When the Partido Popular gets round to publishing its manifesto for the 2019 regional election, there will be more than just passing interest in what it has to say about education. Readers will be vastly more attentive than they were in 2011. Those readers who never read the 2011 manifesto.
Biel Company should beat José Ramón Bauzá and be elected as the party's president later this month. He will then be the party's candidate for the Balearic presidency. Bauzá, a fallen figure in search of some purpose greater than having been sidelined, condemned to a place in the Senate and widely ignored, is most unlikely to win. Stranger things have happened of course, but a Bauzá victory would be most strange.
Even before the party gathers for the congress at which the party's leadership will be decided, the issue which came to haunt the Bauzá administration is being given a thorough airing. This is mainly because it is Bauzá who is doing the airing. He said recently that "we (although it's not clear who we are) have been working with experts to find an appropriate and effective way to apply trilingual teaching (TIL)".
Was this an admission that the TIL he introduced was not appropriate and effective? Not that he has said as much, and nor will he ever do that. He admits to having made mistakes but has not specified what these were. There are many who will happily identify mistakes, the biggest of which was TIL.
Company is not ruling out TIL. He believes that it could be introduced by consensus, but only if there is an avoidance of ideological issues: maximum consensus without any imposition. He has stopped short of condemning Bauzá, but there's no disguising the reading between the lines. There were things that the last PP government did which made its defeat at the 2015 election all the more likely, and TIL was most definitely one of them.
Regardless of who is elected as leader, the 2019 election manifesto is certain to be more specific about trilingual teaching than the 2011 manifesto was. And that manifesto could not have been any less specific. It didn't mention TIL. What came to antagonise so many - and I include myself - was the blatant untruth that the electorate had voted for TIL because it was there in the manifesto. This untruth was then repeated by those who didn't bother to check. The "democratic will" card was played when in fact there was no card available: TIL as an election pledge was to become a fabrication.
The reference made by Company to imposition says it all. TIL was imposed - or imposition was attempted - as a thinly disguised means of downgrading Catalan. Once the "free selection" of teaching languages by parents - Catalan or Castellano - proved to be a failure, Bauzá introduced TIL. English was the patsy for an initiative that from the outset demonstrated education policy subnormality. That's because it wasn't used for educational purposes; only political ones. Had it been only for early primary and infant levels, then there would have been some sense. But this wasn't the case.
Bauzá now says that experts are assisting with a "new formula" for TIL. Where were those experts when he was president? Were they ever presented? Were they ever named? One person who was close to being an expert was Bauzá's "professor", his first education minister, Rafael Bosch. He had a background in education. When he came to appreciate the difficulties with TIL, he was ousted, branded a "Catalanist" and replaced by the inexperienced Joana Maria Camps, under whom the policy degenerated into protest and farce.
It was seemingly Bauzá who offered himself as the expert. Off he and Bosch went to Switzerland to see how multi-language education operates. As Switzerland is in any event a multi-language society, it was not representative of what he was seeking. But there was a question about his policy that was never truly raised and so given a satisfactory answer. Why was teaching in a foreign language felt to be so important?
Having a third language from the start of a pupil's education cycle should have benefits - one can see that - but what of countries where there are high levels and standards of English, where it isn't a teaching language per se: the likes of the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden? While there are instances of its use, it is more a case of it being integrated into school life and, especially in the Netherlands and Sweden, everyday life.
There is therefore a considerable societal difference in the Balearics, and it is this which needs addressing. Introducing English at a very early age may well assist, but doing so would require overcoming obstacles, not least some of the teaching community. Imposition isn't the way. If Bauzá is really a good educationalist, then he should have learned that lesson.
Showing posts with label TIL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TIL. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 07, 2017
Friday, September 11, 2015
The Abnormality Of Mallorca's Education
You'll no doubt remember the teachers' strike. Especially those of you with school-age children attending state schools in the Balearics. It seems like an age ago that it took place. During an age that has now passed, that of the Bauzá administration and its full-frontal conflict with the teachers, one that was primarily to do with the implementation of trilingual teaching (TIL), a system that no longer exists, the new government having consigned it to the history textbooks with the board rubber of a decree.
The 2013-2014 school year did not start with normality. School years normally do begin with normality. Press reports say so. Each year it is the same. But it wasn't normal in September 2013. The teachers were on strike and remained on strike until October. In the midst of the strike the largest demonstration witnessed in the Balearics took place. A hundred thousand in Palma protesting against Bauzá, against TIL and in defence of Catalan instruction. Though the teachers went back to the classrooms after three weeks, the strike wasn't officially called off. It was indefinite. Remarkably enough, given that there is a new government whose first act was to kill off TIL, the strike is still indefinite.
The education minister, Martí March, cannot understand why the strike hasn't been called off. There is no justification, in his view, for it remaining indefinite, meaning it could be reactivated at any time. What more do the teachers want, now that the devil's work of TIL has been undone? He anticipates the school year starting with normality, but behind the appearance of normality lurks the abnormal.
March is a professorial type, similar to Bauzá's first education minister Rafael Bosch, who was to be a victim of TIL dogmatism in that he wasn't antagonistic towards Catalan to the extent that his boss was. Professorial types might be said to be one step removed from the hurl and the burl and the cuts to the throat of down and dirty politics. They apply proportion and so hope that others will too. But in Mallorca's world of education, there are instead alternative dogmas that compete and are clouded by degrees of impetuousness and emotiveness, to which can be added the need for a "cause".
While the unions are there, fighting the good fight, there is also the unmistakable presence of the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' assembly, with its green tide of green t-shirts. This was a product of TIL. The assembly's defence of education against Bauzá was firmly based on the defence of Catalan. English was only ever a side issue.
With TIL abandoned, March cannot understand the need for the strike to be maintained. Nor can many others. But he must surely understand that the teachers' assembly, now deprived of the prime reason for it having come into existence, has become a self-perpetuating force in search of other causes. It has become a power in the land, bolstered, it would think, by the belief that the rebellion against TIL, with it at the head of it, was what brought Bauzá down. It shows no sign of wishing to relinquish this power.
The green tide manifested itself before parliament on Wednesday. Podemos issued a declaration against the national education law - LOMCE. It was one of almost Marxist rhetoric that wouldn't have been out of place in the febrile environment of a students' union meeting debating the application of the dialectic to whatever issue happens to be flavour of the month. As such, it was embarrassing. LOMCE may be a lousy law, not least because of its weird insistence on religious education which most Catholics believe to be unnecessary and unwarranted, but it cannot just be ignored. National laws cannot simply be disobeyed.
