The French Mainstream Model to Deal with Diversity

Abstract

France has been a country of centralist traditions since the French Ancien Regime of the monarchy, and has been universalist since the Declaration of the Rights of Man during the French Revolution, first applied to the schools of the 3rd Republic at the end of the 19 th century. It privileges individual rights as the basis of the State and considers nationality along the lines of integration and assimilation and citizenship in line with homogeneousness (1, 2). Other European countries privilege birth in a community with regards to their citizenship within the State, but this means that while differences are respected, there is a risk that the differences take precedence over what is common to everyone in a nation. The paper will compare strength and weaknesses of the French mainstream model with those of other European countries. For instance, an American inquiry shows that while half of British Muslims consider there is a natural conflict between practicing Islam and living in modern society, 72% of French Muslims see none, a proportion identical to that recorded for French society overall (3, 4). Is it a positive effect of an educational policy founded on secularisation? The weakness of French educational policies is to take insufficient account of all the many differences with respect to knowledge, whatever their socio-cultural, psychological or physical origins. Nevertheless, the French model is changing thanks to the European Union. It will be explained why and how.