutch is spoken by a self-confident, middle-class, Flemish minority. Bibliography Baetens Beardsmore, H. (1980) Bilingual education in international schools, European schools and experimental schools: A comparative analysis. In L. Boey (ed.) Bilingual Education (pp. 3-19). Singapore: National University of Singapore. Barth, F. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Cultural Difference. Boston: Little Brown. Beheydt, L. (1988) Early bilingualism in Belgium. ABLA Papers 12, 207-27. (1991a) Nederlands bij de omroep. [Dutch in Broadcasting]. In L. Beheydt (ed.) Taal en omroep (pp. 10-36). The Hague: Voorzetten 33. (1991b) Het Nederlands in de lift. Hoe Walloniè vandaag Nederlands leert. [Dutch on the rise. How Wallonia is learning Dutch today]. Kultuurleven 8, 26-29. (1993a) Second language learning in Belgium. In D. Ager, G. Muskens and S. Wright (eds) Language Education for Intercultural Communication (pp. 15-22). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. (1993b) De toekomst van het Nederlands. Een nieuwe taalstrijd? [The future of Dutch.

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A new linguistic strife?]. In L. Beheydt et al. Tussen taal en staat (pp. 71-94). Leuven: Davidsfonds. Beheydt, L. and Jucquois, G. (1992) La Belgique. Trois langues, trois régions, trois communautés. In J.C. Herreras (ed.) 1992 Situations linguistiques dans les pays de la Communauté Européenne. LEZ Valenciennes, nr. 14. Boileau, A. (1968) L'acquisition d'une langue seconde à l'âge préscolaire. Revue des langues vivantes 35 (6), 647-57. Clough, S.B. (1930) A History of the Flemish Movement in Belgium. A Study in Nationalism. New York: Richard R. Smith. Debrock, M. (1991) La situation actuelle du français en Flandre. Septentrion 2, 37-41. De Graeve, R. (1933) Conscience. Leuven: Davidsfonds. De Puydt, R.M. and Verthé, A. (1993) (eds) Vlaams-Brussel. Vlaanderen 42, 5. Deschouwer, K., and Mariette D. (1993) De westerse migranten in Brussel en in de rand. [The western migrants in Brussels and in the periphery]. In E. Witte (red.) Brusselse Thema's. De Brusselse rand. Brussel: V.U.B. De Vriendt, S. and Van de Craen, P. (1990) Bilingualism in Belgium. A History and an Appraisal. CLCS Occasional Paper 23. Dublin: Trinity College. Fishman, J.A. 1985. (ed.) The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 37. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Garrett, M. (1986) The Flemish Movement and the restoration of Dutch in Belgium. In J. van Oosten and J.P. Snapper (eds) Dutch Linguistics at Berkeley (pp. 99-113). Berkeley, CA: University of California. Grosjean, F. (1982) Life with Two Languages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hermans, T. (ed.) (1992) The Flemish Movement. A Documentary History 1780-1990. London & Atlantic Highlands: The Athlone Press. Huyse, L. (1981) Political conflict in bicultural Belgium. In A. Lijphardt (ed.) Conflict and coexistence in Belgium: The Dynamicas of a Culturally Divided Society (pp. 107-26). University of California: Berkeley. Laponce, J. (1984) The French language in Canada: Tensions between geography and politics. Political Geography Quarterly 3/2, 91-104. Lijphardt, A. (1981) The Belgian example of cultural coexistence in comparative perspective. In A. Lijphardt (ed.) Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium: The Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society (pp. 1-13). Berkeley, CA: University of California. Lindemans, L., Renard, J. Vandevelde, J. and Vandezande, R. (1981) De taalwetgeving in Belgiè. [The language legislation in Belgium]. Leuven: Davidsfonds. Lorwin, V.R. (1972) Linguistic pluralism and political tension in modern Belgium. In J.A. Fishman (ed.) Advances in the Sociology of Language. Volume 2: Selected Studies and Applications (pp. 386-412). The Hague: Mouton. McRae, K.D. (1986) Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies. Vol 2: Belgium. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laweiere University Press. Roosens, E. (1981) The multicultural nature of contemporary Belgian society: The immigrant community. In A. Lijphardt (ed.) Conflict and coexistence in Belgium (pp. 61-92). Berkeley: University of California. Roosens, E. (1986) Micronationalisme. Een antropologie van het etnische réveil. [Micronationalism. An anthropology of the ethnic revival]. Leuven: Acco. Ruys, M. (1973) The Flemings. A People on the Move, a Nation in Being. Utrecht: Tielt. Senelle, R. (1990) The Reform of the Belgian State. Vol. V, No. 198. Memo from Belgium. Brussels: Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Vandeputte, O. (1981) Dutch: The Language of Twenty Million Dutch and Flemish People. Stichting Ons Erfdeel: Rekkem.

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Van Impe, H. (1993) Vlaanderen en Brussel. Scheiding of verstandshuwelijk? [Flanders and Brussels. Divorce or marriage of convenience?]. In L. Beheydt et al. Tussen taal en staat (pp. 47-57). Leuven: Davidsfonds. Van Velthoven, H. (1987) The process of language shift in Brussels: Historical background and mechanisms. In E. Witte and H. Baetens Beardsmore (eds) The Interdisciplinary Study of Urban Bilingualism in Brussels (pp. 15-45). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Wils, L. (1992) A brief history of the Flemish Movement. In T. Hermans (ed.) The Flemish Movement (pp. 1-39). London and Atlantic Highlands: The Athlone Press.

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Languages in Contact and Conflict: The Belgian Experience and the European Union Peter Hans Nelde Onderzoekscentrum voor Meertaligheid, Vrijheidslaan 17, B-1080 Brussel, Belgium Abstract This paper attempts to position multilingualism within the framework of contact linguistics, and relate this to solving or minimising conflicts. The principles which are of major importance in this debate, those of territoriality and personality are discussed, along with other concepts it is both necessary and desirable to consider in the context of language and politics. The evolving linguistic situation in Europe is described and the case of Belgium is considered as a role model for language policy, particularly in the European Union; conclusions are drawn from the various solutions to conflict evolved in this officially multilingual state. Finally, there are some tentative suggestions on how we may identify and minimise the conflicts caused when different languages come into contact. Introduction This paper, like Gaul, has been divided into three parts. We begin with a consideration of the theoretical aspects of ethnic contact and conflict in the multilingual situation and we suggest that contact between languages always involves an element of conflict. Language may be one of the root causes of inter-ethnic conflict or it may be a secondary symbol, but it is always significant. We then examine the situation of different categories of linguistic minorities in Europe todaythose on the linguistic borders, territorial minorities of long date, linguistic minorities constituted by recent immigration, affluent minorities, disadvantaged minorities. We discuss how urbanisation has increased contact between language groups. We look at how Belgium has handled language contact and conflict, and based on this experience we make tentative suggestions for language planning in the European Union. Finally, we assess the role that sociolinguists may play in the monitoring and analysis of linguistic contact and conflict. Theoretical Considerations Ethnic contact and ethnic conflict. Most contact between ethnic groups does not occur in the context of a peaceful, harmoniously coexisting community. Rather, contact typically takes place in a context of varying degrees of tension, resentment and differences of opinion characteristics of every competitive social structure. Under certain conditions, competitive tensions can degenerate into intense conflicts, in the worst cases ending in violence. However, the assumption of some sociologists (Bayor, 1978)

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that ethnic contact inevitably leads to conflict situations, appears, given the fact that some ethnic groups do live peacefully together (for example Kashubians and Germans in Poland), somewhat exaggerated. The possibility of conflict erupting is, however, always present, since differences between groups create feelings of uncertainty of status, which can, in turn, give rise to conflict. Sociologists (e.g. Williams, 1947) who have dealt with contact problems between ethnic groups define conflict as competition for scarce resources (whether these are actually scarce or only perceived as such) and/or as a struggle to achieve different aims and objectives, in which the goals of the opposing group must be fought, or at least neutralised, to protect the group's own interests (prestige, employment, political power etc.). Conflicts can arise relatively easily ifas is usually the caseinterests have a value-laden and emotional basis. Then conflict may appear as a conflict of values, in which differing behavioural norms collide, since usually only one norm can be considered valid. Conflicts between ethnic groups, however, occur only very rarely as openly-waged, violent conflicts; more usually a complex system of threats and sanctions comes into play, if the interests and values of one group are endangered. Indeed such a system often constitutes a key to understanding the conflict. The magnitude and development of a conflict depend on a number of factors which are determined by the number of points of friction between two or more ethnic groups, the presence of equalising or mitigating elements, and the degree of uncertainty of all the participants. Very different factors influence and reinforce these feelings of uncertainty and intimidation; attacks on values and interests interact; tensions escalate. Thus, any explanation which fails to take into account all the factors which may provide reason for conflict or which allows the irrational prejudices which bedevil the area to colour judgement, will inevitably fail. We may also say that group conflict is a normal part of social behaviour where different groups compete with each other and that as such it should not be connoted only negatively, since it may cause new, possibly more peaceful, forms of coexistence to arise. On the other hand, tensions between ethnic groups brought about principally by feelings of intimidation are unlikely to allow such positive developments and may degenerate to new conflict at any time. Nor is such conflict always or necessarily provoked by the majority; it may equally well be caused by the minority. Our fundamental premise is, thus, that as long as the competitive orientation of society leads to menace or the perception of menace, the development of conflict appears unavoidable. Language contact and language conflict So the question we may pose as linguists is the following: What role does language play in group contact and conflict? The very first concept which it is necessary to grasp is that neither contact nor conflict can occur between languages; they are conceivable only between speakers of languages and between language communities! Once this is understood it is logical to treat

