Archivum Lithuanicum

This article presents an historical overview of ideas and practices of teaching mother tongue (L1, national, majority language) and literacy in Western Europe. The research is based on a focused analysis of secondary sources and aims to distinguish developmental stages of mother tongue education with their characteristic approaches to language and language didactics. The influence of modern language scholarship on language education at the end of the 20th century is discussed, including the teaching of language awareness. The theoretical framework for the research consists of Matthijssen’s theory of rationality, or valid knowledge in education, Englund’s concept of competing meta-discourses about education, as well as academic, developmental, communicative and utilitarian paradigms of mother tongue teaching conceptualised by Sawyer and Van den Ven (2006). A total of four stages of mother tongue education and literacy are singled out: elite literacy (classical Latin tradition); mass literacy (teaching of the national standard), new literacy (teaching of language as communication) and linguistic literacy (teaching scholarly knowledge about language). Recent projects aiming to include critical language awareness into teacher education and school curricula are discussed separately. At the end of the article, features of contemporary Lithuanian mother tongue education are presented and evaluated in light of current developments in the West. The question is raised to what extent the most recent changes in Western curricula have reached Lithuanian education. This part of the research is based on official Lithuanian education documents and data from the authors’ previous research. It has been shown that the communicative approach to language dominates Lithuanian mother tongue teaching, yet it is intertwined with the pre-scientific academic paradigm characteristic of language education from the early modern times. A critical approach to standard language ideology and teaching of linguistics and language awareness is lacking.