“Актуальные достижения европейской науки – 2017”

“Филологические науки” 3.Теоретические и методологические проблемы  исследования языка.

Oleksandr Rak

Department of the Foreign Languages, Higher State Educational Establishment

“Bukovinian State Medical University”, Ukraine

Vision on intercultural education in France

Intercultural education was introduced to the French school in 1970, almost a century after the creation of the free, compulsory and secular school by Jules Ferry which had happened in 1880. Today, this current seems to be running out of steam. The difficulties which led to its outbreak have not disappeared yet. The school visited children of immigrant origin for a few years but the number of newcomers is currently increasing. The difficulties of integration and the failure of schooling are still relevant and concern more and more pupils.

First of all, it seems necessary to define the terms used in the expression of intercultural education, since these two words can receive multiple meanings. According to C. Clanet (1993), we will define education as "an action by an adult who is in charge for the physical, intellectual and moral development of a young person and his or her integration into the environment in which he or she is destined to live". This definition emphasizes the need to adapt teaching process to the environment. According to C. Clanet (1993), the term intercultural introduces the notions of different exchanges and difficulties in relations between cultures. Interculturality would be the "whole of the processes – psychic, relational, group, institutional ... generated by the interactions of cultures, in a relationship of reciprocal exchanges and with a view to safeguarding a relative cultural identity of the partners in relation". Thus, the term intercultural refers to a particular mode of interactions and interrelations, occurring when different cultures come into contact, as well as all the changes and transformations in the resultof repeated or prolonged contacts.

Therefore, interculturalism implies a relationship and a dialogue between different cultures, through the subjects carrying these cultures (Giraud, 1995). An intercultural situation is a situation in which individuals, groups and even institutions from different cultural backgrounds meet and interact.

In reference toClanet, we consider that the term intercultural implies that culture is an ethno-psychological perspective. It shows culture as a particular relation to the world of a given group – with its norms, its values, possibly ways of life, its language, its rites, etc. – which the group transmits and which constitutes its cultural identity. Therefore, the most importantlies in that what is not visible (norms and values) while the external and visible aspects of culture are less important. In other words, interculturalism is concerned with culture as a "world view", a universe of meanings peculiar to a given group, which encompasses the meaning it gives to things, the beliefs to which it adheres and which situates it and makes others place in a particular cultural community.

We are interested in the different meanings that have been given by researchers in the human and social sciences to the notion of intercultural education. For N. de Smet and N. Rasson (1993), the central question of intercultural education must be: to know lifestyles, to understand the reasons for these choices and the values which underpin them. In such a perspective, intercultural education must transmit "respect for others, the possibility of living one's own identity, non-discrimination, etc." It is the values which are imbricated in the Judeo-Christian and humanistic tradition. Intercultural education obviously refers to pluralism cultural, which implies the coexistence of different cultures on the moral, artistic or philosophical level and the possibility to live in oppositions without falling into insurmountable conflicts. This duty of transmitting values would explain the fact that in Switzerland, intercultural education is mostly present in courses in religion, morals, literature, history or the visual arts.

According to N. de Smet and N. Rasson, intercultural education must enable every child, as a bearer of diverse cultural references, to appropriate the cultural knowledge and codes of the society in which he lives. Indeed, "autonomy requires thorough knowledge of the implicit and explicit norms of a society, and the role of a democratic school is precisely that: to provide all children with the knowledge and know-how that will enable them to define and consciously exercise their role as citizens". This aspect, which echoes the definition of the term education of C.Clanet, is one of the most important. It has often been forgotten in the setting up of intercultural projects. For De Smet and Rasson, intercultural education must also strive to "open the eyes of young people to the environment, make them curious and tolerant of difference", "teach them how to communicate", "manage conflict and negotiation". Thus, the notion of openness to diversity is introduced, a concept that has become, over the years, the privileged objective of actions with an intercultural aim.To summarize this idea, society can be composed of several cultures and the advantage of this opportunity is to give each other its rightful place. The school must take this diversity into account.