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language as one of the causes and one of the signs of the intergroup tension discussed above. However, within the area of contact linguistics the term conflict remains ambiguous, at least if it refers to the social conflict which can arise in a multilingual situation (Hartig, 1980: 182). If we assume that conflict represents a counterpart to language contact, and is interdependently connected with it, then both concepts can apply to individuals and to language communities. Oksaar (1980) correctly points out the ambiguity in the term language conflict in the sense of conflict between languages with reference to the personality of the speaker, as well as conflict by means of language(s), including processes external to the individual. Similarly, Haarmann (1980 II: 191) distinguishes between interlingual and interethnic language conflicts. There has in fact been little research carried out in this area: the methodology of language contact research is deficient; that of language conflict even more so. Authorities have been slow to accept the conceptual interdependence of contact and conflict linguistics. Even amongst the founders of modern research into language contact within the parameters of the rapidly developing area of sociolinguistics and language sociology the term conflict rarely appears. For example Weinreich (1953) views multilingualism (bilingualism) and the accompanying interference phenomena as the most important form of language contact, without including the conflicts between language communities on the basis of ethnic, religious, or cultural incompatibilities. Although Fishman (1972: 14) did give some prominence to language conflict in his early work on language planning, it remained marginal until much later (Fishman, 1992). Haugen (1966) was the first to make conflict acceptable in language contact research with his detailed analysis of the Norwegian situation in the United States. Even linguists in multilingual countries such as the former Yugoslavia, Switzerland and Belgium did not feel the need to treat conflict methodically as part of language contact research up until the end of the 1970s. Such an 'ideologicalisation' of language contact appeared to them 'too touchy' (Fishman, 1980: XI). The reason for the relatively late discovery of a term so indispensable to today's contact research is perhaps to be found in the history of contact linguistics itself: in traditional language contact research (as well as in dialectology and research on linguistic change) the focus was usually on closed, geographically and socio-economically homogeneous groups, rather than on diverse, urban industrial societies. However, it is precisely in modern, urban society that conflicts resultessentially from the normative requirements of the more powerful group, usually in the majority, which demands linguistic adaptation as a language contact solution, sanctioning with economic and political disadvantage those who will not assimilate and thus pre-programming conflict with those speakers who are unwilling to adapt. Despite this unsatisfactory research situation, with work to date essentially limited to empirical case studies on language conflict, the following statements can be made: language conflict can occur anywhere there is language contact, chiefly in multilingual communities, although Mattheier (1984: 200) has also demonstrated language conflicts in so-called monolingual local communities.

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Language conflicts arise from the confrontation of differing standards, values, and attitude structures, and strongly influence identity image, upbringing, education and group consciousness. Thus, conflict can be viewed as a form of contact or, in terms of a model, as a complementary model to the language contact model. Linguists are not alone in working towards this position. Both sociologists and political scientists have also posited that language conflicts can be brought about by changes in the expansion of the social system when there is language contact between different language groups (Inglehart/Woodward, 1967). This hypothesis that there is no contact between linguistic groups without accompanying conflict has often been criticised by other linguists (de Bot, 1990), who claim that multilingual situations do exist where there is no conflict, but we have never come across them. We have yet to find a symmetrical bilingual situation; they are all asymmetricalthere is always a strong language and a weak language, there is always a majority and a minority. While numerically weak or psychologically weakened language groups have classically tended towards assimilation, numerically stronger, more homogeneous language groups in modern societies with a strong tradition, history and culture of their own, prefer political resistance as the usual form of organised language conflict. That language contact may become conflict is especially clear when it occurs between population groups of differing socio-economic structuresurban/rural, poor/wealthy, indigenous/immigrantand where the dominant group requires its own language as a condition for the integration of the rest of the population. Language contact and conflict in Belgium and French Canada Belgium and Canada may be seen as illustrations of this asymmetry, of the way language contact develops in actuality, of the way that language contact and conflict can only be treated as contact and conflict between groups. In the recent past, both countries possessed a dominant language groupFrench speakers in Belgium, English speakers in Canadawho had control of the areas of administration, politics, and the economy, and who gave employment preference to those applicants with command of the dominant language. The disadvantaged language group was then left with the choice of renouncing social ambition, assimilating, or resisting. In the case of Quebec in the post-war period, English was the usual means of communication in trade and business. However, nearly 80% of the francophone population spoke only French and thus were excluded from social elevation in the economic sector and, by extension, the political sphere. The formation of a small French-speaking elite, whose only goal was political opposition to the dominant English, precipitated the latent, socially and politically incited, language conflict. This eventually resulted in the passing of Law 101 which protected French in the province of Quebec and which banned English from a number of spheres in the public arena. The Belgian situation could be similarly described; language separation accompanied by differing social status and onesided, preferential treatment of

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the dominant language by the state. In this case the weaker group felt menaced in the religious, social, economic and psychological spheres and the frustrations they experienced were held to be responsible for the language conflict. However, unlike in Quebec, the position of the French speakers in Belgium was one of dominance. The Flemish (or better still: Dutch) speakers were the disadvantaged group. It is very important to recognise this, since it explains why we cannot compare the situation of French speakers in Canada and French speakers in Belgium and why we stress that there is no contact between languages, but only contact between speakers of languages and between communities. Many French-Canadians have failed to recognise this essential distinction They see French as an oppressed language in Canada, protecting itself against the spread of American culture. In their linguistic struggle they identify with the Walloonswhen they come into contact with Belgiumwhom they view as fighting a parallel battle for the preservation of French. However, if these French-Canadians thought clearly about the realities of the situation rather than following the allegiances brought about by membership of a language group, they would have more sympathy with the Flemish community, because their Quebécois French is in the same position as Dutch in Belgium. 1 The reality of the situation was recognised by the jurists who drew up their linguistic legislation; the Canadians have followed closely what has happened in Belgium and the famous Language Law 101 can be viewed as a version of the laws passed in Belgium over the period 1962-8. What the two countries have made out of this legislation, however, is so different that it is impossible to compare the two situations. Unlike the Canadians who imposed French in the public domain in Quebec, in Belgium language legislation was restricted to three areas which are monolingual within the designated territory. The first of these domains is administration which clearly needs to be monolingual. The second area is education, which means that an educational institution will automatically adopt the language of the territory in which it is located. The result is that in Belgiuma multilingual countrythere is not one official multilingual school or university. The third is the workplacean organisation in the Dutch-speaking area must conduct all official communication in Dutch, in the French-speaking area in French.2 Language as a symbol We have discussed the realities of linguistic discrimination where those who do not speak the language of the dominant majority are barred from access to social, economic and political advantage. Before moving on we should perhaps also say two things about the symbolic nature of language. Firstly, language is usually a secondary symbol for the underlying primary causes of conflict, the historical, religious, political bases of dissension. However, saying that language is a secondary symbol does not imply that it is not important, rather it means that the language grievance is the overt sign of a number of other reasons for discontentsocial, economic, cultural etc. For example, the political and economic differences between socialist, industrial Wallonia and Christian Democratic, agricultural Flanders are in fact articulated

