CATALONIA --- Catalan News Agency - Catalan school system against Hispanicisation and the Spanish Government’s Education Reform

Catalan News Agency - Catalan school system against Hispanicisation and the Spanish Government’s Education Reform

Catalan school system against Hispanicisation and the Spanish Government’s Education Reform

CNA

Barcelona (ACN).- On Tuesday Catalonia’s education
stakeholders – including unions, pedagogic organisations and parent
associations – asked the Catalan Executive and Parliament to lead “the
boycott” of the Spanish Government’s Education Reform, known as LOMQE.
This reform aims to recentralise education powers, foster religion and
impose Spanish as a language of instruction in Catalonia. Furthermore,
on Monday evening thousands of people demonstrated in front of
Catalonia’s High Court (TSJC) in support of the current school model in
Catalonia, which is based on the linguistic immersion principle that
guarantees the knowledge of both Spanish and Catalan. Political parties,
trade unions, cultural associations and teaching organisations were
protesting against the TSJC’s recent ruling that imposed a requirement
that 25% of a school’s curriculum be taught in Spanish if a single pupil
asks for it. The TSJC was interpreting a judgement by the Spanish
Supreme Court, framed in a broader offensive against Catalan language.

The Catalan school system is up in arms against the recent
initiatives to change utterly the current education model, which has
been in place for the last 30 years. Spanish nationalism has been
targeting the Catalan school system for the last decade, with a long
series of actions trying to change a model that has an extremely broad
consensus in Catalonia and that totally guarantees the knowledge of both
Spanish and Catalan at the end of the schooling period. In fact, the
model was initially agreed in the 1980s among pedagogic experts and
political parties to ensure the knowledge of both official languages by
all pupils. Later it has been further developed through specific laws,
which were approved with great consensus after wide consultations with
stakeholders.

The system is based in the linguistic immersion, teaching most of the
subjects in Catalan language. Many children coming from
Spanish-speaking families – most of them arriving from other parts of
Spain to Catalonia between the 1950s and 1970s – were not exposed to
Catalan at all. Schooling those children in a linguistic immersion
system was essential to guarantee their knowledge of Catalan and
therefore their equal opportunities in the future. At the same time,
pupils coming from Catalan-speaking families were exposed to Spanish
since its presence is universal, and therefore they were mastering the
language without the need to be entirely schooled in this language. Results show that Catalan pupils have the same or even better knowledge of Spanish (depending on the year) that their peers throughout Spain.

A model guaranteeing the knowledge of both Catalan and Spanish

During these 3 decades, the political, pedagogical and popular
consensus has been to have a single education system, in order to
guarantee social cohesion and to avoid having two separate language
communities. In fact, the system has been praised by UNESCO and the
European Commission as a best practice example, and they stressed that
it fosters a true bilingualism. The Spanish Constitutional Court has
validated it on two occasions, the latest being in 2010. The Court
emphasised that the Constitution does not recognise “the right to be
schooled in Spanish” but only “the right and duty to know Spanish”,
which the Catalan model totally guarantees.

The Constitutional Court’s mess

However, in the last assessment of the model in 2010, the
Constitutional Court introduced an ambiguous ruling. The Court was at
that time interpreting the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (Catalonia’s main
law) which had already been approved by the Spanish Parliament and the
Catalan people through a binding referendum in 2006. The Court trimmed
this statute, which is a sort of Catalan Constitution, and provoked great outrage in Catalan society, which felt ignored.
The Court issued this judgement after its scandalous manipulation by
Spain’s main political parties, the People’s Party (PP) – which
currently runs the Spanish Government – and the Spanish Socialist Party
(PSOE) in order to guarantee a judgement recentralising powers. From
this moment onwards, the support for Catalonia’s independence has been
rampant and the Constitutional Court’s sentence is seen as one of the
triggers of the current political tensions.

