Mother tongue and mother tongue education

Without going into much historical detail, in this chapter I will try to shed some light on the intricacies connected with concepts of ‘mother tongue’ and ‘mother tongue education’—henceforth ‘MT’ and ‘MTE’. In this task I take the mosaic of contemporary multilingual societies as a main frame of reference, since it is in this context above all that the concepts just referred to are gaining importance. The chapter starts by distinguishing analytically between different meanings of MT and MTE. Then it gives an account of two different versions of MTE, from a majority and a minority perspective respectively. It then outlines the difficulties that the process of inclusion of MTs in multilingual classrooms has to face. The final section deals with MTE and linguistic human rights. In its examples, and maybe in its basic thinking, this chapter may well reflect a Western European, especially a Dutch, bias. It is hoped, however, that the concepts and practices dealt with will be recognizable in other contexts as well.