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in the language conflict between the two parts of Belgium. An even more dramatic illustration of this involves the Bosnian Croats. While they were still fighting, short of arms and supplies and with only very little money, they recalled and reprinted a number of school textbooks in order to change the name of the language from Serbo-Croat to Croatian. They could simply have crossed through Serbo-Croat and replaced it with Croatian, but instead they reprinted all these books in the midst of such hardship and shortages. What further example do we need to show that language and even the name of a language is symbolic of identity, culture, religion and other potential causes of conflict between communities? Secondly, language is a potent rallying call. The climax of a political language conflict is reached when all conflict factors are combined in a single symbollanguage and disputes and struggles in very different areas (politics, economics, administration, education) can and do all appear under the banner, language conflict. In such cases, politicians and economic leaders may choose to highlight the language conflict, disregarding the actual underlying causes, and thus continue to inflame 'from above' the conflict which has arisen 'from below', with the result that language assumes much more importance than it had at the outset of the conflict. This language-oriented 'surface structure' then obscures the more deeply rooted, suppressed 'deep structure' (social and economic problems). The language issue becomes shorthand for a variety of grievances. Europe, the EU and the Linguistic Question The question of linguistic contact and conflict becomes particularly interesting in view of the political evolution of Europe. In Europe there are about 80 to 90 languages, of which approximately 35 are spoken in the area of the European Community (Nelde, 1994: 295). In addition to the traditionally multilingual countries (i.e. those which are 'administratively' multilingual), there are so-called monolingual countries (i.e. those which are 'administratively' monolingual) where significant populations possess a mother tongue which is different from that of the majority. These linguistic minorities may be either allochthonous or autochthonous (i.e. immigrant or indigenous). The language contact represented by these European multilingual situations may be described as either latent or manifest language conflict. Moreover, many of them are in evolution. The changing linguistic situation in Europe is, in part, the result of the high predisposition to mobility exhibited by a large number of language groups in the twentieth century. Large-scale migrations have caused both actual language conflict as newcomers have intruded in massive numbers on previously homogenous groups, who have themselves remained immobile, and potential conflict, in areas where numbers of newcomers and their political and social effect have not yet reached the critical mass necessary to cause reaction amongst the indigenous population. This high degree of heterogeneous population composition in densely populated and highly industrialised urban areas is a new phenomenon for many parts of Europe, but one which is now widespread.

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Multilingualism across borders and at the periphery This situation has evolved whilst our patterns of identification have lagged behind. In a Europe which, as we write in May 1994, is voting for a common parliament, it is interesting to view the national meteorological programmes on, for example, Belgian, Dutch or Luxembourg television. The weather map always stops at the political border. In 'our' country the weather is 'our' weather. With the exception of programmes from a few satellite stations which give a European weather forecast, these reports keep alive in viewers' minds the idea that this is 'your' country, this is 'your' weather and that the next political entity has a boundary across which you do not stray, a reality with which you are not concerned, and therefore you do not need to know what weather will take place there. This example, which may be true also for newspapers and the news reports of some national broadcasting and television stations, introduces our next, more serious, point. When people are asked how they feel about European unity they are often very positive about the idea. But when they are asked how they imagine the new Europe will be, it is clear that the boundary mentality prevailsthey often think it will be like their own country only larger. For example, a French person will conceive of it as a centralised, hierarchical structure whereas a German will think of a federal republic of Europe. It is in this way that a high proportion of the 'new' Europeans have managed to avoid confronting the very central question of language. Although the constituent countries of the EU already experience a situation of linguistic diversity, there is little evidence to date that the language contact problems which already exist have alerted the Europeans to the steps they must take to build any viable kind of Union. In the supranational entity being created the linguistic situation will become ever more complex, and this complexity must be properly confronted if it is not to become an insuperable problem. In this context the experience of linguistic groups who have already lived in bilingual situations becomes of central interest. Between 60 and 70 million inhabitants of the European Union live as 'speakers of lesser used languages' (EU terminology) in or around border areas and are often treated as minorities. We should see these forty or so minorities, who are usually multilingual and multicultural (for example the people of Alsace-Lorraine, the Catalans etc.), as having a new function in Europe. They have tended to spearhead cross-border labour mobility. They are prominent in the institutions of the European Union because of their multilingual, multicultural heritage. For example many of the translators and interpreters in the European Commission are from Luxembourg or Belgium. The European Union has opened up new vistas for them. Until now, many of these indigenous, autochthonous minorities were stigmatised and discriminated against. These are now the groups who will respond with more insight and experience than monolinguals to the challenges of the new Europe. So we should be very optimistic about the role of these minorities in bridging gaps in the Europe of the future. In the case of Luxembourg for example the trilingualism of the country could be regarded in terms of language pedagogy as a model for multilingualism in the Europe of the late 1990s. This educational system uses three languages

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consecutively as a medium of instruction: Luxembourgish in the kindergarten is harmoniously succeeded by standard German, taught from the first year of primary school on, with French appearing in the following year. But it would be naive to believe that such language diversification will inevitably take place in other parts of Europe. Moreover, such diversification would not necessarily be unproblematic, for the multilingualism of Luxembourg's schools can also be described as an accumulation of deficits: Luxembourgish plays only a subordinate role as a written language, standard German is supplanted before it is ineradicably rooted in the child, French, only in rare cases the mother tongue of the pupil, is taught for reasons of language politics and national identity as a native and not as a foreign language, without pupils having the necessary linguistic basis for this. These are the pupils Robert Bruch refers to as 'les classes des muets'. He suggests that such pupils often suffer a triglossic deficit (Hoffmann, 1979: 47). Multilingualism in towns and cities. When talking about multilingualism in Europe in the 1990s we also need to distinguish between autochthonous groups such as the border groups discussed above and allochthonous groups. The former are mostly rural groups, often living in underdeveloped, peripheral parts of the state and having their own folklore and traditions. The latter, on the other hand, are mostly found in urban areas. Because of this, there are in fact very few major metropolitan areas in Europe which are now monolingual and these urban centres are the hub of multiculturalism and multilingualism in the EU. However, linguistic diversification in large cities inevitably opens another conflict perspective. The population explosion and increasing mobility of the 1980s have led to the disappearance of monolingual cities in the last decade of this century in all parts of the EU. In Europe, as elsewhere, these international metropolises are potentially conflictladen, although this is not always fully recognised. Here, too, the causes and occasions of conflict vary considerably, although many have their origin in the insufficient importance placed on minority languages and the comfortable belief on the part of the majority authorities that the attrition of the mother tongue of the minority groups and linguistic assimilation to the dominant language will take place within three generationsthe classic description of the American experience (Nelde, 1984: 175). The situation is particularly complex in Europe because migrant groups have come into an urban environment which is already linguistically diverse in many instancesmore perhaps than we care to remember, since the conflict that such contact has produced remains in many cases unresolved and problematic in some way. The following few examples may serve to demonstrate this: Dublin/Baile Atha Cliath: Irish as administrative language with a small area of use is spoken almost exclusively as a second language, often learned with great effort. Helsinki/Helsingfors: The economically strong Swedish minority is bilingual, the Finnish majority mainly monolingual.

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Leeuwarden/Ljouwert: The Frisian minority, which has already weakened in terms of numbers compared to Dutch, is endangered more by a Frisian city dialect ('city Frisian') which is similar to Dutch, than by outside factors. Bruxelles/Brussel: first, the favouring of, or just the awarding of equal rights to, the Flemish minority (smaller school classes, the same rights as the majority) has led to tensions. In addition, the threat of becoming an even smaller minority because of the presence of migrants provides more fuel for the conflict. Bratislava/Pressburg: in spite of successful Slovakification of a partly Hungarian, partly German population over the course of history, the introduction of the territorial principle finally slowed down the threatening Czechification in the 1990s. Now Slovakian independence and growing nationalism brings new pressures to bear on the minority. Fribourg/Freiburg: the German minority, most of whom speak a local dialect, by doing so raise the threshold of language acquisition for majority speakers, whose learning motivation diminishes as a result. Bozen/Bolzano: the initial challenge to the Italians to further bilingualism, send more of their children to German schools and thereby emancipate the German minority, has now given way to the fear that too many bilingual Italians could harm the work market of the German minority. Pécs/Fünfkirchen: repressive political measures so menaced the substance of the small German minority that the minority language has largely disappeared from public life. Multilingualism and class difference In the literature on immigrant groups and multilingualism in Europe, the emphasis has usually been on the economically disadvantaged refugee seeking a better situation in a more affluent society. Language contact here means the speaker of a less prestigious, probably non-standard, language finding it necessary to acquire the language of the host societyoften a prestige variety, often a language of world-wide diffusion. The first language suffers from a lack of currency in the host society. This is not always the case. The high predisposition to mobility in Europe has not only affected poorer groups. Europeans reacting to the influence of the traditional push-pull factors of economic migrationlack of scope at home and opportunity elsewhereinclude members of elite groups as well. There are growing numbers of Euro-managers in international companies, Eurocrats working within the institutions of the EU and other supranational bodies. These elites have generated a prestige form of multilingualism, one of the most important aspects of which is that the host society gives value to the minority language. The most salient result of this prizing of bilingualism has been the creation of a new category of school (e.g. the European schools in Brussels, Kennedy High School in Berlin), at which the children of these privileged 'guest

