The Luxembourgish School System between Inclusion and Exclusion

1. The Luxembourgish School System between Inclusion and Exclusion Jean-Jacques Weber Université du Luxembourg Kristine Horner University of Sheffield

2. Luxembourg(Statec 2010) • Size: 2,586 km2 • Population: 502,100 • Resident foreigners: 43.1% (principally passport holders of other EU member-states) • Workforce: +40% frontaliers ‘border crossing commuters’ • One of the six founding EU member-states • Luxembourg city: one of the three EU capital cities • Officially recognized languages: Luxembourgish, German and French

3. The Luxembourgish educational system • Trilingual: Luxembourgish/ German/ French • Compartmentalization of languages: Luxembourgish in pre-school; German as the language for teaching basic literacy; French from near the end of the 2nd year of primary school onwards • Two separate tracks at secondary level: lycées classiques and lycées techniques; non-Luxembourgish students: 37.9% of lycée technique students vs. 16.5% of lycée classique students • Students in the Luxembourgish school-system: 63.6% of Luxembourgish citizenship and 36.4% of non-Luxembourgish citizenship. The latter group comprises a majority of Portuguese students (52.7%), followed by Ex-Yugoslavian (11.4%), Italian (7.7%), French (7.6%), Belgian (4.5%), German (3.2%) and Cape Verdian students (1.8%). These figures add up to about 74% potentially romanophone speakers.

4. Social cohesion? • Alors que 44,8% des enfants de nationalité luxembourgeoise sont orientés vers l’enseignement secondaire (voie privilégiée pour l’accès à l’université) à l’issue de l’enseignement primaire, seuls 16,3% des enfants d’origine portugaise peuvent bénéficier d’une telle orientation positive • Parmi les notes insuffisantes obtenues par ces 16% d’élèves d’origine portugaise, à l’issue de la première classe de l’enseignement secondaire, 25,2% sont des notes d’allemand, contre 3,7% pour les élèves d’origine luxembourgeoise (Conseil de l’Europe 2005: 22) • Only 16.3% of the luso-descendant pupils are oriented towards the elite lycées classiques, as opposed to 44.8% of ‘Luxembourgish’ pupils. • For these 16.3% luso-descendant students who have access to the lycée classique, once they have completed their first year in lycée classique, 25.2% of their failing grades are in German, as opposed to only 3.7% for ‘Luxembourgish’ pupils.

5. What is integration? A society can only be looked upon as socially cohesive or integrated if it achieves roughly equivalent educational results and employment rates for all its constituent groups (including the members of migrant groups).

6. Chambre des Députés (2000) • 1. à préserver l’unité de l’école luxembourgeoise ainsi que de ses diplômes et certificats, étant donné que la fréquentation d’une même école par les enfants étrangers et luxembourgeois est plus que jamais un élément indispensable à la préservation à moyen et à long terme de la cohésion sociale au Luxembourg • 2. à maintenir le principe du trilinguisme (luxembourgeois, allemand et français) de l’école luxembourgeoise • 1. to preserve the unity of the Luxembourgish school-system and of its diplomas and certificates, considering that attendance of the same schools by both foreign and Luxembourgish children is more than ever an essential element for the medium- and long-term preservation of social cohesion in Luxembourg • 2. to maintain the principle of trilingualism (Luxembourgish, German and French) of the Luxembourgisch school-system

7. Rapport du Ministère de l’Education nationale (2005: 100) Ces problèmes sont difficiles à surmonter. D’autant plus qu’il est impensable d’abandonner le trilinguisme, trait caractéristique du système éducatif luxembourgeois. These problems are hard to overcome. The more so because it is unthinkable to abandon the [Luxembourgish – German – French] trilingualism, the characteristic feature of the Luxembourgish educational system.