This, though, is what the assembly wants, as it also wants Bauzá cutbacks to be reversed, and as it further wants a revision of the obscure "decreto de minimos", something which determines quotas of Catalan (and Castellano). March is dragging his heels on all of these is the conclusion that is being made. Hence the strike will not be called off.
But within all of this is the shaky nature of the government. The Podemos declaration was an implication that PSOE, in charge of education, is as anti-democratic and all the rest as the Partido Popular, whose law LOMCE is. The teachers have found easy allies among the ranks of Podemos (and Més to an extent as well). Alberto Jarabo, the Podemos leader, was one of those wearing the green t-shirt.
March, a moderate in a similar way that Bosch was, finds himself in the cross-fire of the government's tensions and of the extremes of Mallorca's educational politics. Just, in truth, as Bosch was also trapped.
The strike will not be called off. Normality has yet to return. When will it?
The 2013-2014 school year did not start with normality. School years normally do begin with normality. Press reports say so. Each year it is the same. But it wasn't normal in September 2013. The teachers were on strike and remained on strike until October. In the midst of the strike the largest demonstration witnessed in the Balearics took place. A hundred thousand in Palma protesting against Bauzá, against TIL and in defence of Catalan instruction. Though the teachers went back to the classrooms after three weeks, the strike wasn't officially called off. It was indefinite. Remarkably enough, given that there is a new government whose first act was to kill off TIL, the strike is still indefinite.
The education minister, Martí March, cannot understand why the strike hasn't been called off. There is no justification, in his view, for it remaining indefinite, meaning it could be reactivated at any time. What more do the teachers want, now that the devil's work of TIL has been undone? He anticipates the school year starting with normality, but behind the appearance of normality lurks the abnormal.
March is a professorial type, similar to Bauzá's first education minister Rafael Bosch, who was to be a victim of TIL dogmatism in that he wasn't antagonistic towards Catalan to the extent that his boss was. Professorial types might be said to be one step removed from the hurl and the burl and the cuts to the throat of down and dirty politics. They apply proportion and so hope that others will too. But in Mallorca's world of education, there are instead alternative dogmas that compete and are clouded by degrees of impetuousness and emotiveness, to which can be added the need for a "cause".
While the unions are there, fighting the good fight, there is also the unmistakable presence of the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' assembly, with its green tide of green t-shirts. This was a product of TIL. The assembly's defence of education against Bauzá was firmly based on the defence of Catalan. English was only ever a side issue.
With TIL abandoned, March cannot understand the need for the strike to be maintained. Nor can many others. But he must surely understand that the teachers' assembly, now deprived of the prime reason for it having come into existence, has become a self-perpetuating force in search of other causes. It has become a power in the land, bolstered, it would think, by the belief that the rebellion against TIL, with it at the head of it, was what brought Bauzá down. It shows no sign of wishing to relinquish this power.
The green tide manifested itself before parliament on Wednesday. Podemos issued a declaration against the national education law - LOMCE. It was one of almost Marxist rhetoric that wouldn't have been out of place in the febrile environment of a students' union meeting debating the application of the dialectic to whatever issue happens to be flavour of the month. As such, it was embarrassing. LOMCE may be a lousy law, not least because of its weird insistence on religious education which most Catholics believe to be unnecessary and unwarranted, but it cannot just be ignored. National laws cannot simply be disobeyed.
This, though, is what the assembly wants, as it also wants Bauzá cutbacks to be reversed, and as it further wants a revision of the obscure "decreto de minimos", something which determines quotas of Catalan (and Castellano). March is dragging his heels on all of these is the conclusion that is being made. Hence the strike will not be called off.
But within all of this is the shaky nature of the government. The Podemos declaration was an implication that PSOE, in charge of education, is as anti-democratic and all the rest as the Partido Popular, whose law LOMCE is. The teachers have found easy allies among the ranks of Podemos (and Més to an extent as well). Alberto Jarabo, the Podemos leader, was one of those wearing the green t-shirt.
March, a moderate in a similar way that Bosch was, finds himself in the cross-fire of the government's tensions and of the extremes of Mallorca's educational politics. Just, in truth, as Bosch was also trapped.
The strike will not be called off. Normality has yet to return. When will it?
Monday, April 27, 2015
Marching For Education?
A hundred and twenty million steps sounds a good deal more impressive than ten thousand people, but ten thousand there were (organisers' figures) marching on the capital: more a green, slow-moving road block than a green tide - a "marea verde" (or better, "verda").
The march of the ten grand started at ten on Saturday morning in Inca. It would appear that it takes eight and a half hours to walk from Inca to Palma's Plaça Major, though it might have been quicker had it gone straight down the motorway. Symbolically, however, this would have been a poor idea. The ten thousand heard that in 2011 they, and indeed the whole of the Balearics, were to have expected "motorways of education". Needless to say, the motorways had not been built. All that had been delivered were cart tracks.
It was a strange metaphor to have offered, but then it had been strange for the Bauzá administration to have apparently been promising motorways of education in the first place. What is a motorway of education exactly? There again, once Bauzá had realised that his government had made a balls-up of so-called free selection of teaching languages (between Catalan and Castellano) and had conjured up the non-manifesto item of trilingual teaching, perhaps the motorway had been being built after all: English on the outside fast lane, Castellano in the middle lane, and Catalan reduced to a crawl on the inside lane.
This motorway madness, though, was ended by the Trafico of schools which had rather bent the figures of numbers of parents who had plumped for the politically incorrect Castellano option in order to scupper free selection and subsequently of the combined forces of unions, teachers' assembly (Assemblea de Docents), parents' associations, school directors and opposition parties. The boys in green were substituted by the green t-shirts of the green tide. Halt! Stop! The fast and middle lanes were exceeding the teaching-hour limits. The inside lane had to be given its priority again.
A month away from the regional parliamentary election, the Assemblea and its fellow slow-moving travellers had given ample warning of their intention to once more voice their discontent with the government's language policies: primarily the one to do with teaching languages. Here was to be a reminder to the electorate of the dictatorship of Bauzá, the authoritarianism of Bauzá and of the cart tracks travelled by those who were instead aspiring to maintain freedom.
