ABSTRACT
Since 1974 the home languages of large groups of ethnic minority children in the Netherlands have been used in Dutch elementary education as school subjects referred to as Native Language Instruction (NLI). Initially, the educational policy of the Dutch authorities was ambiguous. On the one hand, it was aimed at the integration of immigrant children into the Dutch educational system. On the other hand, their potential remigration was taken into account. During the seventies it was gradually realized that the majority of the immigrant families had definitely settled in the Netherlands. In the Primary Education Act of 1980 it was declared that mother tongue instruction would be given if the parents applied for it and if the authorities deemed it necessary. The frequency of these lessons is limited to a maximum of 2.5 hours a week within the school curriculum. It is clear that this legislation offers no genuine opportunities for ethnic group language maintenance. Likewise, the goals of Native Language Instruction have long been defined in terms of dependence: NLI should contribute to the learning of Dutch and to closing the gap between home and school environment. Only recently has more attention been given to the autonomous function of NLI, the maintenance of ethnic group languages, which are now also offered as optional subjects in secondary schools, Turkish and Arabic in particular.