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workers' are taught through two or more languages, often together with some children of members of the native upper class. From their employment patterns these two elite groups recognise the uses of multilingualism more readily than other sectors of the monolingual host society, where the same multilingual curriculum would probably meet with little success. However, this category of bilingual education is very costly and it would not be easy to make the provision more widely available. Proponents of bilingualism often stress too hastily the temporary successes of multilingual education in such schools and cite them as the answer to the problems of European linguistic diversity. We should remember firstly that such institutions would be difficult to replicate and that at present they promote a form of elite multilingualism, which could lead to a 'Eurocratic upper class' gaining control of foreign language acquisition for their children. Secondly we should note the difference between such bilingualism and that of other allochthonous groups resulting from the host society's attitudes and its willingness to recognise and reward one form of bilingualism but not the other. When Eurocrats, diplomats and other professionals who are stationed in Brussels for a number of years send their children to one of the American schools, the results are different in kind and in effect than when a far larger number of Moroccan children attend a Flemish school. However, this affluent group does add a further dimension to urban multilingualism in Europe and one which is necessary to complete the picture of linguistic minorities. The poorer groups have been the target of much sociolinguistic investigation whereas the others have yet to be studied. We feel an investigation of these affluent migrants would be very worthwhile, particularly since this type of migration is likely to increase in the new Europe. Language in the EU institutions If we now turn to the European Union (EU), and look at how language legislation is developing in this supranational and multilingual entity, we see diverging tendencies. On the one hand, all major languages of the member states of the EU are considered to be equal. As a result, the EU currently deals with 72 language combinations, providing work for almost 3000 translators and interpreters. In fact, sometimes more than 700 interpreters may be working on the same day (Coulmas, 1992). On the other hand, a situation is developing where, de facto, some languages are more equal than others and this naturally has led to problems. Consider, for example, the role of Danish in the running of the Union as opposed to English or French. In legal terms all three languages are on an equal footing. In reality, French and English are far more important languages in the day to day affairs of the Union and although everyone may use his/her own language, what is said will often be interpreted only into the major languages. A tower of Babel, albeit well organised. It is clear that the European Union, with its various language conflicts inherited from its constituent parts, some dating from the nineteenth century, has not prepared sufficiently for a multilingual Europe of the future. Nor can it

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do so at the present moment since the question is insoluble in the current state of the Union (Wright & Ager, forthcoming). Apart from the case of the elite schools we mentioned above, support for the acquisition of several languages in the education systems of the member states is inadequate; the great majority of the citizens of most European nations are not yet motivated to become bilingual. In this, Europe goes against world trends; more than half of the world's population is already multilingual, and the trend is a growing one (Grosjean, 1982). However, multilingual education as the norm and not the exception should perhaps be the goal of member states in this complex situation of linguistic diversity we are describing hereautochthonous linguistic minorities, who desire to remain so; allochthonous linguistic minorities resulting from increased labour mobility at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum; the construction of a supranational political entity. One of the trends where language learning is on the increase is in the move to acquire English as a second language. This can often mean the neglect of languages already present in the environment. For example, in secondary schools in Strasbourg, Alsace, in eastern France, where many children understand and/or speak a German dialect at home, English has become the first foreign language after the language of instruction. So the dialectal language structures for German that are already present, remain unused, with the result that natively acquired proficiency goes to waste and is hardly exploited didactically in school. It should be pointed out that in most European countries, with few exceptions (e.g. Hungary), the high prestige value of English endangers all planning for multilingualism in schools. As is well known, learning motivation in adolescents declines significantly with regard to the acquisition of third and fourth languages and so other foreign languages are less likely to be learned. In the interest of avoiding conflict, the natural multilingualism that exists in all the countries of Europe except perhaps for Iceland and Portugal should be harnessed to rule out overly simplistic solutions for the future, such as, multilingualism necessarily equals mother tongue plus English. It is regrettable that this enormous reservoir of potential for language acquisition has hardly been tapped. The Luxembourg system we have discussed above could perhaps be the better model and where the Luxembourg model is deficient, we can learn from the experience. Plans for Handling Conflict What then are the possible strategies for neutralising, avoiding or even solving linguistic conflict? Here we allow ourselves the following tentative suggestions based partially on the experience of Belgium, a country which has direct experience of what failure to solve this conflict may incur and which has evolved some ways of minimising the consequences. In spite of many disadvantages, the Belgian model has proved itself in certain aspects. The lessons learned may perhaps be of use in tackling the linguistic problems facing the European Union. The territorial principle Firstly, the territoriality principle seems to work, and even though we can

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criticise it, in certain countries, particularly affluent countries such as Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, it functions quite well. Originally in Belgium the two principles of multilingualism were in opposition to each other: the individualist principle, mainly supported by the Romance side, by which every speaker is free to use his mother tongue or another language in all official and private domains regardless of his place of residence: and the territorial principle, defended more by the Germanic side, which obliges the resident of a region, declared administratively to be monolingual, to use the respective territory-bound state language in official domains. Although the individualist principle prevailed in Belgium up until the 1960s and led to extensive Frenchification of the country, today this principle can only be found in bilingual Brussels. In fact, the notorious 'liberté du père (!) de famille' (free choice of one of the national languages by the head of the family) was only abandoned in Brussels in the 1970s. Instead of a bilingual structure, Brussels today maintains two parallel, chiefly monolingual, networks in official domains. The two largest sections of the country are either monolingual French or Dutch in accordance with the territorial principle, except for a few communities on language borders. Institutionalised bilingualism, is a necessary consequence of the territorial principle. It is important to distinguish this concept from individual bilingualism. Many monolinguals think of a bilingual country as one where the citizens speak two languages, but, in fact, in countries like Belguim and Switzerland, bilingualism means that the two languages exist side by side and both have equal status and equal rights. This application of the territorial principle met with simultaneous rejection and admiration in the world, since apparently the viability of a small multilingual nation was thereby maintained. No wonder Belgium influenced the Canadians so much (see above). The consequences for the individual speaker are considerable: whereas the chances of social advancement before introduction of this plan were unavoidably linked to the mastery of two languages (at least in the case of the Flemish and German populations), now life in many spheres can proceed mainly in one language, namely, the language of the respective territory. Even very small minorities are accorded equal status. The German-speaking population in Eastern Belgium which constitutes less than 0.1% of the population is catered for in the same way as the Dutch and French speakers. Of course this costs a lot of money, but it makes sense in terms of language contact and conflict. The situation in Belgium is perhaps a good example for the European Community. How many other countries accord such official status to a language with so few speakers? Failure to do so, however, often causes greater cost in both economic and political terms in the long term. The Belgian state is very careful in matters of linguistic prestige; for example, in Brussels airport, all the indications are in four languagesthe three official languages and English. When the airport was renovated in the 1960s, the German version appeared last on the signs. However as this was felt to be unacceptable, these signs had to be redone, putting the English last. The state is also careful of the rights of the citizen in linguistic terms; when the Belgian police are imposing a fine on a motorist,

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they must ask in which language the motorist would like to be fined! It is interesting how sensitive people become to these potential sources of conflict and how the government is prepared to spend a lot of money in order to avoid them. De-emotionalising Another of the positive outcomes of the language struggle in Belgium has been a certain de-emotionalisation of the linguistic question. This has involved distancing the emotional factor from the linguistic and cultural features, as far as is possible. With the introduction of the territorial principle, the Belgian lawmakers acted on the assumption that strict regulation in a few essential areas would leave room for the greatest possible freedom of language use in the unregulated areas. While in most multilingual countries the monolingualism required by the territorial principle applies to at least two domains (the educational system and public administration), Belgium adds the business domain and requires the language of the territory to be used in all formal contact between employees and employers. 2 Social tensions which result from language use according to social class (e.g. when managers use a different language from union representatives) are thereby reduced. In tandem with language legislation, a plan for federalisation and regionalisation was developed that would prevent centralised language planning such as that practised in France. Since such regionalised language planning (called 'communalised' in Belgium) was applied to only a few, albeit decisive, realms of life of the different language groups, liberality and tolerance are shown in the remaining domains, as compensation, so to speak. Abolition of the language census. Above all, in the area of quantitative evaluation of minoritiesone of the most disputed and most often misused tools in situations of minority/majority conflictBelgium has gone its own way and not followed the North American or Russian examples. The rights and duties of a majority or minority are thereby no longer dependent solely on the strength of numbers of speakers. This means that when the relative size of an ethno-linguistic group is no longer the sole determining factor in language planning, the protection of a language community can proceed from the assumption that a numerical minority may need more help than the majority. The Belgian state has accordingly done away with language counts in the census and thereby surely contributed to de-emotionalising the issue in a considerable way. It is something of which we are deeply convinced. Since Belgium is in this way distinct from most other multilingual nations, we shall discuss the question of language censuses more fully. We have made the point that bilingualism is always asymmetrical; bilinguals will always favour one language for one reason or anothersocio-economic status, cultural identity etc. Therefore, collecting data about bilinguals or multilinguals by the census method is unlikely to furnish accurate information. For example, in the census of 1930 in Martelange/Martelingen, a small village on the border between