Language rights, said Jaume Mateu, the president of all-things-Catalan promoters, the Obra Cultural Balear, had been subjected to "ruthless attacks" from the dictator. After eight and a half hours on the march, the blistered-feet ten thousand needed such a rallying cry. The comedian Miquel Àngel Llonovoy quipped that, as Bauzá loved English so much, they would be saying "goodbye" to him in May (goodbye said in English, you understand). It would have brought the house down had there been a house to have been brought down.
The day before the march, the Mallorcan federation of parents' associations and the Balearics' co-federation of parents' associations had complained to the board which oversees fair play at elections about Bauzá's "totalitarian attitude". The Partido Popular had complained to the same board about a campaign by these associations which it considered was designed to "influence voters". Somehow, one doubts that there will be any influence: minds have long been made up, positions have long been taken in the teaching languages' battle. (By the way, has the Mallorcan federation ever taken any English lessons? Its acronym, FAPA, is, when spoken in English slang terms, somewhat unfortunate.)
When it finally draws to a close, the obituaries for the current Bauzá administration will speak of one issue above all that has dominated. It hasn't been financing of the Balearics by central government, it hasn't been the occasional "collapses" in the health service, it hasn't been oil prospecting, it hasn't been the tourism law designed to meet the desires of the hoteliers, it hasn't even been corruption (and this really is an accusation that Bauzá doesn't deserve), and it most definitely hasn't been the stupidity of Magalluf's "mamading" and the even greater stupidity of the reaction. It has been TIL: trilingual teaching.
Throwing around descriptions such as totalitarian is also pretty stupid, but then, playing fast and loose with legal procedure, being revisionist in terms of manifesto claims, dumping TIL "wets" like ex-education minister Bosch have all played a part in a policy that, at best, has been insensitive. The arguments - for and against - have been chewed over often enough, so there is little point in their being regurgitated. But whatever merits TIL might have had (or indeed might still have) have been obscured by the deliberateness of political posturing by the government and its opponents. Who is marching for a sensible and consensual education system?
The march of the ten grand started at ten on Saturday morning in Inca. It would appear that it takes eight and a half hours to walk from Inca to Palma's Plaça Major, though it might have been quicker had it gone straight down the motorway. Symbolically, however, this would have been a poor idea. The ten thousand heard that in 2011 they, and indeed the whole of the Balearics, were to have expected "motorways of education". Needless to say, the motorways had not been built. All that had been delivered were cart tracks.
It was a strange metaphor to have offered, but then it had been strange for the Bauzá administration to have apparently been promising motorways of education in the first place. What is a motorway of education exactly? There again, once Bauzá had realised that his government had made a balls-up of so-called free selection of teaching languages (between Catalan and Castellano) and had conjured up the non-manifesto item of trilingual teaching, perhaps the motorway had been being built after all: English on the outside fast lane, Castellano in the middle lane, and Catalan reduced to a crawl on the inside lane.
This motorway madness, though, was ended by the Trafico of schools which had rather bent the figures of numbers of parents who had plumped for the politically incorrect Castellano option in order to scupper free selection and subsequently of the combined forces of unions, teachers' assembly (Assemblea de Docents), parents' associations, school directors and opposition parties. The boys in green were substituted by the green t-shirts of the green tide. Halt! Stop! The fast and middle lanes were exceeding the teaching-hour limits. The inside lane had to be given its priority again.
A month away from the regional parliamentary election, the Assemblea and its fellow slow-moving travellers had given ample warning of their intention to once more voice their discontent with the government's language policies: primarily the one to do with teaching languages. Here was to be a reminder to the electorate of the dictatorship of Bauzá, the authoritarianism of Bauzá and of the cart tracks travelled by those who were instead aspiring to maintain freedom.
Language rights, said Jaume Mateu, the president of all-things-Catalan promoters, the Obra Cultural Balear, had been subjected to "ruthless attacks" from the dictator. After eight and a half hours on the march, the blistered-feet ten thousand needed such a rallying cry. The comedian Miquel Àngel Llonovoy quipped that, as Bauzá loved English so much, they would be saying "goodbye" to him in May (goodbye said in English, you understand). It would have brought the house down had there been a house to have been brought down.
The day before the march, the Mallorcan federation of parents' associations and the Balearics' co-federation of parents' associations had complained to the board which oversees fair play at elections about Bauzá's "totalitarian attitude". The Partido Popular had complained to the same board about a campaign by these associations which it considered was designed to "influence voters". Somehow, one doubts that there will be any influence: minds have long been made up, positions have long been taken in the teaching languages' battle. (By the way, has the Mallorcan federation ever taken any English lessons? Its acronym, FAPA, is, when spoken in English slang terms, somewhat unfortunate.)
When it finally draws to a close, the obituaries for the current Bauzá administration will speak of one issue above all that has dominated. It hasn't been financing of the Balearics by central government, it hasn't been the occasional "collapses" in the health service, it hasn't been oil prospecting, it hasn't been the tourism law designed to meet the desires of the hoteliers, it hasn't even been corruption (and this really is an accusation that Bauzá doesn't deserve), and it most definitely hasn't been the stupidity of Magalluf's "mamading" and the even greater stupidity of the reaction. It has been TIL: trilingual teaching.
Throwing around descriptions such as totalitarian is also pretty stupid, but then, playing fast and loose with legal procedure, being revisionist in terms of manifesto claims, dumping TIL "wets" like ex-education minister Bosch have all played a part in a policy that, at best, has been insensitive. The arguments - for and against - have been chewed over often enough, so there is little point in their being regurgitated. But whatever merits TIL might have had (or indeed might still have) have been obscured by the deliberateness of political posturing by the government and its opponents. Who is marching for a sensible and consensual education system?
Sunday, October 12, 2014
TIL Death Us Do Part
Why is anyone talking about TIL any longer? Has it gone unnoticed that the schools of the island have been thrown back to simpler pre-acronym times, that the senyera is being hung metaphorically if not physically from science blocks and that the youth of Mallorca are rejoicing in the mediaevalist purity of the ancients of Catalanism. Oh my Berenguer, my Llull, my Jaume I of times gone by. TIL is dead, long live the Catalan grammar of Pompeu Fabra. PSOE's Cosme Bonet announced that the TIL decree was a zombie decree. The Walking Dead of a decree. Empty-eyed PP sorts (the few who genuinely support TIL) are vainly insisting that the unworkable trinity of languages is still somehow operable, when more than a hundred schools suggest that it isn't. At the head of the not-quite-yet-dead is José Ramón, and what on earth is happening to him? Where has all that hair come from? Is he going for a mullet or is he, as I had suggested some months ago, aiming for the ponytail look with which to confront the devil of Podemos? Or is he finally morphing into his distant ancestor in Transylvania? Blood sucker turned Mood Hoover, vacuuming all the good mood out of the PP?
