Schooling and cultural autonomy : Canada-wide study in Francophone minority schools

The results of the students from the 30 school boards are grouped into four regions: New Brunswick, the other Atlantic provinces, Ontario, the Western provinces and the territories.2 The last chapter summarizes the main study findings and examines the ensuing educational and pedagogical consequences. [...] The institutional completeness component is the place where the main action takes place for the members of the community, the institutions and organizations of civil society. [...] Social proximity is the foundation of the model for cultural auton- omy, helping to highlight its central and fundamental role both for the vitality of the language and for the cultural autonomy of the group. [...] These are enculturation (amount of contact with the group’s language and culture), personal autonomization (which ensures a person’s autonomy as a learner and user of the language), and social conscientization (which encourages the development of a “critical consciousness” of the group’s legitimacy and stability and sparks behaviours of involvement and leadership). [...] It rep- resents the group’s management of the cultural and social institu- tions that breathe life into the group’s language in the public domain (Breton, 1964) and marks the community’s ability to establish and manage what Fritz Capra (2002) calls “identity borders.” In fact, insti- tutions are the markers of the group’s collective identity and have a major role to play in its historical continui