8. Journal de la Ville et du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (1828: 3) • M. l’inspecteur procéda aussitôt à l’examen; et qui aurait pu voir, sans la plus vive satisfaction, des enfans (sic) de 6 à 10 ans lire très-bien, non seulement l’allemand, mais encore le français et le hollandais, résoudre avec une grande facilité des problèmes d’arithmétique assez compliqués, et montrer des progress étonnans dans l’écriture? Nous avons entendu un petit garcon de Mersch, de l’école de M. Werner, qui après avoir parfaitement bien traduit une phrase hollandaise en allemand, a également traduit en hollandais une phrase française assez difficile. • The inspector started the examination at once; and who would not have seen without the greatest satisfaction children aged between 6 and 10 read very well, not only in German but also French and Dutch, solve fairly complex problems in arithmetic with great ease, and show astounding progress in writing. We listened to a little boy from Mersch, from Mr Werner’s school, who, after perfectly translating a Dutch sentence into German, also translated a fairly difficult French sentence into Dutch.

9. Syllabus for 1st year primary school in 1844 (quoted in Huls 2002: 130) • Connaissance des lettres dans les 2 langues • Éléments de lecture dans les 2 langues • Écriture sur l’ardoise • Knowledge of the letters in the 2 languages • Reading German and French • Writing

10. Circulaire ministérielle (1922) • Il s’ensuit encore que ces premiers exercices de langage devront tirer le plus de profit possible du vocabulaire français préscolaire des enfants – plus riche que l’on ne l’admet généralement et surtout d’un usage très courant … Bref, il importe d’user de tous les moyens pour gagner, dès les premières semaines, l’intérêt de l’élève pour le français, que nous disons notre seconde langue maternelle. Il faut lui montrer, dès le début, que celle-ci n’est ni si difficile que les grammairiens l’ont faite, ni si étrangère qu’elle en a l’air, et que l’on ne saurait parler luxembourgeois sans parler un peu français. • It also follows that these first language exercises will have to draw as much as possible on the children’s pre-school French vocabulary – richer than usually acknowledged and above all widely used … In short, it is essential, right from the beginning, to use every possible means to raise the children’s motivation to learn French, which we call our second mother tongue. Right from the beginning, they have to be shown that French is neither as difficult as the grammarians have made it out to be, nor as foreign as it seems to be, and that one cannot speak Luxembourgish without at the same time speaking a little French.

11. Lëtzebuergesch Texter (1990 edition) • Déi meescht Lëtzebuerger kënnen haut, nieft hirem Lëtzebuergesch, och nach Däitsch a Franséisch, muncher och Englesch. An dat soll och esou sin! Mir sin op eis Noperen ugewisen, fir mat Friemen an d’Gespréich ze kommen, musse mir hir Sprooche kennen. Mir hun bal 30% Auslänner bei eis am Land wunnen, mat dene mer eis wëlle verstoen. • In addition to their Luxembourgish, most Luxembourgers today know German and French, and many also English. And that is the way it should be! We are dependent on our neighbours; in order to have conversations with foreigners, we must be able to speak their languages. We have almost 30% foreigners living in our country, with whom we want to make ourselves understood.

12. ‘Hurdles’ for Romance-speaking students in the Luxembourgish school system • German as language of literacy and language of instruction at primary level vs. French and Portuguese (and often Luxembourgish) in their out-of-school lives • Intensive instruction in German, sometimes at the cost of English

13. Important educational principle Literacy is best imparted in a language that the children know very well

14. Learning from the past • a multilingual school system, with other languages (Dutch) being present in the 1820s • the possibility of simultaneous literacy development in German and French in the 1840s • a more inclusive view of languages, with all of Luxembourgish, German and French being looked upon as belonging to the children’s linguistic repertoires and being built upon in the school system – in the 19th + 1st half of the 20th century (e.g. the Circulaire ministérielle of 1922)

15. Moving into a more educationally equitable future • Build upon all the children’s linguistic resources • Study the children’s actual linguistic repertoires (taking into account all their linguistic varieties and not just a narrow range of standard languages) • Construct the best possible school-system upon this foundation, by establishing a reasonable number of ‘literacy bridges’

16. Possible directions • Filière germanophone (German as L1 and français langue étrangère) + filière francophone (French L1 and Deutsch als Fremdsprache) • If 2 filières are introduced, need to avoid the danger of ghettoization! • Alternative: simultaneous literacy (or biliteracy) programme