Contrast the Bauzá dishevelled look with that of Nuria. Each morning she rises for her appointment with the stylist before taking herself off for a trip around the pueblos or for a meeting with gauche student representatives. Bauzá's Batwoman, who only has a few months to save TIL Gotham City from falling into the hands of the jokers and riddlers of PSOE and Podemos. Her mission (if she should have chosen to have accepted it, which she of course did) is that of the impossible charm offensive. Is she bothered that TIL is a walking dead of a decree? Of course she isn't. That she might even contemplate a tour of the pueblos in order to convert recalcitrant PP mayors to the dogma of TIL sets her well apart from José Ramón. Mayors across the isle are desperately seeking ways of ensuring that he doesn't get within 50 kilometres of their municipalities in pre-election times (difficult given the size of Mallorca, admittedly).
So why don't the mayors just get rid of him? Send in the men in grey suits or even one with a brown suit, his chum Matty Isern. Is it because there is no one to replace him? Not so. Not since Nuria claimed the education throne. A tough job? Not a bit of it. Puts her firmly in the party and public eye. She is, so sources explained last week, "very smart", "extremely ambitious" and seemingly not afraid to put the boot in or to get the knife out. Sounds as though she would be ideal for the backstabbers party. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next leader of the PP. Nuria Riera.
Contrast the Bauzá dishevelled look with that of Nuria. Each morning she rises for her appointment with the stylist before taking herself off for a trip around the pueblos or for a meeting with gauche student representatives. Bauzá's Batwoman, who only has a few months to save TIL Gotham City from falling into the hands of the jokers and riddlers of PSOE and Podemos. Her mission (if she should have chosen to have accepted it, which she of course did) is that of the impossible charm offensive. Is she bothered that TIL is a walking dead of a decree? Of course she isn't. That she might even contemplate a tour of the pueblos in order to convert recalcitrant PP mayors to the dogma of TIL sets her well apart from José Ramón. Mayors across the isle are desperately seeking ways of ensuring that he doesn't get within 50 kilometres of their municipalities in pre-election times (difficult given the size of Mallorca, admittedly).
So why don't the mayors just get rid of him? Send in the men in grey suits or even one with a brown suit, his chum Matty Isern. Is it because there is no one to replace him? Not so. Not since Nuria claimed the education throne. A tough job? Not a bit of it. Puts her firmly in the party and public eye. She is, so sources explained last week, "very smart", "extremely ambitious" and seemingly not afraid to put the boot in or to get the knife out. Sounds as though she would be ideal for the backstabbers party. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next leader of the PP. Nuria Riera.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
MALLORCA TODAY - Teachers suspend strike and are likely to return to work on Monday
It was the CCOO union which first raised the possibility of a "truce" in the teachers strike yesterday, and the Assembly of Teachers later accepted a return to work, at the same time overwhelmingly maintaining the strike action. So, the strike has not been called off, it has only been suspended, and it could be reactivated at any time. While Monday is believed to be the day when schooling will resume, even this is not totally certain yet; there is to be a meeting today with the parents association to discuss this. There is some feeling among teachers that going back on Monday would look as though they had caved in to the regional government. What is also far from certain is what will be taught and, perhaps more importantly, in what language. Therefore, will TIL be applied or put on hold for the time being?
The parents association has welcomed the return to work but still supports the teachers against the government. The unions, perhaps acknowledging rising levels of opposition among at least some parents, have taken the view that a temporary suspension will bring some relief to these parents.
In the meantime, yesterday the government said that it would seek to employ over 100 more language assistants who would help with English conversation. These assistants would, it would appear, be taken on through schemes whereby student teachers from North America and Britain can be paid 700 euros per month for typically some 14 or 15 hours per week as part of their practical training.
The parents association has called for there to be mediation between the teachers and government, reviving the offer of the rector of the university in Palma to mediate (an offer the government rejected) or suggesting that the Ombudsman becomes involved. In other news related to the strike, the fund to help teachers financially during the strike (and they can lose up to one hundred euros a day if on strike) has risen to over 370,000 euros.
The government says that it has given ground on a number of issues to the teachers, but the teachers are still holding out for TIL to be applied only voluntarily at both primary and secondary levels this year (the government has been willing to make it voluntary in secondary schools), for directors of schools in Menorca to be reinstated (they were sacked for not complying with government requirements regarding TIL) and for a relaxation of the law of symbols so that the display of the Catalan flag would be permitted.
The parents association has welcomed the return to work but still supports the teachers against the government. The unions, perhaps acknowledging rising levels of opposition among at least some parents, have taken the view that a temporary suspension will bring some relief to these parents.
In the meantime, yesterday the government said that it would seek to employ over 100 more language assistants who would help with English conversation. These assistants would, it would appear, be taken on through schemes whereby student teachers from North America and Britain can be paid 700 euros per month for typically some 14 or 15 hours per week as part of their practical training.
The parents association has called for there to be mediation between the teachers and government, reviving the offer of the rector of the university in Palma to mediate (an offer the government rejected) or suggesting that the Ombudsman becomes involved. In other news related to the strike, the fund to help teachers financially during the strike (and they can lose up to one hundred euros a day if on strike) has risen to over 370,000 euros.
The government says that it has given ground on a number of issues to the teachers, but the teachers are still holding out for TIL to be applied only voluntarily at both primary and secondary levels this year (the government has been willing to make it voluntary in secondary schools), for directors of schools in Menorca to be reinstated (they were sacked for not complying with government requirements regarding TIL) and for a relaxation of the law of symbols so that the display of the Catalan flag would be permitted.
Monday, September 23, 2013
A Very Political Educational Strike
Has the Balearic Government no interest in negotiating with the teachers? An editorial on Sunday* compared the lack of negotiation with the intense negotiations which occurred at times when damaging strikes, such as the 2001 transport strike, threatened to be prolonged and to so harm tourism. The lack of negotiation now, the editorial continued, indicated that it wasn't only negotiating that the government wasn't interested in, it was education itself.
