Educational Apartheid: Languages in schools

It’s the day of the “vuelta al cole” next September. By the school gates you wave goodbye as junior enters primary school for the first time. A tear in the eye but joy in the heart, as you will have decided that junior is to be taught in … taught in which language?

From the start of the next school year there will be free parental choice as to the main teaching language at the voluntary nursery level and at primary level, but not at secondary level. This will be in line with the election manifesto of the Partido Popular government. After a fashion. There was meant also to have been free choice in secondary schools. There still will be, but not yet. It’s all a question of money.

Electoral promises are fine, but they do require that the money exists to back them up. The Círculo Balear, the fiercely anti-Catalan and staunchly pro-Castilian organisation, reckons there is the budget, but then it probably would. The government says, however, that the education ministry needs to shed a 35 million euro debt before secondary schools are included. So this – 35 million, if you follow the government’s logic – is what it costs to be able to offer secondary school teaching in the language of parents’ choice.

The budget for education, and the ministry includes culture and university, will be down in 2012 by 55 million euros. With its budget already under strain, it could do without the complication of administering this choice. Because complication is what it is. The education minister, Rafael Bosch, has yet to decide exactly how the choice model will operate, though it would seem that he has in mind a mixture within the same school.

Let’s get this straight, because I am struggling here and you may be able to help. Bosch has, mercifully it would seem, dismissed the possibility of separation into different centres along language lines, but he appears to be saying that there will be separate classes within one school for those being taught in Catalan or Castilian. Have I got this right? Because if I have, it may be good for parental choice but isn’t when it comes to how schools function.

Schools are terrible places when it comes to “being different”. And what you would arrive at with this system is one of apartheid based on language choice. The potential for us and them should not be underestimated.

Moreover, it is an us and them that has the potential to carry on beyond school years. If you want to create a situation of tension between Catalan and Castilian speakers, where better than to foment it than in schools. The notion of splitting along language lines goes against principles of child socialisation that schools should be aiding, not inhibiting.

The Círculo Balear believes that the PP has bowed to pressure from the “anti-democrats of the Catalanist minority”, which it almost certainly hasn’t. Give the PP its own fully free choice and it would probably happily get rid of Catalan from schools, but it is enforcing the provisions of the 1986 act that recognised the right of language choice, but which has since come to mean Catalan taking precedence.

The Círculo, however, may not be right in assuming that an overwhelming majority of parents want Castilian teaching. Back in June it was reported that parents, for the most part, were happy enough for Catalan to prevail. In which case, they’ll be able to choose for it do so.

Apart from a budgetary constraint, the government’s position may have been watered down (albeit perhaps temporarily) by the presence of Sr. Bosch, described as a moderate when he was made education minister.

But this moderation, while it ensures a greater role for Castilian while maintaining Catalan, creates a different problem; two in fact – greater expense plus the linguistic apartheid. The cost of education will have to increase, though not by as much as Sr. Bosch might have wanted, as his plan to add an hour to the school day has had to be held back for now because of lack of money.

Accommodating the two languages, to be fair to the government, is a thankless task. The purely pragmatic approach would be to make Castilian the language and make Catalan a language taught in specific lessons. Where many Catalan-preferring parents would probably have to agree is not with the Círculo Balear’s posturing but with the notion of greater opportunity arising from Castilian.

But pragmatism is too simple when set against culture, history, arguments and tensions. Unfortunately, the government, while it is right in its free-choice policy, might find that it ends up exacerbating these tensions.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Educating Rafa: Mallorca’s schools

One of the names I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to over the next few years is that of Mr. Bosch, Rafael of this variety. As new education minister for the Balearics, can we expect Mr. Bosch to promote instruction in engineering? Will Mallorca’s schools be subject to his use of power tools or will they be set to a gentle wash and softened by a fragrant conditioner?

Mallorca’s state-run schools aren’t very good. Or at least, what they produce underperforms in comparison to most of the rest of Spain and therefore most of Europe. In key competences, such as maths and comprehension, Mallorca and Balearic school children rank among the bottom four of Spain’s regions. The standard of English is such that two-thirds of students at the Universitat de les Illes Balears admit to not understanding it, despite instruction at the university and years of teaching at school.

The education spokesperson at the CCOO union has a point when he suggests that, of the ministries in the new Bauzá administration, education should be given the greatest priority, above even that of tourism. Mallorca’s future lies with well-educated and motivated raw material that can help to shift the economic emphasis away from a reliance on tourism and to change an attitude among young people that they can aspire to no more than being waiters and hanging out on the beach.

The union has expressed concern that the new administration might be targetting education for privatisation. It is probably a touch of scaremongering, but it is just one issue that confronts Rafael Bosch as he takes over the education ministry. The CCOO, and the other two unions representing teachers, have, however, given Bosch’s appointment cautious approval. They describe him as “moderate and communicative”.

