A plan by the Catalan regional government to increase the amount of English taught in secondary schools is causing controversy after it emerged that students would end up receiving more classes of that language than Spanish or Catalan.
The move, seen by the regional government as a way to better prepare students for university and their entry into the increasingly globalised labour market, would take effect in the new school year beginning in September thanks to nationwide changes to the Spanish education system. Under the new Education Law, regional governments have the freedom to choose what students between the ages of 16 and 18 study for 16 hours of the 30-hour school week.
In Catalonia, three of those hours would be dedicated to learning the English language, while just two each would be dedicated to Spanish and Catalan. Coming on the back of the PISA education survey (which showed that Spanish students are flunking many important subjects, not least reading and writing their own native languages), the Catalan proposal has received a mixed reaction within the education community.
"Prioritising English over native languages seems like a utilitarian measure designed to satisfy the demands of businesses. I don’t think it’s a good idea," argues Antonio Rodríguez Almodóvar, a professor of literature at the University of Seville and the former director general of education reform at the Andalusian regional government. "In addition, the measure is being proposed too late - it should be applied a lot earlier," he adds.
It is certainly true that students stand a better chance of learning a language if they start learning it while young, although the Catalan government argues that the additional emphasis on English in their final years of secondary school will give them an added boost for university or working life. Conversely, Finland, which came out on top in the PISA survey, emphasises Finnish and Swedish in the latter years of schooling.
"It’s surprising after the PISA report. They want to reduce [native] languages, literature and history when the report told us that we were failing precisely in reading comprehension and writing," complains Juan Santolaria, a professor of philosophy at a Barcelona school.
However, there are others within the education community who see the measure as positive.
"There can be no other objective for this country than to educate tri-lingual citizens, who speak Catalan, Spanish and, for obvious reasons, English, which is not so much just a foreign language but a basic education skill," says Miguel Berga, the dean of humanities at Pompeu Fabra University and the president of the association of English teachers of Catalonia.
There are also many practical reasons.
"I think English will be much more useful for them than the languages from here, which they have already studied for many years," says María José Martínez, an English teacher at a Barcelona high school.
February 2008
[Copyright El Pais / Sebastián Tobarra 2008]
Subject: Education in Spain