The government has said that it will negotiate but that there has been no offer from the unions. What are the unions expected to negotiate, though? Are they expected to debate points of law? When a senior lawyer such as Pedro Horrach, the anti-corruption prosecutor for the Balearics, can condemn the government's expeditious "legalising the illegal" after the high court had declared the procedure for TIL illegal (which should have meant the suspension of its introduction), then there are grounds and grave concerns for believing that this is a government which does not act in good faith.
There has been an offer to mediate. It has come from the rector of the university. The government said thanks but no thanks. Mediation wasn't necessary. If not, then what is? The rector's offer was knocked back, one suspects, because the government would have been placed in the awkward position of involving someone who might actually understand something about education in negotiations. Who can it put up? Joana Maria Camps, an estate agent?
But to admit someone from education into the discussions would mean admitting that the strike is an educational one and not, as the government insists and the national education minister Wert has also said, a political one. A university rector wouldn't understand the politics, one has to conclude.
The strike is both educational and political. It isn't wrong for the government or indeed anyone to make the political point, but it is political because the government made it political. All government legislation is political insofar as it is the political process which determines legislation, but the introduction of TIL in April was not an educational issue and an educational issue alone. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that it was a political issue and a political issue alone. Try as he might to make everyone believe otherwise, TIL was not voted for at the last election because it wasn't in the Partido Popular's manifesto. TIL was a political expedient to compensate for the failure of the government's free selection policy. Much to its annoyance, parents did not opt in any great number for their children to be taught in Castellano, as the government had hoped. And once parents had given free selection the thumb's down, despite possibly having voted for it (as it was a manifesto pledge), TIL became the alternative - the political alternative, one which would impose a certain percentage of teaching in Castellano. So much, therefore, for the free selection of language. So much, therefore, for the good faith.
Both sides, unions and government, are engaged in a political battle. Both sides use TIL (the English part of it) to disguise their real agendas. Many teachers will consider themselves to be striking over nothing more than a strictly educational matter to do with the implementation of the three-language instruction, but many will be striking because of the threat that TIL will end up diminishing Catalan. Both sides, I would argue, have wanted this strike. Not the teachers themselves so much as their unions. The government's anti-Catalan stance was always likely to end in industrial action and pretty serious industrial action at that. It hadn't happened until TIL tipped the balance.
Why would the government want the strike? The answer is simple, and lies with its description of the strike as political. It has needed a battleground to make its point, the anti-Catalanist one that pre-dated the election and which has been a constant since the PP won the election. Bauzá's reference the other day to not speaking the Catalan of Catalonia but the Catalan of parents and grandparents (i.e. Mallorquín or the dialects of the other Balearic islands) would have gone down well with many Mallorcans who reject Catalonia and Barcelona and who proudly state that they speak Mallorquín and not Catalan.
But in so doing, Bauzá has emphasised the political nature of government policy. Why, if it is not political, bring Mallorquín (or Catalan) into the argument? Educationally, TIL is about a third language for teaching purposes. Educationally, this is its unique proposition. Bauzá, though, has revealed that it is more than this. He has wanted a battle and by God he's got one.
* http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2013/09/22/vale-estibador-educador/876427.html
The government has said that it will negotiate but that there has been no offer from the unions. What are the unions expected to negotiate, though? Are they expected to debate points of law? When a senior lawyer such as Pedro Horrach, the anti-corruption prosecutor for the Balearics, can condemn the government's expeditious "legalising the illegal" after the high court had declared the procedure for TIL illegal (which should have meant the suspension of its introduction), then there are grounds and grave concerns for believing that this is a government which does not act in good faith.
There has been an offer to mediate. It has come from the rector of the university. The government said thanks but no thanks. Mediation wasn't necessary. If not, then what is? The rector's offer was knocked back, one suspects, because the government would have been placed in the awkward position of involving someone who might actually understand something about education in negotiations. Who can it put up? Joana Maria Camps, an estate agent?
But to admit someone from education into the discussions would mean admitting that the strike is an educational one and not, as the government insists and the national education minister Wert has also said, a political one. A university rector wouldn't understand the politics, one has to conclude.
The strike is both educational and political. It isn't wrong for the government or indeed anyone to make the political point, but it is political because the government made it political. All government legislation is political insofar as it is the political process which determines legislation, but the introduction of TIL in April was not an educational issue and an educational issue alone. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that it was a political issue and a political issue alone. Try as he might to make everyone believe otherwise, TIL was not voted for at the last election because it wasn't in the Partido Popular's manifesto. TIL was a political expedient to compensate for the failure of the government's free selection policy. Much to its annoyance, parents did not opt in any great number for their children to be taught in Castellano, as the government had hoped. And once parents had given free selection the thumb's down, despite possibly having voted for it (as it was a manifesto pledge), TIL became the alternative - the political alternative, one which would impose a certain percentage of teaching in Castellano. So much, therefore, for the free selection of language. So much, therefore, for the good faith.
Both sides, unions and government, are engaged in a political battle. Both sides use TIL (the English part of it) to disguise their real agendas. Many teachers will consider themselves to be striking over nothing more than a strictly educational matter to do with the implementation of the three-language instruction, but many will be striking because of the threat that TIL will end up diminishing Catalan. Both sides, I would argue, have wanted this strike. Not the teachers themselves so much as their unions. The government's anti-Catalan stance was always likely to end in industrial action and pretty serious industrial action at that. It hadn't happened until TIL tipped the balance.
Why would the government want the strike? The answer is simple, and lies with its description of the strike as political. It has needed a battleground to make its point, the anti-Catalanist one that pre-dated the election and which has been a constant since the PP won the election. Bauzá's reference the other day to not speaking the Catalan of Catalonia but the Catalan of parents and grandparents (i.e. Mallorquín or the dialects of the other Balearic islands) would have gone down well with many Mallorcans who reject Catalonia and Barcelona and who proudly state that they speak Mallorquín and not Catalan.
But in so doing, Bauzá has emphasised the political nature of government policy. Why, if it is not political, bring Mallorquín (or Catalan) into the argument? Educationally, TIL is about a third language for teaching purposes. Educationally, this is its unique proposition. Bauzá, though, has revealed that it is more than this. He has wanted a battle and by God he's got one.
* http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2013/09/22/vale-estibador-educador/876427.html
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Losing The Classroom: TIL
I have a question. It is one that, I suppose, I should send in three languages, addressed to President Bauzá with a copy to education minister Joana Maria Camps. The question is this. How do you expect normality to return to schools in the Balearics when you have clearly lost the classroom?