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Luxembourg and Belgium, 87% of the inhabitants claimed to be German speakers and only 10% declared themselves francophone. In 1947, in the last census to be carried out in Belgium, the situation was reversed, with the majority in the village claiming to be French speakers and only 12% describing themselves as German speakers. The reasons for this are obvious. Of course all of these villagers were bilingual, but in 1933, German was more favoured, whereas in 1947, in the aftermath of the Second World War, German had become very unpopular and consequently it was more desirable to be a French speaker. Therefore, we need to treat census data about language with a certain scepticism for the information it yields about multilinguals is always distorted by extra-linguistic considerations. Positive discrimination Finally, something which could be of great benefit to linguistic minorities in the future Europe is positive discrimination. At a practical level, where we have asymmetrical multilingualism and institutionalised multilingualism, the structure of the education system should favour that minority, if necessary, to ensure equal outcomes. This may mean tolerating smaller class sizes for smaller groups, better pay if teaching staff are more difficult to find. The principle here is that the minority pupils should have more rights and advantages because they are numerically weak, in order for them to have equal access to society in the long term. Another form of positive discrimination is to reward all those who work in a bilingual situation. For example a postman working in Brussels could be paid more for the 'burden of bilingualism'. Obviously, this would also add to the prestige and status of bilinguals. Market philosophy and language Further ways of avoiding and neutralising conflict have developed in the wake of the de-emotionalising of the language dispute in Belgium. It is much easier now for the individual to choose what language s/he will study and speak according to the dictates of personal and professional need. Individual language behaviour and the acquisition of languages correspond to the free market. In this way multilingualism, freed from numerous historical and social prejudices, stereotypes and emotions, has been able to adapt to levels of supply and demand. Today the Belgian multilingual situation can be characterised as especially liberal in relation to the three national languages as well as the most important foreign and neighbouring languages. To this must be added a purely economic argument: the function of the capital city as an international meeting place has furthered the willingness of the population to learn other languages, for it is demonstrable that the mastery of languages that meet demand obviously pays. Thus the Belgian example shows that economically motivated language planning, according to need, is more successful in encouraging multilingual acquisition than a centralised language policy, which can seldom adjust to constantly changing language needs in a flexible way.

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Conclusions Having discussed the solutions that Belgium has found to some of the problems posed by multilingualism, we must stress that, of course, there is no generally valid model of multilingualism that can be applied to all cultures, countries and circumstances. The context of each respective multilingual situation must be decisive in the decision to adopt certain policies. Every case of planning for multilingualism should be tailor-made for its language community, it should correspond to real economic need, and its strength should not be diluted with fashionable airs and ambitious but futile language planning. The many different situations of conflict which we have discussed and to which numerous other examples could easily be added, plainly show that a single plan for solving language problems would only meet with failure. So there are no simple solutions; there is, however, much that can be done. Common action for allochthonous and autochthonous groups Despite the fact that allochthonous and autochthonous groups, i.e. immigrant and indigenous groups, have in common the relatively low prestige of their language and culture and their disadvantage vis-à-vis the dominant linguistic group, it is interesting that to date there has been little or no cooperation between these two groups in campaigning for language rights in Europe. This may evolve since the two phenomena are linked and share common problems and solutions. Certainly, the new, often socially defined, minorities like migrants, guest workers, returning settlers from former colonies, refugees, emigrants, and transmigrants have moved into the foreground of the European political context. All these groups have brought about a new awareness amongst the majority population which has by no means resulted in the native minorities being pushed into the background. Instead, they have been carried along by new currents like the so-called 'renaissance of dialects and less common languages'. A new regional consciousness oriented towards smaller unitsthe small is beautiful movement of the 1960s and 1970shas increasingly shifted the view of research, politics, culture and the public to minorities, whose significance in a culturally viable Europe, east and west, is now stressed. The European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages in Dublin and Brussels is an excellent example of crossborder efforts to respond to new needs in these domains. However, majority groups in their attitude towards linguistic or cultural minorities usually react considerably more negatively to allochthonous than to autochthonous minorities. The confrontations between the majority or dominant groups and the indigenous or immigrant minority groups take place at different levels (social, political, economic, cultural), although the forms of discrimination are often similar. In sociolinguistics, very few scholars have dedicated their efforts to researching both sorts of minorities at the same time, despite the benefits which could accrue from a common approach. In the Netherlands, Switzerland and France, autochthonous and allochthonous are described and analysed quite differently for methodological reasons. In Great Britain, however, sociolinguistic

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contacts are lacking between the linguists examining the so-called 'decolonised' languages and the researchers in Scotland and Wales working on Celtic languages because of the completely different conflict situations. No wonder there have been hardly any suggestions for solutions to the conflict which would try to neutralise the quite comparable language conflicts of the two groups. Reassessing the situation This area of sociolinguistic enquiry is constantly expanding and changing. Firstly, the rural communities who conserved language and other markers of identity, are often located at the periphery of the various European States and, in the past, were often seen as marginalised. If they wished to share in prosperity and economic progress they had to become urbanised and industrialised, and in most cases lost their specificity, including their language, in the process. Now a number of these communities find themselves at the heart of the new Europe because they are situated along borders and on axes of contact. Geographically they are no longer marginalised. Furthermore, it may be that a supranational Europe will tolerate regionalism more than was the norm for the nation state. This means that such communities are in a process of change and it is therefore essential that this evolution is studied. In order to understand what is happening already and what is perhaps likely to happen to some of these communities, we need to look more closely at those which have succeeded in maintaining language and tradition. Groups such as the Catalans are furnishing insights into how a 'minority' language may be rescued and reinstated. Here we need to increase the attention we pay to local and regional evolution. Secondly, the great multilingual cities of Europe are a relatively recent phenomenon. In some instances they have been closely scrutinised, in others there is still much work to be done in order to understand exactly what is happening. This is one area where racism and linguicism (Philipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, forthcoming) are closely linked and where problems and conflicts may result from multilingual contact, from attempts on the part of the dominant group to block social mobility, from feelings of insecurity as national identity appears to be diluted. Here, understanding the patchwork of these cities is essential for successful diffusion of tension and avoidance of conflict. Thirdly, the problem of languages in the European Union remains largely undiscussed and unresolved. We may in the future end up with a Europe where three or four languages are considered working languages, but whatever happens, the Europe of the future will not be monolingual. The accession of the remaining Scandinavian countries and Finland to the Union in 1995, countries which have traditionally favoured English, will change the linguistic balance of power in Brussels and Luxembourg and will no doubt open up the debate. Fourthly, we need to monitor the linguistic conflicts on the borders of the EU, those of the former Eastern Bloc countries, where language seems to be becoming a symbol of reborn nationalism. Here we need to differentiate between conflicts with historical origins and conflicts which have been artificially created. We can see that in this Europe which is moving slowly towards some form of greater unification, where at the same time nationalism and regionalism are on

