PERSPECTIVES SUR L’ÉDUCATION PLURILINGUE DANS LE CONTEXTE OCÉANIEN

There is a natural relationship between language and education: school is the place where the codes through which the faculty of language has been constructed are rebuilt in order to allow the speaker to access, through language, wider areas of science, culture and society. However, very little attention is paid to the ecological variable, i.e. the part played by education in the mission to preserve the natural environment. And conversely, if the human development index proposed by the United Nations integrates the level of education of the countries considered, there is a difficult correlation to analyze between the high number of languages spoken in a given territory and the low degree of economic development of this same territory. This observation, although it must be made with infinite precautions, nevertheless put the problem of the preservation of endangered languages in a new light. When we know that the degree of education is also a notorious factor of linguistic harmonization and selection of idioms, we understand the delicate situation to which the analyses of language policy must deal with linguistic diversity, economic development, diffusion and elevation of public education. In the Melanesian space and in the South Pacific in general, each of these three components is in a crisis situation: high number of languages spoken, low economic development, high school dropout. This paper will provide an overview of these issues in the French-speaking Melanesian areas.