Rather like the football manager who is said to have lost the dressing-room, the regional government has lost the classroom - its teacher, its pupils, its parents - yet it ploughs on with a system that few associated with the classroom have any confidence in. A football manager who insists on playing 4-3-3 when the team knows it should be playing 4-5-1, who oversees a slump in the team's fortunes which place it in danger of relegation, who is derided from the terraces and who is attacked on phone-ins for the loss of the dressing-room usually ends up getting the sack. Once he has been sacked, a new man comes in and hopefully confidence is restored.
There isn't anyone who can sack Bauzá, unless the ranks of the Partido Popular were to rise as one and start singing "you don't know what you're doing" and a good old-fashioned putsch were to be effected. There is someone who can sack Camps. Bauzá. But he wouldn't do this, as Camps was brought in to press ahead with the 4-3-3 system (or 3-3-3, if you prefer). Camps has lost the classroom but it is a loss dictated remotely from on high. She is the Steve Kean of Balearics education, reporting to a Venky Bauzá, both of them clucking around an empty school field like headless chickens desperately looking for the goals but forgetting that they moved the goalposts, so that no one, not even them, can remember where they put them.
The question I pose above seems a pretty damn crucial one. There is no real point in reiterating the reasons why the teachers have chosen to strike. There is no real point in further dissecting the educational merits of a system that strikes mostly anyone with a touch of common sense as being introduced devoid of rationality and practicality. There is no real point in debating whether the objections to trilingual teaching are in fact more of an objection to an undermining of Catalan than to the use of English. We have become pointed out.
How does the government think it is going to restore anything like normality? The teachers will have to return to work, especially if they lose out financially, and there will be only so few politicians, such as the leader of the Entesa party in Muro, willing to hand over a month's salary to swell the assembly of teachers' coffers. But they will do so under sufferance, lacking confidence in the system, demotivated and demoralised. Their pupils will know all about this lack of confidence and so will parents. The classroom has been well and truly lost.
There is very little point the unions demanding the removal of Keano Camps. José Ramón Venky would simply parachute in a global education adviser with probably even less qualification for the job than Joana Maria. (As was said when she was appointed, she had at least been to school.)
A replacement for Camps on the educational "campo" would not restore confidence. There is only thing that would, and that is that the government backs down and does what it should have done, which is to introduce TIL in a more evolutionary fashion than it is attempting. But would Bauzá consider such a climb down? It's most unlikely. Any credibility he may have would be shot to pieces were he to.
The government has chosen a battle, victory in which can only be pyrrhic. Its eventual loss is likely to be greater than any gains it feels it has made by planting the un-Catalan flag of TIL on the school field. The loss may be, in under two years time, to the replacement board under Francina Armengol which would lower the flag and reclaim the classroom. Meanwhile, two years of education would have been for nothing.
The battle is one that is in contrast to the surrender to business when it threatened the government with the courts over its green taxes; one that is in contrast to its slavish bowing to the demands of its sponsors in the hotel industry. It has picked a fight in which there aren't any winners and so we will be left with a system that is deeply flawed, being implemented by teachers who don't believe in it. The classroom is lost.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Rather like the football manager who is said to have lost the dressing-room, the regional government has lost the classroom - its teacher, its pupils, its parents - yet it ploughs on with a system that few associated with the classroom have any confidence in. A football manager who insists on playing 4-3-3 when the team knows it should be playing 4-5-1, who oversees a slump in the team's fortunes which place it in danger of relegation, who is derided from the terraces and who is attacked on phone-ins for the loss of the dressing-room usually ends up getting the sack. Once he has been sacked, a new man comes in and hopefully confidence is restored.
There isn't anyone who can sack Bauzá, unless the ranks of the Partido Popular were to rise as one and start singing "you don't know what you're doing" and a good old-fashioned putsch were to be effected. There is someone who can sack Camps. Bauzá. But he wouldn't do this, as Camps was brought in to press ahead with the 4-3-3 system (or 3-3-3, if you prefer). Camps has lost the classroom but it is a loss dictated remotely from on high. She is the Steve Kean of Balearics education, reporting to a Venky Bauzá, both of them clucking around an empty school field like headless chickens desperately looking for the goals but forgetting that they moved the goalposts, so that no one, not even them, can remember where they put them.
The question I pose above seems a pretty damn crucial one. There is no real point in reiterating the reasons why the teachers have chosen to strike. There is no real point in further dissecting the educational merits of a system that strikes mostly anyone with a touch of common sense as being introduced devoid of rationality and practicality. There is no real point in debating whether the objections to trilingual teaching are in fact more of an objection to an undermining of Catalan than to the use of English. We have become pointed out.
How does the government think it is going to restore anything like normality? The teachers will have to return to work, especially if they lose out financially, and there will be only so few politicians, such as the leader of the Entesa party in Muro, willing to hand over a month's salary to swell the assembly of teachers' coffers. But they will do so under sufferance, lacking confidence in the system, demotivated and demoralised. Their pupils will know all about this lack of confidence and so will parents. The classroom has been well and truly lost.
There is very little point the unions demanding the removal of Keano Camps. José Ramón Venky would simply parachute in a global education adviser with probably even less qualification for the job than Joana Maria. (As was said when she was appointed, she had at least been to school.)
A replacement for Camps on the educational "campo" would not restore confidence. There is only thing that would, and that is that the government backs down and does what it should have done, which is to introduce TIL in a more evolutionary fashion than it is attempting. But would Bauzá consider such a climb down? It's most unlikely. Any credibility he may have would be shot to pieces were he to.
The government has chosen a battle, victory in which can only be pyrrhic. Its eventual loss is likely to be greater than any gains it feels it has made by planting the un-Catalan flag of TIL on the school field. The loss may be, in under two years time, to the replacement board under Francina Armengol which would lower the flag and reclaim the classroom. Meanwhile, two years of education would have been for nothing.
The battle is one that is in contrast to the surrender to business when it threatened the government with the courts over its green taxes; one that is in contrast to its slavish bowing to the demands of its sponsors in the hotel industry. It has picked a fight in which there aren't any winners and so we will be left with a system that is deeply flawed, being implemented by teachers who don't believe in it. The classroom is lost.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, September 09, 2013
A Balearic Lesson In Making Education Worse
I spoke the other day with a British woman whose children are at school locally. I asked her about the introduction of teaching in English. Her reaction did not surprise me. How can it work when neither teachers nor pupils can speak English well enough?
