Identity Politics in the Educational System in South Tyrol: Balancing between Minority Protection and the Need to Manage Diversity

Abstract

This article focuses on the educational system in South Tyrol as one of the pillars of language and identity politics used for minority protection and elaborates on possible future developments triggered by immigration. After a historical overview of the coexistence of the three linguistic groups in South Tyrol, the article will explore, from the perspective of the educational system, the institutional framework guaranteeing the protection of the German-speaking and Ladin minority and in particular their languages as the most important markers of the particular local identities. The article then examines how the educational system in South Tyrol deals with increasing immigration, assessing the strengths and weaknesses in relation to whether the educational system facilitates, on the one hand, the development of a multilingual society and, on the other, individual language competences and thus individual multilingualism.

International Perspectives on Inclusive Education

“…Overall, the development of the educational system in the province is closely connected to the development of the autonomy and, as mentioned above, clearly shows up in the tripartite division according to the three language groups (Verra 2008). This means that schools of the province are organised through three parallel school systems with their own administrations, three education authorities, directing bodies, and evaluation boards (Wisthaler 2013). Consequently, all educational institutions from kindergarten to secondary education are separated by language.…”

“…In 1939, through an agreement between Hitler and Mussolini, the population of the Province of Bolzano then had the choice to opt for Germany and the expatriation to German territory, or Italy and a full acceptance of the Italianization. Pressured by war propaganda from both sides Fascist and Nazi organisations, the majority (more than 80%) opted for leaving the province (Alcock 2001), but due to the course of the war only a few did so, and many returned after the end of World War II (Wisthaler 2013). The post-war time (i.e., the 20 th century) was then characterised by the striving for autonomy to gain the certainty that German and Ladin minorities will be protected after the events of the past.…”

“…After the forced assimilation of the German and Ladin speaking population under the fascist regime such a division had the aim to guarantee to the minorities the right to education in their mother tongue. Therefore, the educational system can be considered, on the one hand, as a key foundation of the minority-protection policies but, on the other hand, as a mirror of the events and trauma of the past (Wisthaler 2013). The latter recently lead to the fact that many scholars address this organisation of school in the province also as potentially problematic since creating parallel worlds, linguistic division, and a fragmentation of society (cf.…”

“…Such a result might be interpreted also in the vein of the abovementioned critical voices by other scholars, who claimed that the organisation of the education system in the province leads to or further promotes the social division of the population of the three official languages of the territory (Baur 2013;Zinn 2017). Even though variation in value priorities within and across cultures has been empirically proven so far and should not be seen as problematic at all, the strict separation of schools according to the three languages hinders daily contacts between the children (Wisthaler 2013) and contributes to the creation of parallel worlds (cf. Gross 2019).…”

Value transmission in primary schools: are teachers’ acculturation orientations a moderator?

“…Moreover, besides these, other minorities must be considered today, namely, those caused by the new forms of migration in the 21st century (e.g., globalization, increasing mobility, advanced communication technologies; Teltemann and Windzio, 2016). Recently, several authors (Wisthaler, 2013;Zinn, 2017Zinn, , 2018Carlà, 2019), foremost Medda-Windischer (2015, shed light on the reality in the province through the arrival and presence of these "new minorities. " Researching the interplay of value transmission and teachers' acculturation orientations in this school context promises particularly interesting insights.…”