21. Revitalization and education

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the revitalization of Romance minority languages and language education policies. After briefly defining language planning and revitalization, we analyse the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, focusing in particular on its goals concerning the implementation of measures for the valorization of minority/regional languages. We then review the educational policies of two of the countries that have not yet ratified the Charter, namely France and Italy, in order to better understand the ways in which their political and historical backgrounds may influence the decision to ratify the Charter or not. In the last section, we draw attention to the ways in which geopolitical and linguistic borders interact with the minority language education policies and measures of revitalization. The observation of local, national and supranational language education policies affords further evidence to show that the steps of revitalization are the fruit of both top-down and bottom-up processes.