There will be exceptions. There will be teachers whose English is excellent. There will be pupils whose English is excellent, but don't be fooled into believing that children with English-speaking parents (or one parent) will necessarily be excellent. If these children have grown up in Mallorca, their English, especially their written English, may well be poor. Multilingualism, genuine multilingualism, requires immersion and constant reinforcement. If even English-speaking children aren't brilliant, then what possible hope is there for Mallorcan children?
There are of course educational regimes which operate multilingualism well, but they tend to be those which have promoted English (or other languages) for very many years and which have cultures highly geared to acceptance and use of other languages. In the Netherlands, as an example, watching the BBC has long been a common practice in Dutch homes. The Dutch, though, are a pragmatic people. As the person at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange with whom I collaborated some years ago once remarked: "we speak English because no one else speaks Dutch".
Mallorca and the Balearics are not known for their high levels of pragmatism, other than the pragmatism that is demanded to not rock the boat, and the boat that should not be rocked is one commanded by ideology, self-interest and power. Introducing trilingualism may sound as though it is a pragmatic response to tackling what has for too long been an underperforming state education system, but it is not pragmatic. Not when the right skills do not exist. Not when a culture of language acquisition does not exist. And not when the introduction is undertaken in an incoherent and hasty fashion with too little attention paid to practicalities but with a great deal of attention paid to ideology. For trilingualism to work, a considerable amount of ground work has to be done. For it to work, it needs to be introduced incrementally. Bit by bit. Evolution rather than revolution.
It is easy to be persuaded that there is a culture of language acquisition when one encounters the many Mallorcans who can speak English. Yes, there is a good deal of English ability knocking around but too little which is of a standard required to teach in English. There is much English spoken but as a survey of students at the University of the Balearic Islands revealed in 2010, two-thirds of these students admitted to not understanding English.
This failure is not unique to the Balearics. A professor from the University of Navarre pointed out not so long ago that great numbers of Spanish pupils, despite being taught English (as opposed to being taught in English), were leaving school still not able to speak English to any decent level.
The Balearic Government is right to try and confront the issue but it has gone about it in a wholly unsatisfactory manner. It wants trilingual revolution but will end up with a different type of revolution. It is already facing one. The revolt of teachers against the TIL scheme. The government has used the introduction of trilingualism to shield its antipathy towards Catalan and has so insisted on revolution as a fast-track device to bring Catalan to heel. This is the ideology. One that is wrapped up as securing the future of the children of the Balearics, or so the president would have everyone believe.
The teachers are using the same ideology but in reverse. They are aghast at the potential for Catalan to be undermined, but in their defence they do also appreciate, far better than the government, the pedagogical problems raised by trilingualism. But because the teachers (their unions at any rate) are a bunch of lefty, Catalanist agitators, the government has ignored them. And it was this disregard which led the Balearics High Court to tell the government that its procedure for scheduling the implementation of TIL was wrong. The government had not consulted properly, just as, only hours after the court's decision, it revealed it had not consulted at all in magicking up some decree to permit TIL to go ahead as of this Friday.
The principle of TIL is not wrong but the implementation is totally wrong. Blind dogma has led the government down a path towards chaos in the classrooms, chaos that will be even greater if PSOE were to return to power in 2015 and scrap TIL (they have said they will). The government, far from taking measures to improve educational performance, has adopted one that will worsen it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There will be exceptions. There will be teachers whose English is excellent. There will be pupils whose English is excellent, but don't be fooled into believing that children with English-speaking parents (or one parent) will necessarily be excellent. If these children have grown up in Mallorca, their English, especially their written English, may well be poor. Multilingualism, genuine multilingualism, requires immersion and constant reinforcement. If even English-speaking children aren't brilliant, then what possible hope is there for Mallorcan children?
There are of course educational regimes which operate multilingualism well, but they tend to be those which have promoted English (or other languages) for very many years and which have cultures highly geared to acceptance and use of other languages. In the Netherlands, as an example, watching the BBC has long been a common practice in Dutch homes. The Dutch, though, are a pragmatic people. As the person at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange with whom I collaborated some years ago once remarked: "we speak English because no one else speaks Dutch".
Mallorca and the Balearics are not known for their high levels of pragmatism, other than the pragmatism that is demanded to not rock the boat, and the boat that should not be rocked is one commanded by ideology, self-interest and power. Introducing trilingualism may sound as though it is a pragmatic response to tackling what has for too long been an underperforming state education system, but it is not pragmatic. Not when the right skills do not exist. Not when a culture of language acquisition does not exist. And not when the introduction is undertaken in an incoherent and hasty fashion with too little attention paid to practicalities but with a great deal of attention paid to ideology. For trilingualism to work, a considerable amount of ground work has to be done. For it to work, it needs to be introduced incrementally. Bit by bit. Evolution rather than revolution.
It is easy to be persuaded that there is a culture of language acquisition when one encounters the many Mallorcans who can speak English. Yes, there is a good deal of English ability knocking around but too little which is of a standard required to teach in English. There is much English spoken but as a survey of students at the University of the Balearic Islands revealed in 2010, two-thirds of these students admitted to not understanding English.
This failure is not unique to the Balearics. A professor from the University of Navarre pointed out not so long ago that great numbers of Spanish pupils, despite being taught English (as opposed to being taught in English), were leaving school still not able to speak English to any decent level.
The Balearic Government is right to try and confront the issue but it has gone about it in a wholly unsatisfactory manner. It wants trilingual revolution but will end up with a different type of revolution. It is already facing one. The revolt of teachers against the TIL scheme. The government has used the introduction of trilingualism to shield its antipathy towards Catalan and has so insisted on revolution as a fast-track device to bring Catalan to heel. This is the ideology. One that is wrapped up as securing the future of the children of the Balearics, or so the president would have everyone believe.
The teachers are using the same ideology but in reverse. They are aghast at the potential for Catalan to be undermined, but in their defence they do also appreciate, far better than the government, the pedagogical problems raised by trilingualism. But because the teachers (their unions at any rate) are a bunch of lefty, Catalanist agitators, the government has ignored them. And it was this disregard which led the Balearics High Court to tell the government that its procedure for scheduling the implementation of TIL was wrong. The government had not consulted properly, just as, only hours after the court's decision, it revealed it had not consulted at all in magicking up some decree to permit TIL to go ahead as of this Friday.
