LİBERTÉ, ÉGALİTÉ, FRATERNİTÉ … ARE ALL CHILDREN IN FRANCE TRULY EDUCATED IN FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD?

A Study of the French Republic in the Context of Multilingual Education

The establishment of the First French Republic in 1789 marked the adoption of the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity as the founding ideals of the French Republic, recognizing individuals’ freedom to exercise their fundamental rights, affirming that all persons are born and remain equal before the law, and promoting the ideal of social solidarity. However, as discussed in the first article of this series, despite the rhetoric of a fraternal social order, the social and cultural fabric of many states continues to be structured around a single dominant language—or, in some cases, no more than two official languages. As a result, although multilingualism and cultural diversity are recognized at the normative level, their effective implementation in practice often remains limited. Against this backdrop, the third installment of this article series, following the analytical approach adopted in the second part, examines the historical development of multilingual education in France by exploring the historical foundations of French language policies and outlining their implications for the education system.

Throughout its historical evolution—from the period of absolutist monarchy to the Third Republic, encompassing the experiences of the two French Empires—the French state was constructed upon a political framework characterized by centralization and territorial expansion. Within this framework, the ruling authorities recognized only the language of the political center as legitimate, while systematically marginalizing other linguistic and cultural identities. As the principal instrument for transmitting this political project to society, the education system emerged as one of the most effective mechanisms for implementing this vision, becoming deeply embedded at the local level and playing a decisive role in the construction and consolidation of a monolingual national order.

The first milestone in the extensive legislative framework underpinning France’s monolingual language policy was the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539, enacted to ensure that official documents would be comprehensible to the public. To this end, Articles 110 and 111 required that all judicial decisions, court records, interrogations, witness statements, and other official documents be drafted in French rather than Latin. In parallel with these legal developments, scholarly works in the social sciences increasingly sought to legitimize the exclusion of regional languages from education and public life. Among the most influential of these was Pierre Desgrouais, Professor at the Royal College of Toulouse, whose 1766 work Gasconnismes corrigés (Corrected Gasconisms) sought to eliminate the influence of Occitan on spoken French and encouraged linguistic practices that conformed to French norms by presenting French as the sole legitimate language of public communication. Another landmark document in the development of French language policy was Bertrand Barère’s report to the National Convention of 27 January 1794, entitled Rapport sur les idiomes et sur les moyens d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française (Report on Dialects and the Means of Universalizing the Use of the French Language). The report portrayed France’s linguistic diversity as a threat to political unity, arguing that regional languages such as Breton, Occitan, and Basque fostered ignorance, social fragmentation, and counter-revolutionary tendencies, and concluded that national unity could only be achieved through the adoption of French as the single and indivisible language of the Republic.

This approach institutionalized an understanding that portrayed linguistic diversity as a source of political fragmentation while positioning the French language as the principal vehicle of national unity. Within this framework, regional languages were progressively relegated to the realms of folklore and cultural heritage, whereas French became established as the sole legitimate language of education, scientific production, and public administration. This intellectual tradition continued to shape French language policy in subsequent periods, finding expression in the writings of Ernest Renan and, in the modern era, in the public statements of former Minister of National Education Claude Allègre, thereby illustrating the remarkable continuity of France’s monolingual language ideology.

The practical consequences of this language policy became evident in the 1863 report commissioned by Victor Duruy during the Second French Empire. Although languages other than French continued to be widely spoken throughout the country, the report revealed that the education system had been overwhelmingly organized around the exclusive use of French. Of the 65,338 schools surveyed, instruction was provided solely in French in 65,338 schools, while only 3,438 schools employed both French and regional dialects, and merely 92 schools delivered instruction entirely in regional dialects. Against this background, the report further demonstrated the limited effectiveness of the prevailing language policy by examining literacy among children aged seven to thirteen. It found that more than half of the children were unable either to speak or write French, while 1,490,269 children were able to speak French but remained unable to read or write it.

During the Republican period, the use of regional languages in the public sphere, and particularly within the education system, was subjected to explicit legal and administrative restrictions. Notwithstanding various reform initiatives advanced over successive decades, this monolingual approach remained the prevailing doctrine until the end of the Second World War and, to a considerable extent, continued to shape French language policy well into the mid-1960s. However, the mass atrocities, genocides, and systematic human rights violations perpetrated under fascist and ultranationalist regimes during the Second World War prompted a profound re-evaluation of policies predicated upon the ideals of a single language and a homogeneous national identity. Furthermore, France’s post-war labour recruitment programmes, through which migrant workers were admitted from countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, Türkiye, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to address acute labour shortages, fundamentally transformed the country’s demographic structure into one characterized by increasing linguistic and cultural pluralism. As these migrant communities became permanently established, the presence of successive generations of children of migrant origin necessitated the development of new educational policies and legal arrangements aimed at preserving their heritage languages and maintaining their cultural ties.

The process of reassessing the status of languages other than French within the education system began with the gradual development of policies acknowledging linguistic diversity. In this context, the Deixonne Act of 1951, the first legislative measure to regulate the teaching of regional languages in France, had only a limited impact because it did not recognize regional languages as autonomous languages of communication and instruction, but instead treated them primarily as elements of the nation’s folkloric and cultural heritage. Consistent with this approach, although the teaching of regional languages was subsequently provided with a legal and institutional framework through the ministerial circulars of 1966 and 1969, it remained confined to a supplementary educational activity offered for a limited number of instructional hours per week, rather than being integrated into the mainstream education system.

