The Occitan language in education in France European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning hosted by OCCITAN The Occitan language in education in France | 2nd Edition | c/o Fryske Akademy Doelestrjitte 8 P.O. Box 54 NL-8900 AB Ljouwert/Leeuwarden The Netherlands T 0031 (0) 58 - 234 3027 W www.mercator-research.eu E [email protected] | Regional dossiers series | t ca r cum n n i- ual e : Availableinthisseries: This document was published by the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism Albanian; the Albanian language in education in Italy Aragonese; the Aragonese language in education in Spain and Language Learning with financial support from the Fryske Akademy and the Province Asturian; the Asturian language in education in Spain (2nd ed.) of Fryslân. Basque; the Basque language in education in France (2nd ed.) Basque; the Basque language in education in Spain (2nd ed.) Breton; the Breton language in education in France (2nd ed.) 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Italian; the Italian language in education in Slovenia Kashubian; the Kashubian language in education in Poland Acknowledgements Ladin; the Ladin language in education in Italy (2nd ed.) The author wishes to express his gratitude to Didier Agar (Toulouse), Jean-Marie Sarpoulet Latgalian; the Latgalian language in education in Latvia (Bordeaux) and, Marie-José Villeneuve (Montpellier). Lithuanian; the Lithuanian language in education in Poland Maltese; the Maltese language in education in Malta Manx Gaelic; the Manx Gaelic language in education in the Isle of Man Meänkieli and Sweden Finnish; the Finnic languages in education in Sweden Contact information of the authors of Regional dossiers can be found in the Mercator Nenets, Khanty and Selkup; The Nenets, Khanty and Selkup language in education in the Yamal Region in Russia Database of Experts (www.mercator-research.eu). North-Frisian; the North Frisian language in education in Germany (3rd ed.) Occitan; the Occitan language in education in France (2nd ed.) Polish; the Polish language in education in Lithuania Romani and Beash; the Romani and Beash languages in education in Hungary Romansh: The Romansh language in education in Switzerland Sami; the Sami language in education in Sweden Scots; the Scots language in education in Scotland (2nd ed.) Serbian; the Serbian language in education in Hungary Slovak; the Slovak language in education in Hungary Slovene; the Slovene language in education in Austria (2nd ed.) Slovene; the Slovene language in education in Italy (2nd ed.) Ramziè Krol-Hage has been responsible for the publication of this Mercator Regional dossier Sorbian; the Sorbian language in education in Germany (2nd ed.) Swedish; the Swedish language in education in Finland (2nd ed.) Turkish; the Turkish language in education in Greece Ukrainian and Ruthenian; the Ukrainian and Ruthenian language in education in Poland Võro; the Võro language in education in Estonia Welsh; the Welsh language in education in the UK Contents Contents Glossary 2 Foreword 3 Glossary ..............................................................................2 1 Introduction 5 2 Pre-school education 19 Foreword ..............................................................................3 3 Primary education 21 4 Secondary education 28 1 Introduction ...........................................................5 5 Vocational education 37 6 Higher education 39 2 Pre-school education ..........................................19 7 Adult education 45 8 Educational research 48 3 Primary education ..............................................21 9 Prospects 49 10 Summary of statistics 50 4 Secondary education ..........................................28 Education system in France 55 Endnotes 56 5 Vocational education ..........................................37 References and further reading 58 Addresses 65 6 Higher education ................................................39 Other websites on minority languages 66 What can the Mercator Research Centre offer you? 68 7 Adult education ...................................................45 8 Educational research ..........................................48 9 Prospects............................................................49 10 Summary of statistics .........................................50 Education system in France ...................................................55 Endnotes ...............................................................................56 References and further reading ..............................................58 Addresses ...............................................................................65 Other websites on minority languages ...................................66 What can the Mercator Research Centre offer you? ..............68 Education and lesser used languages Glossary BEP Professional education certificate (brevet d’études profession- nelles) BOEN Official Bulletin of the Ministry of Education (Bulletin Officiel de l’Education Nationale) CALR Academic council for Regional Languages and Cultures (Con- seil Académique des Langues et Cultures Régionales) CAP Vocational aptitude certificate (certificat d’aptitude profession- nelle) CAPES Professional degree for secondary education teachers (Certi- ficat d’Aptitude au Professorat de l’Enseignement du Second degré) CRPE Primary school teacher selection procedure (Concours de Re- crutement de Professeur des Ecoles) DA-SEN Academy director of national education services (directeur aca- démique des service de l’éducation) EOE Occitan summer school (l’Escola occitana d’Estiu) 2 EPI Pedagogic Interdisciplinary Education (Enseignements Péda- gogiques