Berta Romero Tejero, 21 December 2021
Professor of History at middle, and high schools and Anthropology graduate. She is the president of ‘Centro de Izquierda de España (Dcide)’, ACPE secretary, Catalonia for Spain and collaborator in various civic associations.
The regional Minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray
Many pages have been written since the teaching of Spanish and Catalan in schools and institutes (now also in universities) in Catalonia began to be a problem for the nationalist elite and an abuse of the rights of Spanish-speaking students.
There are two fundamental aspects to understand the transformation of educational practice into a permanent state of intransigence, humiliation, contempt and neglect of the Spanish-speaking population.
A fundamental aspect is the Federations of Family Associations, which I consider key in the construction, development and implantation of an educational system based on the indoctrination of students and on the thoughtful abandonment of what should be a bilingual education; that is, one that uses both languages as a means of training or instruction to achieve the required competence in the language of acquisition (L2), but without abandoning the mother tongue (L1).
In Catalonia reality leads us to:
The FAPAC, the largest Federation of Student Family Associations in Catalonia, functions as a transmission belt and executing arm of the principles of nationalism in Catalan educational centers, disseminating and amplifying the slogans of the CUP (Candidacy of Unidad Popular), Ómnium Cultural, ANC (Catalan National Assembly) and “Som Escola”, a platform that welcomes 54 organizations that defend the end of bilingualism typical of Catalonia. The FAPAC disseminates the principles of the most staunch educational nationalism through the Student Family Associations that it hosts. This work is comfortable for you and its results are very effective. The AFAS (AMPAS) bring together families of all kinds, but their boards of directors are made up of small groups belonging to the Catalan bourgeoisie that has created a private elite within the public school financed with the money of all citizens (I do not intend to generalize, but it is a reality that we find mainly in inland Catalonia and in the industrial areas of large cities).
The educational system in Catalonia totally dispenses with the mechanisms of immersion and has set in motion what we call linguistic immersion, which is nothing more than preventing children from using their mother tongue (L1) at school in order to assimilate the language of the minority and to reorganize all their mental processes in the language of acquisition, not in the mother tongue. This practice can be accompanied by a lack of respect for the mother tongue of families and students, neglect, contempt or total indifference.
To the linguistic theme the symbolic and cultural complement is added. The issue of symbols has been abruptly settled with a method similar to the linguistic one: the symbols of Spain are dispensed with for the sake of the formation and assimilation of all the political symbolism of what nationalism considers an independent country. The theme of symbols
Spain is a mixed bag, there is room for all the insults and insults that, turned into “progressive slogans”, anyone, even politicians, is allowed to pronounce.
Why is there no strong response from families of students who undoubtedly do not agree with linguistic imposition and indoctrination? In many cases it is the fear of disagreeing, of possible reprisals on the children, but above all it is that the majority of Spanish-speaking families come from social classes with little academic level and feel powerless if they have to talk about something that they do not master. On the other hand, foreign families cannot in any way protest because most of the information that comes to them from the centers they do not understand.
Ultimately, we are faced with a monopoly of education by a Catalan bourgeois elite and worst of all is that convictions are not valid because they do not comply with any and their victimization is reinforced with them, at the same time that they atomize the force that could have together the families of students in Catalonia.
I have no choice but to appeal to reason and common sense of all parents who value the education of their children to subvert this feudal order in the XXI century so that they accept the ruling of the TSJC, according to which it is due teach a minimum of 25% in Spanish, a language common to all Spaniards.
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