With regard to policies concerning migrant populations, France introduced the ELCO (Enseignement des Langues et Cultures d’Origine – Teaching of the Languages and Cultures of Origin) programme in the 1970s through a series of bilateral agreements concluded with countries of origin. Under this programme, instruction was offered in a range of languages, including Arabic, Croatian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, and Turkish. Its primary objective was to enable pupils of migrant origin to preserve their heritage languages and maintain their cultural heritage.

During the same period, the expansion of schools established through civil society initiatives and adopting the immersive education model significantly enhanced the visibility of regional languages within the education system. In parallel with these developments, the Haby Act of 1975 and subsequent legislative reforms enabled regional languages and cultures to acquire a more institutionalized position within French education. From the 1980s onwards, the Savary Circulars, the Jospin Act, and Circular No. 95-086 further broadened the scope of regional language and culture education, allowing it to be implemented through a variety of pedagogical models, including language-awareness programmes, introductory courses, second- and third-foreign-language options, elective subjects, and bilingual education programmes.

By the early twenty-first century, no comprehensive or legally binding legislative framework had been adopted to govern the teaching of regional languages in France; instead, regulatory developments in this field continued to rely predominantly on administrative circulars. France’s decision to sign, but not ratify, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages likewise reflects the State’s cautious approach towards the legal recognition of linguistic diversity. During this period, regional languages were increasingly relegated to a secondary position within the category of living languages, where they competed with foreign and classical languages for limited educational resources. Their role within the education system was further weakened by staffing constraints, limited instructional hours, and insufficient institutional support. Although regional languages were formally recognized through the 2008 constitutional amendment, which introduced them into the French Constitution, legal scholarship generally acknowledges that this recognition remained confined to the constitutional chapter concerning local authorities and was framed primarily from the perspective of cultural heritage, rather than as the recognition of enforceable linguistic rights.

The regulatory framework governing the linguistic education of migrant children likewise underwent significant reform. Over time, the ELCO (Enseignement des Langues et Cultures d’Origine) programme attracted sustained criticism for failing to reflect the permanent settlement of migrant communities in France and for approaching pupils’ educational trajectories primarily through their ties to their countries of origin rather than from the perspective of their integration into French society. While the programme sought to facilitate migrants’ adaptation to life in France through the acquisition of French, it simultaneously aimed to ensure that, should they eventually return to their countries of origin, migrant children would retain their heritage languages and cultural identities. In response to these criticisms, ELCO was replaced by the EILE (Enseignements Internationaux de Langues Étrangères – International Foreign Language Education) framework from the 2020–2021 academic year onwards.

The transition from the ELCO programme to the EILE framework marked a significant shift in the conceptualization of language instruction, aligning the teaching of migrant-origin languages with the general principles governing foreign language education within the French educational system. In this context, the removal of the term “culture” from the programme’s title reflected a deliberate departure from the historical function of these languages as vehicles for identity formation and cultural transmission, repositioning them instead within a more neutral framework centred on linguistic competence. This transformation has, in turn, reignited scholarly debate concerning the place of the cultural dimension in language education, the recognition of students’ multiple forms of belonging, and the manner in which the relationship between heritage languages and cultural identity should be addressed within educational policy and practice. Accordingly, the replacement of ELCO with EILE has been regarded in the literature not merely as the reform of an existing pedagogical model, but as evidence of a more profound shift in France’s approach to migrant-origin languages and their place within the education system. In our view, the criticisms advanced in the doctrine are well-founded, as this transformation risks reducing heritage languages to instruments of linguistic proficiency while overlooking their broader social, cultural, and identity-forming functions.

In conclusion, the historical development of language policies in France demonstrates that the State has adopted a monolingual model of education in which languages and cultures other than French have been excluded, in a manner that departs from the principles and ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity upon which the Republic is founded. Throughout this process, regional languages and, subsequently, migrant-origin languages were displaced from the centre of the education system, at times through explicit prohibitions and, at others, through legislative and administrative measures. By contrast, the devastating consequences of the Second World War, together with the migration movements that followed, and the reforms that gained particular momentum after the 1980s, signalled the emergence of a new approach aimed not at the complete rejection of linguistic pluralism but rather at its limited recognition. Given that this transformation has remained confined to symbolic and incremental reforms and clearly demonstrates that regional and migrant-origin languages continue to occupy a considerably more limited position than French, it is, in our view, not possible to conclude that France has completely abandoned the monolingual approach that it has historically embraced. As we have emphasized in our previous articles, language is not merely a means of communication; rather, it constitutes a fundamental element shaping an individual’s identity, cultural memory, and sense of social belonging. Accordingly, the restructuring of the education system on the basis of an approach that perceives linguistic diversity not as a threat but as a source of enrichment is indispensable both for meeting the requirements of a democratic society and for ensuring the effective protection of the right to education of migrant and regional communities. In this respect, France, like many other States, continues to require a more inclusive approach capable of fostering greater transformation in the field of language and education policy.

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