Bilingual schooling of the Canadian Francophone minority: a cultural autonomy model

Abstract

The article gives an overview of the sociopolitical context that led to the provision of educational rights to Francophone minorities outside Quebec. It also presents a conceptual framework that distinguishes between French immersion, a bilingual program intended to promote additive bilingualism for majority group members, and French schooling, an approach developed to foster additive bilingualism for minority group members. French schooling is described as a cornerstone to cultural autonomy, a process that leads to cultural survival and ethnolinguistic vitality. The concept of cultural autonomy is defined as well as each of its components: social proximity, institutional completeness, and ideological legitimacy. Finally, the article discusses the challenges of the Canadian Francophone minorities in their quest for cultural autonomy. This cultural autonomy model of minority education is seen as unique and as an approach to minority education that could be applied to other linguistic minorities.