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Abstract
Frisian, a unique minority language in the Netherlands, is in the middle ranks of threatened European minority languages in Europe. In recent decades a framework for language policy has been developed in which the educational domain is one of the spearheads. This article provides an overview of language policy and language rights for Frisian language in education. After a brief outline of the sociolinguistic context, a detailed description is given of the development of policy for language education in relation to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. A wider perspective is offered by comparing the case of Frisian with some other European minority languages. The legal obligation to teach Frisian as a subject may seem to place the language among the stronger minorities in the European Union, but the implementation of the minority language as medium of instruction is fairly marginal. From the comparison with other minority language communities it becomes clear that in the field of education Frisian takes an intermediate position. Most schools are currently a weakening factor for the minority language in society, contrary to what is demanded by the European Charter.
Notes
The importance of the field of education among the seven fields of language policy can be discerned from the relative number of pages devoted to education in the two reports (Ministry of the Interior Citation1999, Citation2003): 23 pages in the first report (out of 75 pages of text, or 31%) and 49 pages in the second periodical report (out of 169 text pages, or 29%).