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the increase, where great urban centres are home to multi-ethnic populations, potential sources of linguistic conflict exist all around us. Furthermore, we are in a situation which has not yet finished evolving; we are continually faced with new developments. We know from history the possible consequences of suppressing or denying the existence of conflict and, as academics, we can make an invaluable contribution in monitoring, describing and analysing. the complex linguistic situations already existing or in the process of developing in Europe. Notes. 1. In fact, the Flemish are the only oppressed linguistic majority in Europe, since Dutch has never been a minority language in Belgium and it is in fact the language spoken by the majority, although the literature has always referred to the 'Dutch-speaking minority in Belgium'. 2. A brief example will help to illustrate what this legislation means in practice. In the past, French was the language used by the factory-owning classes, even those located in Flanders. An elderly owner brought up in this linguistic tradition hires a seasonal labourer from France. Naturally they habitually speak French together. However, when the situation arises where the owner wishes to lay off the labourer, he must do so in writing, in Dutch, because of the territoriality principle. References Bayor, R. H. (1978) Neighbors in Conflict. Baltimore, London: The John Hopkins University Press. Coulmas, F. (ed.) (1992) A Language Policy for the European Community. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. de Bot, K. (1990) Language attrition: Competence loss or performance loss. In B. Spillner (ed) Interkulturelle Kommunikcation (pp. 63-4). Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang. Fishman, J.A. (1972) Language and Nationalism. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. (1980) Prefatory notes. In P.H. Nelde (ed.) Languages in contact and Conflict. (XI) Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. (1992) Reversing Language Shift: Theory and Methods of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Grosjean, F. (1982) Life with Two Languages. Cambridge, MA. and London: Harvard University Press. Haarmann, H. (1980) Multilingualismus I, II. Tiibingen: G. Narr. Hartig, M. (1980) Soziolinguistickfiir Anfanger. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe. Haugen, E. (1966) Language Conflict and Language Planning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hoffmann, F. (1979) Sprachen in Luxemburg. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. Inglehart, R.F. and Woodward, M. (1967) Language conflicts and political community. In P. Giglioli (ed.) Languge and Social Context. New York: Penguin. Mattheier, K.A. (1984) Sprachkonflikte in einsprachigen Ortsgemeinschaften. In E. Oksaar (ed.) SpracherwerbSprachkontakt-Sprachkonflikt (pp. 197-204). Berlin, New York: W de Gruyter. Nelde, P.H. (1984) Sprachökologische Überlegungen am Beispiel Altbelgiens. In E. Oksaar (ed.) SpracherwerbSprachkontaktSprachkonflikt (pp. 167-79). Berlin, New York: W. de Gruyter.

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(1994) Zur Sprachdynamik autochthoner Sprache. In C. Truchot (ed.) Le Plurilinguisme européen (pp. 295-306). Paris: Champion. Oksaar, E. (1980) Mehrsprachigkeit, Sprachkontakt, Sprachkonflikt. In P.H. Nelde (ed.) Langues en contact et en conflit (pp. 43-52). Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. Philipson, R. and Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (forthcoming) Linguicide and linguicism. In P.H. Nelde et al. (eds) International Handbook on Contact Linguistics. Berlin, New York: W. de Gruyter. Weinreich, U. (1953) Languages in Contact. New York: Publications of the Linguistic Circle of New York. Williams, R.M. (1947) The reduction of intergroup tension. Social Science Research Council Bulletin 57, 40-43. Wright, S.M. and Ager, D.E. (forthcoming) Major and minor languages in Europe: The evolution of practice and policy in the European Union. The Journal of Intercultural Studies.

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Debate Language Censuses John Gaffney (Aston University): Working as we do in a French Department, we're very aware of the tradition of the Jacobin state. The French tend to refuse to recognise the existence of ethnic minorities because they are incompatible with this tradition. Rejecting the concept, they refuse to count the outward manifestation of it, i.e. the speakers of the minority language. This seems to me to be not very helpful. Phenomena do not cease to exist just because we refuse to measure them. Peter Nelde: To comment on the Belgian reluctance with regard to censuses. Of course we academics carry out a lot of fieldwork and surveys and we do believe there are times when you have to ask people about their languages. But the point I was trying to make about the census is that the data collected in this way has been abused for political purposes, and used to justify decisions on the basis that 'people have been counted'. Furthermore, in Belgium, bilinguals are more likely to answer in favour of the more prestigious language. For example, at the language frontier, the Walloons tend to have a negative attitude towards Dutch, whereas further away from the border, the attitude is much more positive. This positive view is largely based on the socio-economic advantages of Dutch, which the people living just across the border cannot recognise, because they are in too close contact with the language. It is therefore very hard to obtain honest and objective answers and so inaccurate information may be collected and used for political purposes. The problem is not the census itself, but rather what is done with it. Manjula Datta (University of North London): Minority language communities, in my experience, are very distrustful of these surveys. They don't know what is going to be done to the data and they don't want to be identified as nonspeakers of English. Because they are suspicious, they feel that if they say they don't know English, they will be disadvantaged. John Gaffney: This doesn't really counter my point. What you are both saying is that people are suspicious of how the results may be used. This is understandable. In the case of linguistic minorities in Great Britain, it is symptomatic of their general feelings of unease in a society in which they are a minority. The point I was making is that without a census, the whole linguistic issue can be shelved, obliterated. The state can say there is no problem, we haven't counted it. Sue Wright (Aston University): Precisely. One could suggest that the freeze on Belgian statistics after 1947 was partially because the data was not what certain groups wanted to hearthat there was a trend towards French. Now with the monolingual demarcations, we have no precise idea of how many monolingual speakers of each language, each territory contains. I would have thought when one is setting up political entities on linguistic criteria, one ought to be sure about the facts.

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Helen Kelly (Aston University): Just to expand on Peter's point, the answers to any questions posed in a census must be analysed sensitively, bearing in mind issues of prestige. After all, when people do not have any strong language loyalty, then they may well choose the language with the most social cachet. Peter Nelde: Namibia is an example of a very similar phenomenon. About 80% of the population is able to speak or at least understand Afrikaans, whereas only about 2-3% can speak English. Due to the ideological associations which Afrikaans has in South Africa, and which have spread, the language has become synonymous with oppression, whereas English is now associated with liberation. Consequently, far more than 2-3% claim to speak English. And, although English is not a truly autochthonous language in Namibia, it is used as a symbol of the country's freedom and the education system is now monolingually English. This is why, in order to be able to judge the language situation in a particular country, it is not enough just to ask people 'What do you speak?' or 'With what language do you identify?' Sue Wright: But it is a start, and, in fact, what you're asking here are two quite separate things. One is simply what is the language of communication, but the other is a question about identity. One may wish to claim a language, in order to claim membership of the language group. This doesn't necessarily mean one's command of the language is good. I really don't believe that we can allow ourselves to argue against language censuses, simply because we haven't developed tools which are sensitive enough to make them useful. Frank Knowles (Aston University): On the question of language claiming and identity, the opposite may also be true. In 1923, the League of Nations carried out a plebiscite in Silesia, then still a disputed territory. When asked, many of the people of Silesia could not actually state what they felt their nationality or identity to be. Although they had been living in a particular social and political environment, cultural allegiance was rather dubious and was therefore amenable to significant changeschanges which actually took place in Silesia. As regards the question of identity: how far can we go along with the idea that language even functionally restricted language use is not necessarily a true badge of cultural identity and belonging? Peter Nelde: This is an interesting point and reminds me of some research we carried out on the Belgium-Luxembourg border. The people in this area adopted French in 1945 and in the research in Martelange/Martelingen, it was not acceptable for us to ask the people if they spoke Luxembourgish or German. However, it was interesting to note that they all listened to Luxembourg state radio which broadcasts in German. I suggest that the reason that theyFrench speakerslistened to a German language station was that they culturally prefer the German style. In interviews, they admitted to this and castigated the French style as being too verbose. We noted that in the north of the region, there was a general refusal to be identified with any particular language. In Quebec and South Tyrol, however, the census forms actually force individuals to choose an identity, a nationality, and do not accept anything in between; of course this does not take into account people who are bilingual and feel themselves to be part of

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both groups. However, this bilingual group is growing and will soon be of a size where it cannot be ignored. The difficulty with censuses is that they lead to policies which depend too much on the number of speakers, on the relative number of speakers in a state. What I would suggest is that the number of speakers should not be the major factor. Minority groups, no matter how small, are contributors to the state through the tax system, they are citizens like everyone else. Their rights to have their children educated in their mother tongue should not depend on something as crude as a headcount. Alan Frith (Newham LEA): I can't begin to go along with the idea that you cannot ask people what language they have. If it can't be spoken about, it can be ignored. It seems to me that not to collect such data conflicts totally with the point you made about positive discrimination. I have found working in a school in a multicultural, urban situation that it is in fact very useful to ask school age pupils quite specific questionsnot simply what language group they feel emotionally bound to, but, for example, 'Do you ever use a language other than English at home? What is the name of that language? Do you speak any other languages? Can you read or write that language?' When this is done throughout a local education authority, you can then actively positively discriminate in favour of these languages. When resources are limited and judgments on the allocation of funds have to be made, then I think that decisions should be based on precise knowledge of the number of speakers and of the regularity of use of a language. What other just way can we make decisions about languages to include in the curriculum? Officially, the UK census doesn't contain a language question. It does in Wales, but not in the rest of the country. I feel that there should be a question on languages and to make up for this, in schools in local authorities, we tend to promote the idea of doing language surveys. Andrea Young (Aston University): And of course this is not new. The Linguistics Minorities Survey carried out in the 1980s found that linguistic minority groups were very much in favour of being asked about languages. Unfortunately, the survey was only carried out in two centres. Sue Wright: How would we advise politicians and administrators if they were here with us now? Would we advise them to include a language question in their census or not? If we advise them to take a language census, how would we tell them to carry it out? Surely this is the key issue. The point that has been made here is that questions about language and linguistic identity have to be asked within a context of everybody knowing what the answers are for and how the information is going to be used and also that those asking the questions must be trusted by the linguistic minority groups. By fulfilling these criteria, the Linguistic Minorities Project actually got useful answers. Ludo Beheydt: The ideology and history of a particular language can often prevent people from admitting that they speak it. For example, when I was in Indonesia, people were quite happy to speak Dutch with me, because I was

