The School of Politics

Things in Catalunya haven't turned out like the conservative government in Madrid would have liked. After the declaration of independence in October, the central government declared the Catalan govern null and void, and sent out an arrest warrant for its president, Carles Puigdemont, accusing him of rebellion and sedition. Puigdemont, however, found refuge in Belgium. In the meantime, Madrid ordered new regional elections, which turned out more or less like the previous, with the majority of votes going to the independence parties. A new govern has been set up, with the exception of the president, who is again Puigdemont, except if he comes to Spain to be sworn into office, he goes to jail. While things are still in the air, Madrid rules the roost in Barcelona. Madrid is angry at the results of the elections. Madrid is trying to exact its pound of flesh in the meantime by making changes to the educational system in Catalunya.

Upon dissolving the Catalan govern, and taking charge of the region by applying the constitutional article 155, the central government in Madrid can make changes in its legislation. It is now going to try to change the language requirement in all Catalan schools. It is going to allow parents to choose the vehicular language their children can be taught in. So, if the majority of parents of a school want the vehicular language to be Castilian, Catalan will only be used in Catalan language class. At this moment, Catalan is the obligatory vehicular language in all of Catalunya's schools, with the exception of a few private ones.

The Constitutional Court once ruled that Castilian should be used in at least 25% of all classes in all schools, no matter the regional language. This case was taken forward by those parents living in a region with its own language who didn't want their children to "suffer" in school, being taught in a language not spoken at home. To me it sounds like a leftover from Franco, when the only language taught in schools was Castilian because that was the language of the "one, great, and free" Spain. The parents' main concern was that their children thus could not understand the subjects taught in the other languages and their grades subsequently would go down. Some of these parents are the same that would love that their children speak English. If not through immersion, I suppose they want that to happen through osmosis in their sleep.

Children quickly learn new languages if they are continuously exposed to them. If a family from Zaragoza (Castilian only) were to move to a Catalan town with a nine year old child, that child might have problems the first months in Catalan. But after that, that child will learn and pick up the new language easily. I know people whose parents took them to Boston in their early teens with precious little more English than "hello" and "goodbye." Yet, though in school they were placed in a lower grade than they should have been, they picked up English quickly enough to be speaking the language pretty well by the end of their first year there. And English is more different from Castilian than Catalan. 

Catalan is a minority language, just like Galician and Basque. While Basque is the most different and difficult of the three, if they are not taught in school through immersion, they will quickly die out. Another argument many minority language-phobic parents use is that the minority language will be of no use in their child's future. If we follow that path, why do some countries continue teaching their language? Danish, for example, or Bulgarian. Outside Denmark and Bulgaria, who speaks those languages? 

But if we allow these languages to die out, we are letting part of ourselves die. They helped define who we are. If we keep following that line of argument, we can also say there's no need to teach history; it's not going to get us a job in computer programming. But education consists of learning about ourselves, not just of gathering job skills.

Castilian is the majority language in Spain. Our daughter learned Galician and English at home. At that time, her primary school used only Galician, because it's the majority language in our rural township. Her secondary school also used Galician. The secondary school where she studied the last two years had many kids who spoke Castilian as their first language, and some teachers, too. Our daughter had no problem. In university, the material is mostly in Castilian, with a few books in English. Most of the professors speak Galician, though some speak Castilian. Most of the students speak Galician, though a few exchange students don't. Our daughter has never had any problems speaking, reading in, or understanding Castilian. It was not her language in infancy, nor is it now, but it is the majority language in this country and she has always been exposed to it. Castilian will not die out in our lifetimes. Our minority languages will if they're not taught in schools.

In fact, Catalan is not spoken in Barcelona on the streets. When my husband and I went to France four years ago, we stopped the first night and day in Barcelona to visit my brother-in-law, who was then living there. When we parked and started walking to where he had told us to meet him, I was expecting to hear Catalan. Yet, except from a few esteladas, the independence flag of Catalunya, hanging from plenty of balconies, if I had closed my eyes I could have felt I was in Madrid or any other Spanish city. Store names were in Catalan, but everyone spoke Castilian. Even in A Coruña, Castilian-speaking city par excellence in Galicia, you can easily find someone who speaks Galician. Perhaps we just were in the wrong neighborhoods that day, but the only Catalan we heard was on the television in my brother-in-law's flat before we left for the border. 

The Ministry of Education in Madrid is composed of lifetime bureaucrats and politicians who know very little about education. Their intention now is to exact revenge, and to try to indoctrinate children like Franco once did. National unity has become the new mantra to follow. Instead of going forward, we seem to be going back in time. Only, since history isn't discussed, few realize it and call out a warning that is ignored.

La Escuela, Aula, Vintage, Pizarra

Comments

  1. Good overview. Language is so much tied in with identity.

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