And being perceived as moderate might well be a blessing, given that President Bauzá had suffered, some time before the elections, his now infamous, self-confessed “mental lapse” in respect of language, one that has, ever since, dominated discussion as to the PP’s attitude to language and the party’s potential for scrapping Catalan as a language of teaching. This will be an issue that will dog Bosch, though, for his part, he is saying that there needs to be greater effort in the teaching of language – three languages in fact: Spanish, English and Catalan. Hierologically, the hitherto anonymous Bosch does not appear to adhere to the notion of Castilian being the sacred language.

He recognises that the law as it stands allows parents freedom of choice between Spanish and Catalan as to the main language of teaching. For the most part, Mallorca’s parents are happy enough for Catalan to prevail, while schools and pupils have expressed their preference for Catalan, and on occasions vociferously so.

The language question does threaten to overshadow all other matters in Bosch’s ministerial in-tray, but it is way less important than the main one – that of improving standards and combatting what he has described as the “intolerable” situation regarding the high level of year repetition that pupils in Mallorca are obliged to undergo. To this end, Bosch is planning to create a “social pact” between the teaching profession, unions and others to develop a model of education in the islands. Which sounds all rather grand, though we will have to see what it actually means. More practically, he is hinting at adding an hour to the school day, which, pact or no pact, the unions might find a tad hard to swallow.

At the same time as Bosch has got his feet under the ministerial desk, the schools have broken up for the long summer break. It might seem that Bosch, if he believes that longer hours and more schooling are necessary, should perhaps shorten the holidays. The fact is, however, that adding hours isn’t necessarily a solution and nor would be a shortening of the holidays. In Finland, for example, there is an eleven-week break, a lower annual number of school hours than Spain (quite appreciably so) and a way higher standard of achievement than anywhere in Spain.

Mr. Bosch is not only education minister. He also has responsibility for culture. And perhaps here lies a clue for him. Improving educational standards in Mallorca is less a matter of longer days and more one of changing cultural attitudes to education. The people he really needs to be educating are parents.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Losing Their Religion – religious study in Mallorca

Good news for Mallorcan agnostics. Religious education is less popular than it was. The Balearics have fewer students taking religion than any other autonomous region in Spain. And for religion, read Catholicism. There is a vast discrepancy between private and public educational institutions and between primary, secondary and the higher level of the Baccalaureate, but the trend for religious education is downwards. Less than 15% of those in public secondary schools undertake such study.

There are various reasons being advanced as to this growing irreligiousness among the youth of Mallorca and the islands, such as other courses and a growing cosmopolitan population, but the findings of the ministry of education seem indisputable – religion, Catholicism, is in retreat, at secondary school anyway.

Is this so surprising? Why the Balearics might be less religious than elsewhere is curious, but the islands are subject to the same dynamics as elsewhere in Spain, these dynamics – for the young – being what you might expect: youth culture, normal adolescent rebellion, and the like. The findings might be good news for agnostics, but they don’t necessarily mean that religion and Catholicism are in a freefall of disinterest. However, there are other dynamics, not least of which are political. Spain, and the Balearics, have been kicked into greater secularism on the back of social reforms, those that have caused outrage among the conservative, Catholic right – itself a natural target of rejection for the young. These reforms – liberalised abortion, gay rights, easier divorce, assisted suicide (possibly) – sit unwell with that conservativism, but they are in tune with a modern societal impulse propelled by the Zapatero administration which has, some say, been hell-bent on a collision course with the Church.

While attitudes of the young may well continue into adulthood, there is – perhaps – one factor that endures and which favours an essential religiosity, and that it is the family. Religious studies may be in decline, but the traditions that surround families’ rites of passage – from baptism through the communion to marriage – do not necessarily show signs of being undermined. Nor does the power of the family, despite the liberality of gay marriage or termination.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that strong criticism is reserved for the Church, especially among younger Mallorcans, those into adulthood. It is seen as an obstacle and even anachronistic. It has also, thanks to the publicity surrounding the law of historic memory and the rejection of all things Franco, been exposed – for many – as a reactionary force, supporting nationalism and authoritarianism during the Civil War and its aftermath.

For outside observers, such as myself, one from an irreligious background, the trappings of some local religion seem bizarre, such as the zeal of aspirants to the role of Santa Margalida’s Beata, young-ish girls lining up for a public, fiesta statement of modern-day sainthood and devil rejection. It’s easy to see such a tradition as oddly quaint, but tradition does still pervade – up to a point. The fiesta, and its religious basis, has undergone a transformation. There is a debate in Palma regarding the San Sebastià fiesta – whether it should actually be held in summer, rather than winter, and also whether it has gone too far in the direction of being some youth-fest of rock bands and DJs. For the Mallorcan young, many of them, fiesta is not a religious celebration, but an opportunity to get off their face and to dance to the pagan of the turntable and mix. Ironic, but the religious justification of the fiesta in its current-day party guise may have actually done as much, if not more, than Spanish politics to have diminished religious studies and religion – period.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.