Interdisciplinaires) ESPE Schools for professorship and education (Écoles supérieures du professorat et de l’éducation) IA-IPR Académie inspectors / regional pedagogical inspectors (inspec- teurs d’académie – inspecteurs pédagogiques régionaux) IEN Inspectors for national education at pre-school and primary education level (inspecteurs de l’éducation nationale du 1er degré) IEO Institute of Occitan Studies (Institut d’Estudis Occitans) IGEN General inspection for national education (inspection générale de l’éducation nationale) IUFM Academic teacher training institutes (Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres) JO[RF] Official Bulletin (Journal Officiel [de la République Française]) RERS Statistical benchmarks and references on teaching, training and research (Repères et Références Statistiques sur les enseigne- ments, la formation et la recherché) The Occitan language in education in France Foreword background Regional and minority languages are languages that differ from the official state language. The Mercator Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning uses the definition for these languages defined by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML): “Regional and minority languages are languages traditionally used within a given territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population; they are different from the official language(s) of that state, and they include neither dialects of the official language(s) of the state nor the languages of migrants”. The Mercator Research Centre aims at the acquisition, application and circulation of knowledge about these regional and minority languages in education. An important means to achieve this goal is the Regional dossiers series: documents that provide the most essential features of the education system of regions 3 with a lesser used regional or minority language. aim The aim of the Regional dossiers series is to provide a concise description of European minority languages in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools, teachers, pupils, and financial investments. Because of this fixed structure the dossiers in the series are easy to compare. target group The dossiers serve several purposes and are relevant for policy­ makers, researchers, teachers, students and journalists who wish to explore developments in minority language schooling in Europe. They can also serve as a first orientation towards further research, or function as a source of ideas for improving educa- tional provisions in their own region. link with The format of the Regional dossiers follows the format of Eury- Eurydice dice – the information network on education in Europe – in order Education and lesser used languages to link the regional descriptions with those of national education systems. Eurydice provides information on the administration and structure of national education systems in the member states of the European Union. contents Every Regional dossier begins with an introduction about the region concerned, followed by six sections that each deals with a specific level of the education system (e.g. primary education). Sections eight and nine cover the main lines of research into education of the concerned minority language, the prospects for the minority language in general and for education in particular. The tenth section gives a summary of statistics. Lists of regulations, publications and useful addresses concerning the minority language, are given at the end of the dossier. 4 The Occitan language in education in France 1 Introduction language Occitan, or the Oc language, is a Romance language. It is spoken in three countries: in southern France, Italy, and in Spain. The focus in this dossier is on the four regions in France where Occitan is spoken: Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Auvergne-Rhône- Alpes, Occitanie, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Occitan in France is subdivided into six dialects: Vivaro­Alpine, Occitan Auvergnat and Occitan Limousin – together called Northern Occitan –, Languedocien (Toulouse, Montpellier) and Provençal (Aix, Marseille, Nice) – together called Southern Occi­ tan – and Gascon (Bordeaux, Bayonne) (Ronjat 1913 & 1930; Bec 1967; Allières 2001; Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath & Bank, 2016). Despite the fact that the number of speakers is decreasing, Occitan remains the most widely spoken regional language in France, and the largest one in Europe in terms of territory. 5 Occitan was one of the first European languages to be recognised as a literary language. This literary presence started during the reign of William IX, Duke of Aquitaine (1071­1127). His reign saw the rise of the ‘troubadours’: the minstrels. At that time, “the language and the poetry of the troubadours were in fashion in most of the courts of Europe” (Knight 1843, 108). The language, ethics and themes used by the Troubadours had a strong and durable impact on Western Europe, from Petrarch to Tasso through Dante. Because of their chivalric structures, Occitan societies enabled a different relationship to God (a relationship that would be denounced as heretic in the Crusade against the Cathars from 1209 to 1229) and herald the development of the Inquisition based in Toulouse – last Cathar is burned in 1321 – to women – called “lord” – and to the economy, with a rapid development of urban bourgeoisie (Weil [Novis], 1943; Martel, 2002; Lafont 2007). In the sixteenth century, Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, ordered the translation of the Psalms of David and the Gospels into Occitan. This contributed greatly to the rise of baroque literature in Occitan. The Occitan language thus remains anchored in the Renaissance humanism period (Lafont Education and lesser used languages FLAMAND Picard FRANCIQUE Normand Ch a m Lorrain LANGUE D’OÏL pe BRETON Gallo nois ALSACIEN Angevin Touran gBeearuriOcrhléoannais Bourguignon cFormantoci-s Poitevin Bourbonnais Saintongeais FRANCOPROVENÇAL m o u sin Li Auvergnat Vivaro- 6 alpin LANGUE D’OC Gascon (OCCITAN) Provençal Languedocien BASQUE CORSE CATALAN Figure 1: The area where Occitan is spoken. (Source: adapted from Eurominority.eu. Available at: http://eurominority.com/en/romance-people/occitania/) 1970; Escudé 2017) and flourished in Toulouse, the capital city of the south of the kingdom of France, around a modern poetic discourse (Escudé 2009). There were some factors that resulted in decline of the status of Occitan from the 14th century on. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) stated that French should be used as language for all French administration (Laurent 1982). Also, language diversity was seen as a threat during the French revolution (Certeau & alii 1975; Weber 1983; Boyer The Occitan language in education in France & alii, 1989). Still, Occitan remained the main language of communication of the population until the beginning of the twentieth century. Occitan was also the language of popular protest movements (demonstration of Languedoc wine growers, 1907; coal miners’ strikes in Decazeville, 1962; fight for the Larzac, 1974). However, diglossia, a mechanical distribution between a high language (an increasingly standardised French language) and a low language (an increasingly dialectalised Occitan) settles durably. An intellectual elite continued to write in Occitan. The Romantic period witnessed a European revival of Occitan with the félibrige, around the character of Frédéric Mistral, the author of the most comprehensive dictionary of the Occitan language (Lou Tresor dóu Félibrige) and of a poetic work that was rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904. Since the end of the Second World War and the foundation of the Institut d’Estudis Occitans in 1945 (Institute of Occitan Studies, hereafter: IEO), numerous artists (singers, actors, writers) have used Occitan as the medium for their 7 various artistic expressions. Various causes can be identified as having contributed to the decline of Occitan. These include a highly uniform national school system (introduced in 1880); two World Wars when Occitan speakers spent extended periods of time alongside French speakers; the use of French as the dominant language in the media (initially in newspapers, but followed by radio and later by television), and finally the fact that Occitan cannot be used in public administration. An important factor is that French has been the only official language since 1539 (Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts). Article 2 of the current constitution (La Constitution de la 5e République, du 4 octobre 1958) states that “the language of the Republic shall be French” (an article added in 1995). But over the years, since the end of the Romance period and the era of the Troubadours, literature gave Occitan the means to prove its existence, as if poetic art could sublime or compensate its dwindling social and political presence (Gardy 1978; 1988; 1992; 1996; 1996b; 1998). The years 1950-1980 witnessed a new approach through a political endeavour to “reclaim diglossia” (Lafont 1984; Sauzet 1988 & Education and lesser used languages 1990) and to invest the field of institutional education: Occitan can nowadays be learned at schools. population In 1913, Jules Ronjat estimated that, out of 40 million inhabitants in France, the population living in the Occitanophone territory was 10 million (Ronjat, 1913). Today, it is estimated that 1 to 2 million people that can speak Occitan live in France. The exact number is unknown, since there is no official statistical language survey in France. Because Occitan has many variations that can also be seen as distinct languages, estimating the number of Occitan speakers is a challenge. It is not clear how many Occitan speakers there are at this time. Since the first official population censuses at the beginning of the 19th century, the French government has always refused to ask questions about language practice. Indeed, France is a civic republic: information considered private, such as religion or language are not to be taken into account. Likewise, there is only one French people but no Occitan, Corsican or Breton 88 people. This political and cultural ‘invisibilisation’ has been studied over the last fifty years (see Lafont 1952, 1967, 1968, 1971, 2004 or more recently Escudé 2014). Additionally, seven surveys have been conducted in various regions regarding language competence and the attitude of the public towards Occitan from 1991 to 2010 (1991: Languedoc-Roussillon; 1997: Languedoc-Roussillon and Aquitaine; 2006: Auvergne; 2009: Aquitaine; 2010: Midi-Pyrénées and Rhône-Alpes – the latter for Occitan and Francoprovençal). These surveys did not cover the whole Occitan-speaking territory: data from the regions Limousin and Provence are missing. There are also a few remarks to be made on the methods used on the survey (for example, the questions were asked by phone and the results are based on self­definition), therefore we need to approach the results tentatively. Still, data collected by these surveys provide a hint about the linguistic landscape of the Occitan-speaking area. “In fact, the number of Occitan speakers was estimated by the French Demographics Institute at 526,000 people, then 789,000” (Martel 2007). Table 1 shows the survey results from 1991 and 1997 (in Languedoc-Roussillon).