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Flemish, but they chose to speak English with my Dutch colleagues, because, for them, Dutch is the language of the former oppressor. Peter Nelde: I'm going to say it againthe lack of a census does not prevent politicians from identifying minorities. Linguistic Minorities Constituted by Recent Immigration Reiner Salverda (University College London): Are data being collected on linguistic minority groups in Belgium other than Flemings and Walloons and Germans? If so, how is this done? Ludo Beheydt: Yes, there is some work being carried out, but it is for scientific and academic rather than official purposes. The Onderzoekscentrum voor Meertaligheid in Brussels carries out such surveys. The apparent reason for the lack of official government surveys is the fear that it would lead to further Frenchification, especially of the area on the periphery of Brussels, which although officially Dutch-speaking, is inhabited by the more prosperous Francophones. There is, therefore, a desire to contain the 'oil slick', what McCrea calls 'a double form of pollution, destroying the physical and human environment of the Flemish countryside'! By using targeted surveys, policies can be developed for minority language groups in the big urban centres which will allow us to avoid conflict. But something as crude as a census could destroy the very precarious balance which has been achieved between the two major language groups. The presence of the other minorities does in fact complicate the picture and this is one of the reasons why minority language education is not available in Belgium. How could we legally provide this for the new minorities when it is not available to the older linguistic groups who are bound by the territoriality principle? Sue Wright: So, there is in fact no room for the languages of the newer ethnic minorities within the Belgian situation precisely because of its bilingual context. Here we have the contradictory situation where it is easier to make provisions for ethnic minority languages in a resolutely monolingual country such as Great Britain or the Netherlands than it is in an officially trilingual country such as Belgium. Ludo Beheydt: Yes, it is in fact very difficult to allow educational provision for the languages of any groups other than French, German or Dutch precisely because the language laws are so stringent. Again, it is this fear of destroying the balance and everything becomes secondary to this. Andrea Young: Am I right in thinking that, although there are no official support measures for ethnic minority pupils, there have been individual projects under the aegis of the Commission of the European Communities? Sue Wright: Yes, they arose from the Resolution on the Education of the Children of Migrant Workers in 1976 and there were seven projects in Belgium between 1976-1991. But they have remained pilot schemes and have not moved to the mainstream curriculum. One of the consequences of this lack of mother-tongue support might well be the high numbers of ethnic minority students found in lower streams and in repeat years.

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Helen Kelly: Although this is a pattern that is replicated across Europe, even where there is mother-tongue support, as we saw in the Dutch experience. The variables are surely very complex. Manjula Datta (North London): Yes, the variables may be complex, but there's no doubt that the lack of recognition of the mother tongue and support for it are factors. Peter talked earlier about a class of mutes. I have come across many mutes in multilingual classrooms in London. These children have got the message that they either speak English or nothing. Because their command of English does not allow them to participate fully in the classroom, they remain silent. And there's a further problem. When I have tried to speak to such children in an Asian language, they simply look at me suspiciously. Sometimes the teacher only allows English in the classroom; in any case the classroom ethos is racist and because this is so traumatic for the children, they switch off and consequently do not perform well. The contradiction here is that we are trying to teach these children English by taking away their identity, their reference point and with it their attitudes and their whole motivationin a sense de-skilling them. Also, the emphasis on standard English further intimidates these children, so we have a vicious circle. They need instead to feel good about themselves, their identity, their language, their culture in order to learn. I can't believe the situation is any different in Belgium, which explains the failure to perform. Monolingual Norms and Multilinguals Julian Edge: I'd like to point out a strand which for me runs through so many of the things we have been discussing, including the census issue. Ludo began by quoting Fishman, who described Belgium as a paradise for sociolinguists and went on to list all the problems which Belgium presents to the sociolinguist for examination. Noticeable by its absence from that list, however, was the problem of monolingualism, which seems to me to be the central problem underpinning all the others we have been discussing. It is significant that Peter referred to the postman who had to 'cope' with the 'burden' of bilingualism. It's interesting that bilingualism is always seen as the problem. I'd like to suggest that it is rather monolingualism which poses the problem. For example, censuses usually ask people to identify themselves as either/or and it is this monolingual assumption that there is only one reply which causes fear and suspicion among linguistic minorities, who fear they may be judged on whether they have assimilated to the dominant language or not. Furthermore, the tripartite division of Belgium, the territoriality principle, the personality principle are all based on a presupposition of monolingualism being the norm. I propose that if we viewed monolingualism as the problem, we would assess the situation from a whole new perspective. Ludo Beheydt: To respond, I think firstly that it is generally agreed that bi- or multilingualism is beneficial to everyone. But to impose bilingualism on everyone is not acceptable for a number of reasons. First of all, not everyone is gifted

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enough to become bilingual, for reasons of intelligence, personality etc.we are all familiar with the crisis of the bilingual. Julian Edge: But what about the crisis of the monolingual who grows up believing the world has only been named once? This notion of the bilingual or bicultural 'crisis' is only possible from the starting point of the monolingual assumption. Sue Wright: The fact that children can be considered not 'gifted enough' to become bilingual, to me, is the crux of the problem. We judge people against monolingual norms and because we do this, we have bilinguals jumping through monolingual hoops. This happens in the British education system and no doubt in most places elsewhere in Europe. It ought to be conceivable to judge bilinguals on their overall linguistic competencewhere they would not have to have monolingual competence in every area of every language, but would be able to cope with what they need to do in that language. Instead there is no accommodation made for them and the fact that they are working through their second language. Ludo Beheydt: Yes, I agree. But the problem is that very often we end up with what Skutnabb-Kangas has termed semilingualism; where the individual is unable to speak either language well and we come across this situation very often in Belgium. Sue Wright: But well enough for what? Ludo Beheydt: Well, for instance, for scholastic success. Often these semilinguals are unable to follow the school system in either language. Sue Wright: That is in fact of only academic interest, since they are not offered the chance of schooling in their mother tongue. There are two points here firstly, the total linguistic competence of these children is never assessed and, secondly, they are never allowed to 'get by' in their second language. They always have to perform to monolingual norms or standards. Peter Nelde: I think we're agreed that monolingualism is the danger, because all the rules, all the standards are derived from a monolingual world. But, on a more practical note, the fact that over half the world's population is bi- or multilingual means that bilinguals should not continue to react in a defensive way. What they should be doing is developing a positive attitude and reassuring monolinguals that, with time, they can be cured! Julian Edge: Yes we need to stress this. I'm not arguing for the implementation of legislation, but rather for an attitudinal reorientation to where the problems lie, and then we can start to think again and understand. There is always a rush to explain before we fully understand a problem and an instinct to respond before we clarify the issues. Li Wei (University of Newcastle): I think Peter's is a very valid point. In some communities, monolingualism can be seen as a consequence of the kind of social pressure individuals face. In many monolingual states, monolingualism is actually imposed on individuals by the state, because it is idealised, it is fashionable, it is politically expedient. The net result of this is, in Fishman's terms, diglossia without bilingualism with some ethnic minority members making language