The principle of TIL is not wrong but the implementation is totally wrong. Blind dogma has led the government down a path towards chaos in the classrooms, chaos that will be even greater if PSOE were to return to power in 2015 and scrap TIL (they have said they will). The government, far from taking measures to improve educational performance, has adopted one that will worsen it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, September 07, 2013
Another Fine Mess: Balearics' trilingualism
The Balearics High Court did indeed move swiftly in responding to the call from unions to suspend the introduction of TIL ("tratamiento integrado de lenguas") and so prevent it from being applied from the start of the new school year. The court agreed with the unions, who had argued that the Balearic Government had not consulted in the way that it should have done in finalising the legislation that enacted the implementation of TIL (trilingualism) in June this year. The court considered that the appendix to the bill which set out the schedule for implementation amounted to a "fraud" in that relevant educational bodies were not involved in the scheduling decision.
The court's decision was made around midday yesterday. By late afternoon, the government announced that an extraordinary meeting of the government's council had ratified an amendment which annulled the offending appendix. The minister for education, Joana Maria Camps, explained that the problem had all been one of a procedural error but that it was one which had no political consequences as it was the type of slip-up any government administration could make.
Yes, she really did say this. Now, having realised that there had been a cock-up and having been told that there had been by the high court, the government has merely removed the appendix from the bill, said that consultation didn't matter anyway and that, as the court had only said that the scheduling was wrong, will still go full speed ahead with implementation minus any scheduling apart from that which will involve TIL being brought in at the start of the school year. The court did not consider that the principle of TIL was at fault, just the procedure.
If you are lost by the legal logic of all this, then you are not the only one. But regardless of this logic or absence of logic, the children of the Balearics will, as from 13 September (and then 16 September, which is when the school year really gets underway) be taught in three languages - Catalan, Castellano and English; those children to whom TIL applies, as it doesn't apply at all levels.
Whether this teaching does in fact start on time will depend on the unions, of which there is more than one, in addition to the assembly of teachers on the Balearics. It overwhelmingly called for strike action against the introduction of TIL. There has been some union movement to hold back on strikes because of a question raised as to its legality (a question mainly asked by the right-wing Balearics Institute for Family Policy), but this in itself has raised accusations that the government is acting in a "dictatorial" fashion in applying legal interpretations that wouldn't normally be applied to the notification of strike action.
One of the unions, STEI-i, believes that there has been "dictatorial" behaviour by the government in the way in which it has circumvented the High Court's decision, and all unions and the opposition PSOE party are in agreement that the government has acted in a unilateral fashion in not having come out and engaged in a full and proper debate over the past few months.
PSOE has called for all the leading politicians at the education ministry to resign or to be dismissed, which of course won't happen, and for President Bauzá to come and front up in public about the whole affair. Not untypically for political leaders in Spain (think Rajoy for example), Bauzá just melts into the background when the heat is on. Instead, he leaves the spin and the explanations to the unfortunate Joana María Camps; unfortunate because she is clearly out of her depth. It should be remembered that she only became education minister a few months ago when the previous minister, Rafael Bosch, lost his job in a cabinet re-shuffle. Bosch lost his job because he was not a fanatical proponent of linguistic policy that might undermine Catalan (and the fuss about TIL has less to do with English being brought in than with Catalan being downgraded). Camps was parachuted in because she would do she was told, even if she has little idea what she is doing.
The chances are that the new school year will witness total chaos and that the chaos will last. Who in all of this is most to blame? Both government and teachers. The government because of its mismanagement of its own policy and the teachers, who are just too obstinate to accept a system which might actually be of educational value.
It is a total mess, and the underperforming public education system in the Balearics is about to become more underperforming. It can't be anything else if the teachers are on strike.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The court's decision was made around midday yesterday. By late afternoon, the government announced that an extraordinary meeting of the government's council had ratified an amendment which annulled the offending appendix. The minister for education, Joana Maria Camps, explained that the problem had all been one of a procedural error but that it was one which had no political consequences as it was the type of slip-up any government administration could make.
Yes, she really did say this. Now, having realised that there had been a cock-up and having been told that there had been by the high court, the government has merely removed the appendix from the bill, said that consultation didn't matter anyway and that, as the court had only said that the scheduling was wrong, will still go full speed ahead with implementation minus any scheduling apart from that which will involve TIL being brought in at the start of the school year. The court did not consider that the principle of TIL was at fault, just the procedure.
If you are lost by the legal logic of all this, then you are not the only one. But regardless of this logic or absence of logic, the children of the Balearics will, as from 13 September (and then 16 September, which is when the school year really gets underway) be taught in three languages - Catalan, Castellano and English; those children to whom TIL applies, as it doesn't apply at all levels.
Whether this teaching does in fact start on time will depend on the unions, of which there is more than one, in addition to the assembly of teachers on the Balearics. It overwhelmingly called for strike action against the introduction of TIL. There has been some union movement to hold back on strikes because of a question raised as to its legality (a question mainly asked by the right-wing Balearics Institute for Family Policy), but this in itself has raised accusations that the government is acting in a "dictatorial" fashion in applying legal interpretations that wouldn't normally be applied to the notification of strike action.
One of the unions, STEI-i, believes that there has been "dictatorial" behaviour by the government in the way in which it has circumvented the High Court's decision, and all unions and the opposition PSOE party are in agreement that the government has acted in a unilateral fashion in not having come out and engaged in a full and proper debate over the past few months.
PSOE has called for all the leading politicians at the education ministry to resign or to be dismissed, which of course won't happen, and for President Bauzá to come and front up in public about the whole affair. Not untypically for political leaders in Spain (think Rajoy for example), Bauzá just melts into the background when the heat is on. Instead, he leaves the spin and the explanations to the unfortunate Joana María Camps; unfortunate because she is clearly out of her depth. It should be remembered that she only became education minister a few months ago when the previous minister, Rafael Bosch, lost his job in a cabinet re-shuffle. Bosch lost his job because he was not a fanatical proponent of linguistic policy that might undermine Catalan (and the fuss about TIL has less to do with English being brought in than with Catalan being downgraded). Camps was parachuted in because she would do she was told, even if she has little idea what she is doing.
The chances are that the new school year will witness total chaos and that the chaos will last. Who in all of this is most to blame? Both government and teachers. The government because of its mismanagement of its own policy and the teachers, who are just too obstinate to accept a system which might actually be of educational value.
It is a total mess, and the underperforming public education system in the Balearics is about to become more underperforming. It can't be anything else if the teachers are on strike.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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