The Constitutional Court recognised that Catalan language was “the
centre of gravity” of Catalonia’s school system but that Spanish
Language could not be neglected and had to be introduced “in a
proportional way” to be decided by the Catalan Government. The subjects
of Spanish language and literature are taught in Spanish, but the rest
are taught in Catalan. However, the system includes many flexibility
measures, including individualised attention for new-comers.
Furthermore, some schools teach additional subjects in Spanish,
following their own autonomy and education project.

The Supreme Court also intervenes

However a dozen families insisted on having their children schooled
in Spanish in the Catalan public school system. They filed several
judicial complaints and there has been a series of judgements and
appeals over the last few years. The issue arrived at the Spanish
Supreme Court, which cannot modify existing laws and is not the highest
court regarding fundamental rights. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court used
the Constitutional Court’s interpretation of the Statute of Autonomy
(Catalan as “the centre of gravity” but Spanish also included) to decide
that these families had the right to school their children in Spanish
in Catalonia. There have been a series of appeals by the Catalan
Government but in late January, the Supreme Court rejected them.
Furthermore, four days later the Catalan High Court (TSJC) interpreted
this last judgement from the Supreme Court and ruled that schools were
obliged to offer “at least” 25% of the mandatory subjects in Spanish if the family of a single pupil was asking for it,
regardless of the opinion of the rest of the class. This decision
initially affected 5 schools but it will affect the entire system in the
mid-term. The Catalan Government has already appealed against it.

Demonstration in front of the TSJC

On Monday evening some 10,000 people (according to the organisers)
and some 1,500 (according to the local police) got together in front of
the TSJC building to protest against the ruling. The protest was
organised by the civil-society platform Somescola.cat, which brings
together teacher associations, trade unions and cultural organisations.
In the last few years, this group has organised manifold protests against the Hispanicisation of Catalan school.
The slogan in Monday's demonstration was “For a country for all, school
in Catalan”. The President of the civil-society organisation Òmnium
Cultural and Spokesperson of the campaign group, Muriel Casals, insisted
that “all our youngsters, when they reach the labour market, are
totally competent in both Catalan and Spanish”. “The model works and
ensures that people coming from outside Catalonia can get integrated
within Catalan society”, she concluded.

Education stakeholders call for a week of protests

On Tuesday morning, the MUCE platform, which brings together the
education stakeholders – such as trade unions, teacher associations,
school organisations and parent associations – asked the Catalan
Government and the Catalan Parliament “to boycott” the Spanish
Government’s Education Reform, known as LOMQE.

This law is being approved without consensus,
only with the absolute majority of the PP in the Spanish Parliament. It
aims to recentralise education powers, particularly those referring to
setting school curricula. In addition, in line with the recent judicial
ruling, it aims to guarantee that Spanish is a language of instruction
in Catalonia. The Spanish Education Minister, José Ignacio Wert, stated
that his aim was “to Hispanicise Catalan pupils”. The law provides for obliging the Catalan Government to pay for a privately-owned school for the families that want to school their children in Spanish. Furthermore, the contents of the history curriculum will be imposed from Madrid,
and topics referring to Catalonia’s own history will not be part of the
final exams. On top of this, religion will have a greater presence in
the system.

For all these reasons, and the budget cuts imposed on the education
system in the last few years in order to reduce public deficit, the MUCE
is a calling for a week of protests between the 22^nd and 29^th of March. They declared that Wert’s Reform is “unnecessary, useless and unfair”.

More on

Barcelona, Catalan Education System, Catalan Government, Catalan Independence, Catalan Language, Catalan School, Catalan Statute Of Autonomy, Catalan Supreme Court, Centralism, Civil Society, Demonstration, Education, Education Reform, Independence, José Ignacio Wert, Language Immersion, Language Rights, Linguistic Immersion, Minority Rights, Òmnium Cultural, Protest, Protesters, Recentralisation, School, School Teachers, Self-Determination, Somescola, Spanish Government, Spanish Language, Spanish Nationalism, Spanish Supreme Court, Trade Unions

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The Somescola.cat demonstration on Monday evening (by L. Fíguls)

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