Lately, I have been examining different school approaches to teaching minority languages.
The Māori probably have the widest selection of services. They are well-known, of course, for their kohunga reo or language nests. To these, they added kura kaupapa Māori schools to include elementary through the equivalence of high school here in the U.S. These schools offer most coursework in te reo Māori, but some classes may be done in English, such as maths. More recently, Māori have gained the right to have instruction in the Māori language in every school. Sometimes, however, this means that the student gets only 1.5 hours per week, far less than is needed to gain any fluency in the language. And indeed the number of speakers have declined in the last 10 years.
Another model is the Canadian model that allows children to begin literacy in their heritage language and transition to English beginning around 4th grade. This model is being used by the Secwepemc, a Salish speaking people in British Columbia at the Chief Atham School. This school begins with the Secwepemc language in immersion preschool and continues through to 9th grade. At fourth grade, instruction begins with English so that by 9th grade the program has become bilingual. The Adams Lake Band is hopeful that this approach will produce speakers of their language.
Another well-known model is the Irish model. After Ireland's independence in 1919, Irish was declared an official language and every Irish child was required to take 12 years of Irish as a subject. Irish speaking children can be educated in the medium of that language. However, the number of native speakers of Irish have continued to decline as have the Irish speaking areas, the Gaeltacht. In fact, the Irish language educators I visited with in Dublin predict that Irish will disappear as a family/community language within one generation. Recent legislation has further weakened the position of Irish in Ireland: Students are no longer required to pass an exam in Irish to graduate and civil servants are no longer required to pass exams in Irish to hold government positions.
Another Gaelic language, Scottish Gaelic, is beginning to appear again in immersion schools. The creation of the Scottish Parliament has supported the interests and use of this language in schools. Attitudes in Scotland by both speakers and non-speakers is quite positive with most people seeing the retention of the language as an important identity marker for Scotland. Instruction via English is introduced around 2nd grade while instruction in Scottish Gaelic still dominates each student's day. Due to these schools, there has been a slight increase of number of speakers or as one headline heralded--the loss has slowed.
The final system I have reviewed are the DIWAN schools in Brittany. The French government really does not want any other language than French in France. Breton, a Gaelic language, is one of those minority languages whose speakers have come together to organize schools, and the French government has reluctantly agreed to allow the schools to operate as private schools with limited supported from the French government. The schools begin in preschool and continue to the equivalent of high school graduation. While Breton remains the primary language of instruction, particularly in mathematics, French instruction begins around age six. Later, these students will add a third language, generally English or German. There has been a positive response by parents to the schools (there are also Catholic bilingual schools) with an increasing number of children enrolled in some kind of education via Breton.
The question is whether putting minority languages into school reverses language loss. It some cases this does seem to be true, particularly when schools are supported by families and communities. Families and communities are the heart of intergenerational transmisstion, so schools have to be closely connected to these two kinds of uses for the use of the language in school to affect any reversal of language loss. As seen with the declining statistics for Māori and Irish, simply having the language in a school does not achieve this. As a consequence, school programs must include family/community uses of language and be strongly connected to both.
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