The intercultural education must be based on a work on oneself and J.-M. Dufour confirms that: "as a guarantor of general and universal truth man must exercise to distance oneself from one's own cultureto have access to a certain type of objectivity, to seek oneself by comparison and relativisation". Similarly, N. de Smet and N. Rasson (1993) think that "interculturality leads to reflections on one's own culture or, better still, one's own cultural identity and contains questions like - Who am I? What do I do? "This issue of cultural identity is of direct interest to the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to psychology.

Interculturality also leads one to wonder about the differences and similarities between oneself and others and "also assumes that I speak about myself and the (cultural) position I occupy in intercultural dialogue". This point is essential because it places the individual at the center of the intercultural experience. For C. Camilleri, such work on oneself should lead young people to grasp what a culture is in the anthropological sense, to understand the point of view of the other, whether it is shared or not, which implies that one has access to "relativism", that one is able to legitimize cultural identity while avoiding",to give it a sacred representation. The same author proposes us to protect the exchanges between carriers of distinct cultures, to help assume without guilt feelings of distance and personalized positions that these exchanges favor. In other words, intercultural education aims at a dialectical project that of ensuring respect for differences within a system of attitudes which allow them to be overcome.

In this perspective intercultural content is much more than a teaching content. It merges with an in-depth reflection, decentration and knowledge of its own cultural identity and the role it plays in the construction of each.

Abdallah-Pretceille gives a vague indication of what an intercultural education action should be when she writes: "Understanding cultures is not accumulating knowledge, but it is a movement, a reciprocal recognition of a person by person, it is a learning to think of the other without annihilating it without entering into a discourse of mastery in order to emerge from the primacy of identification and marking." The intercultural approach must be "comprehensive and multidimensional in order to account for dynamics and complexity and avoid categorization processes."(1999)

The definition of the concept of intercultural education is sometimes more ideological than operational. That is sought above all is the transformation of individuals, a phenomenon that is difficult to evaluate. The behavior of children which have benefited from intercultural action in their class may seem to change in the days that follow, but there is no guarantee that the observed change will be truly deep and lasting. The main defect in the definitions of the concept of intercultural education is the difficulty of making them live. If some researchers have tried experiments to put the theory into practice, they would get not much.

Dias (1985) defines interculturality as "a new conception of education and communication, leading to positive and dynamic interethnic and community relations so that our children are more likely to be open to others, and to have a vision and an openness to the world, without forgetting their own realities, their history ".

A. Flye Saint-Marie (1993) designates intercultural as "any action, any project aimed at transforming the spontaneously difficult relations between people and groups of different cultures into positive situations", there is an evolution in the conception of intercultural education: initially it is limited taking into account different cultures, but it gradually becomes willing to make the relations easier between the bearers of these cultures.

If one adheres to the definition of A. Flye Sainte-Marie (1993), which states that intercultural education is "an option in the school space for the psychological, intellectual and moral preparation of children for the daily life of diversity, alterity, the acceptance of differences, the relativisation of cultures, an essential contribution to the construction of a global society that harmoniously manages the plurality of its components". We can understand the confusion of teachers which meet such a challenge. Moreover, the term option seems ill-suited, as most researchers agree on the need for an intercultural project that is both transversal and omnipresent within the school. Indeed, it is not a question of adding a new subject to be taught, such as, for example, the study of cultures, but of imbuing a little "intercultural philosophy" with every moment of school life. L. Porchersays (1989): "The intercultural hypothesis,must be global and generic to be coherent and truly concrete. It is a matter of developing an original pedagogy, not intended specifically for the children of migrant workers, but necessarily encompassing them among the target public. It must address all children".

Many authors insist on the inadequacy of a contact of different cultures to constitute an intercultural action. Indeed, whole society of the populations of different cultures come together daily without necessarily coming into relation. The school must therefore strive not to bring cultures into contact but to allow them to exchange and communicate.

The keystone of intercultural education seems to be take into account the values, codes and norms that underpin each culture, not only on the side of children but also on the school side. School has to play a role in education of the citizens. It must develop in a persona certain number of values for example the respect of difference and openness to otherness.