Public education systems in Europe were created in the course of the foundation of the ‘classical’ nation state in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historical analyses show that it was part of their destiny to contribute to the consolidation of the respective states’ national self-design. In the 19th century, the myth developed that a nation state is monolingual not by its creation but ‘by mere nature’, and that monolingualism in the national language is the ‘natural’ result of being born and growing up in a nation state. Many of today’s public education systems are still based on this notion of linguistic ‘normality’ with respect to the composition of their clientele as well as their image of an individual ‘normal’ child(hood). However, the populations of nation states are in fact multilingual. Linguistic diversity increased as a result of migration and factors such as technical means for virtually ‘borderless’ communication. My contribution presents the European traditions of nation building since the late 1700s and asks for the functionality of monolingual habitual practice in education systems today. First results from an empirical study are presented which illustrate individual language abilities of multilingual children and the potential of linguistic diversity as a resource.

欧洲的公共教育体系是在18世纪和19世纪建立“古典”民族国家的过程中创建的。历史分析表明，为巩固各自国家的民族自我设计做出贡献是其命运的一部分。在19世纪，神话发展成一个民族国家不是凭其创立而是由“单纯的自然”而说一种语言，而用一种民族语言说一种语言是在一个民族国家中出生和成长的“自然”结果。当今的许多公共教育系统仍然基于语言“正常性”的概念，即客户群的构成以及单个“正常”孩子的形象。但是，民族国家的人口实际上是多语种。由于迁移和诸如“无边界”交流的技术手段等因素，语言多样性有所增加。我的贡献介绍了自1700年代后期以来欧洲民族建国的传统，并要求在当今的教育系统中使用单语习惯性练习的功能。提出了一项实证研究的初步结果，这些结果说明了多语种儿童的个人语言能力以及语言多样性作为一种资源的潜力。