17 février 2020
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Gabrielle Varro, « Les discours officiels sur les élèves étrangers et l’exigence de la « maîtrise » du français », Éducation et sociétés plurilingues, ID : 10.4000/esp.2760
When looking through French official texts to see what French administrators think of immigrant children’s languages, one must admit that either they hold a rather negative view of them or have no opinion at all. It is as if, since those children do not possess a mastery of the French language, they had no language at all. That ethnocentric attitude has been long dominant in France, as perusing four decades of government instructions, decrees, etc. shows. The most persistent approach in school policies regarding those pupils has been to insist on their learning, even mastering, the official language (French), whatever the administration in place, even though attitudes and motivations are not exactly the same on the “right” and on the “left”. Official language has framed the presence of immigrant children in a paradigm bordered by the notions of welcoming them and integrating them, and the proof of the latter resides in how well they master school French. French thus becomes a double bind: since these pupils do not perfectly “master” the language – in theory the instrument of their integration – French is also what keeps them at a distance from the mainstream. The article ends with an analysis of the reasons why the situation has evolved so little over such a long period of time (1969-2009).