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choices for economic and social reasons. I think we need to learn what factors are influencing people's attitudes in order to help them to maintain their family language. And there is then the further question of whether monolinguals should perhaps learn one of the languages of the multilingual community. Helen Kelly: How many mother tongue English speakers in Great Britain would choose to learn Urdu or Punjabi, rather than French or German, when in fact there is far more scope for contacts and communication, but a lack of prestige? Ludo Beheydt: Yes, and this is where the psychological factors come into bilingualism. The crisis of the bilingual is well known, where s/he rejects one of the languages. The choice of an individual's identity is bound up with the choice of one language over another. Once the choice has been made, many bilingual children will often refuse to speak the language of their parents in front of their friends. Mike Grover (Multilingual Matters): But you are giving the impression that this crisis always occurs whereas in actual fact, it doesn't have to happen. This crisis only occurs because the children are surrounded by the monolingual norm and are being forced by their peers and society to be either/or, but not bothagain this comes back to the point about the census. Peter Nelde: Perhaps before we go any further with this subject, we should define the term 'monolingual'. We must take so many factors, so many connotations into account, such as cultural background etc. Alan Frith: An example from a school I worked in may show how wide this definition can be. We were listening to a tape of Afro-Caribbean slang and when we had listed down all the terms, the pupils then translated them into different registers of English, e.g. standard English, Cockney etc. and into various languages used by members of the class, e.g. South Asian languages etc. When the monolingual pupils were asked which register they used, the answer I got was both encouraging and surprising, although it shouldn't have been. One girl answered that she used Cockney when speaking to her parents, standard English when talking with her teachers and other varieties when talking to her friends from different backgrounds. This just shows that a monolingual child can actually have a great awareness of different languages and cultures and a range of registers. Therefore, I think monolingualism can be reacted to positively and used as a basis for extending a child's linguistic repertoire. Research Issues. Reiner Salverda: Thinking about how to mobilise people within the context of the personality principle, the territoriality principle, other conflicting principles and the allegation that census data is untrustworthy, perhaps we should begin to define languages in terms of human rights. This would help to set up an agenda which would in turn assist in satisfying multilingual educational needs. This is something which AILA and IFFLT have already started doing. Peter Nelde: The problem is of course giving advice. How can we set out guidelines which will adequately deal with such diverse political social contexts

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as the situation of Urdu in Britain and Macedonian in Greece? Whatever minority charters we create, cannot be used everywhere. For example, look at the reactions to the minority languages charter proposed by the European Union this spring. France and Greece opposed it, because they felt it gave linguistic minorities too many rights, whereas Denmark opposed it, because the Danes felt that it did not give such groups enough rights! What I think we can do from our contact linguistics viewpoint is to advise the kind of programmes which Canadians call partial immersion. These do seem to allow second language learners access to the language they are learning. Julian Edge: With regard to this idea of not generalising and being specific, you spoke earlier about the unfortunate state of research, which consists mainly of case studies. I wonder if you see the tension here and if perhaps you feel there is a need to evolve local theory and situated cognition which is in fact in some ways alien to the more usual traditions of linguistic and language investigation where researchers tend to look for sweeping theories? Peter Nelde: Yes, I agree. This type of research needs to reflect the specific societal situation. Rather than using models developed in previous decades, we need to look at what is happening today in the 1990s. An important development in this respect is Ecolinguistics, where linguistic changes can occur and situations can arise due to ecological, economic and social changes. So we need to come up with ideas based on specific situations and we need to do this at local level. Sue Wright: I agree fully with the danger of extrapolating from one situation to another. For example, I would say that there has been some abuse and misuse of the findings of the Québécois. However, by confronting two different situations, we may be able to look at what we have been researching in a new light. Questions of Motivation, Prestige and Currency Frank Knowles: I think we need to draw a distinction between a functional as opposed to an holistic approach to language learning. Language for general purposes must include cultural accommodation, whereas this is not as necessary in language for specific purposes. However, the debate about whether people should learn foreign languages and which they should be seems not to take this issue into account in the decision-making. As a result fears about language takeover, language threat and fears about acculturation dominate. However realistic these fears may be, they are there and we have a whole spectrum between the functional approach and the totality of finding out in a vicarious way what it is like to be from a different culture. Ludo Beheydt: Yes, but isn't this an adult point of view? Early bilingualism necessitates taking cultural factors into account as well as motivation and the motivation of the parents. Lambert found that the positive motivation of parents, independent of their knowledge of the language, is a very great influence on the child's motivation. In a survey we carried out of two groups of Francophone minority parents, one group living in Flanders, one in Brussels, the children of

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the first group achieved a better standard in the language. Why? Because their parents realised that bilingualism would be an economic asset, whereas the parents of the Brussels children simply sent them to the nearest school which happened to be Dutch, or they did not want them to go to the local Francophone schooloften because of their prejudice towards the ethnic minority children present in the school. So the decision was negatively rather than positively motivated. Alan Frith: I would like to make a point which is in a similar vein to what you have just said about motivation, but using a different example from a different place. In a previous school I worked for in London's East End, we pursued a policy of attaching a high value to the languages of the ethnic minority communities in the school. Over that period, slowly, but surely, I could see attitudes change very considerably, and not only exam results in those languages increased and improved, but also in French and German. Sue Wright: This is also true when it becomes clear that the language being learned has prestige in the wider society. In Britain in the 1980s, students found their Urdu A-Level, Panjabi A-Level etc. could be used to contribute to the 'points' requirement for university entry and a major breakthrough occurred. It became known by the various linguistic communities that their languages had currency in terms of matriculation and, consequently, more and more students started acquiring qualifications in their home languages. Naomi Paul (Birmingham LEA): On a more pessimistic note, I don't think that this type of marketing is all that widely pursued in sixth form colleges. We have a situation where students who have the potential to succeed in Urdu or Bengali or Panjabi at A-Level, decide instead to take other subjects. I think this is because there is no pro-active marketing policy; the students don't ask for the subject because it isn't provided and therefore it doesn't become available. Also, finances have played a certain role in the decline of the popularity of taking these languages, for example the stricter definition of where Section XI funding may be used. Ruth Hansford (CILT): It seems a paradox to me, that on the one hand, all the economic and market arguments for providing language training for business people wishing to sell internationally are very compelling, but by the time individuals actually want or need to learn these languages it is too lateoften because they haven't had a successful language learning experience at school. So how do you sell the educational arguments for learning a language, not just a European language, but also home and community languages in order to provide a basis for future language learning? Ludo Beheydt: This is indeed very problematic. I think we can point to certain findings, for example it is easier for a variety of reasons to learn a language before the age of 14 and, therefore, in educational policy terms we should be aiming to start as early as possible. Then, of course, there is the problem that with so many possible languages there will inevitably be a hierarchy in the provision of languages. Ruth Hansford: I am not so sure that the language itself is so important, rather the experience of learning a language.

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Sue Wright: The choices we make on which language we provide in an education system are not always purely rational. For example, in Britain it is not quite clear what the reasons are for having French as the first foreign language, except perhaps the availability of French teachers, which in itself perpetuates the situation. Extrinsic reasons for choosing French are not there: France is not our biggest trading partner nor the place where the majority holiday. The Parker Report in 1986 made a case for the languages of the Far East and the Asian sub-continent, but this proposal appears to have been totally shelved. Manjula Datta: Well, in terms of primary education (with which I have most contact), the multilingual classroom is definitely an asset in terms of language learning, for example there is greater language awareness, more sharing of resources and use of the resources already in the classroom, there is more discussion about language, something which children find very stimulating and it may motivate them intellectually to learn another language later on. It is therefore a great pity that these resources are overlooked through short-sightedness, racism, linguicism, whatever reasons, in the majority of classrooms. So, a disservice is not only done to our multilingual children, but also to the 'white' monolingual children, depriving them of some intellectual stimulus. No wonder the National Curriculum had to stipulate the compulsory learning of a foreign language, because all of these languages and interest in languages have been driven out in the primary sector. Peter Nelde: One of the major dangers I see is in elitist bilingualism. In such a situation, some languages become so prestigious in terms of bilingualism that the languages of autochthonous and allochthonous minorities do not stand a chance. For example, in Strasbourg, English has been pushed as the first foreign language, despite the fact that many of the schoolchildren speak or can understand Elsässisch, a German dialect. Thus, the potential for learning German is not used, because of the prestige of English. By pursuing this type of artificial and elitist bilingualism, we are in fact playing with children. We have a similar situation in Brussels when students choose to take German. Despite its official status in Belgium, they are often asked why they don't learn a 'decent' language such as English or even French. Manjula Datta: Even French. This is interesting, because French is usually thought of as a prestigious language, but of course it depends on who is speaking it: the African French speaker, as opposed to the European French speaker! Alan Frith: I have to say that this would not apply to the local authority in which I work, where we practise a policy of positively valuing children's home languages. Of course, a certain proportion of the teachers may resent this, but the majority supports it. I'm not saying that everything is perfect, but when positive attitudes are systematically practised, things can improve, and we can see the results.

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