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.
Showing posts with label Trilingualism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trilingualism. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Sunday, September 15, 2013
In A Bad Way: Balearics education and TIL
The Pau Casesnoves secondary school in Inca is located in a residential area of the town behind the grand edifice of the Garcia printing company. As one drives past the school there is a wall on which graffiti has been sprayed. Or it had been when I last went past perhaps three months ago. This graffiti declared opposition to attacks on Catalan teaching in the school and the Balearics as a whole. The school in Inca has been one of the more prominent in making its opposition to language reforms known. On Friday, the day of the return to school, teachers from Pau Casesnoves gathered for a photo. They were wearing green t-shirts from a body known as the Plataforma Crida. The t-shirts supported the teachers' strike and called for "quality public education". The objectives of the Plataforma, in addition to quality in education, include education in Catalan. The teachers in the photo at Pau Casesnoves were wearing the t-shirt and they were also holding a flag - the Catalan flag.
The strike by teachers in the Balearics, which may last until the end of the month, is styled as one against the introduction of TIL - the integrated treatment of languages - the lack of preparation for TIL, and the heavy-handed, non-consultative approach of the regional government (which culminated in the High Court's rejection of its procedure for implementation and the immediate declaration of a government decree to get around the court's decision).
This is, however, an over-simplification. There are indeed grave misgivings and justifiable misgivings about TIL and especially the haste in which it has been introduced. Some teachers, perhaps even a majority of them, will consider this to the prime reason for strike action, but I doubt that were it just about TIL that a strike would be happening. There is more to it.
Teaching in Catalan is also an educational issue, but it is also very much a political issue. The teachers at Pau Casesnoves did, in a sense, give the game away by holding up the Catalan flag. This is a strike, where some teachers are concerned (and again it may be a majority or it may not be), about teaching in Catalan.
If it is concerns about Catalan which are really at the heart of the strike, then it is a strike which been months in the making. Despite attacks by the regional government on Catalan in other ways - reducing or eliminating requirements to speak Catalan in some public-sector jobs, banning the use of "symbols" (such as the Catalan flag) and the display of the flag on public buildings, even the nonsensical proposal to change place names to Castellano (now forgotten about it seems) - there hasn't been concerted industrial action. The teachers' strike is that concerted action, and it has been action that unions and some opposition political parties have been angling for. They now have it.
It will be lamented that schoolchildren will be the ones to suffer and are the ones who least deserve to be in the firing-line of the divisions caused over Catalan. But there are a great number of parents who support the teachers, not just over TIL but also over Catalan teaching. This is not a strike without popular support, and the unions know this.
A reflection of this support lies with what was the government's first "assault" on Catalan teaching. This was the so-called free selection of teaching language whereby parents (at primary levels) could choose between Catalan and Castellano as the language they wished their children to be taught in. It has been a colossal flop in that the percentage of parents opting for Castellano has been nothing like that which the government would have hoped.
In the space of two years since it came to power, the Partido Popular government has introduced two major changes to education - one was free selection, the second is TIL. I am convinced that TIL, and its rushed agenda, is a direct response to the failure of free selection. The government has sought a different way to reduce Catalan teaching and has found it in trilingualism. It is for this reason that the strike is as much political as it is educational.
But then there are also grounds for believing that teachers might have taken strike action had the issue solely been an educational matter to do with TIL. It would have been an extreme form of protest but one must ask why the government appears to think that introducing TIL, and especially in the ham-fisted way in which it has been introduced, will be successful in the Balearics when the islands start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to trilingualism - a disadvantage from generally low educational standards anyway and the absence of a true foreign language culture. Why also does the government believes this might be a success where the Basque Country and other parts of Europe have demonstrated that trilingual education is far from straightforward. Has the government genuinely consulted with educationalists and academics? If it has, it should present the findings of its research. It should be transparent in pointing to how, educationally, trilingualism will be rolled out effectively.
I doubt that it will because I doubt that it has any findings. Not ones that would be convincing. TIL has merits, but the government has gone about it in the wrong way. A very bad way.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The strike by teachers in the Balearics, which may last until the end of the month, is styled as one against the introduction of TIL - the integrated treatment of languages - the lack of preparation for TIL, and the heavy-handed, non-consultative approach of the regional government (which culminated in the High Court's rejection of its procedure for implementation and the immediate declaration of a government decree to get around the court's decision).
This is, however, an over-simplification. There are indeed grave misgivings and justifiable misgivings about TIL and especially the haste in which it has been introduced. Some teachers, perhaps even a majority of them, will consider this to the prime reason for strike action, but I doubt that were it just about TIL that a strike would be happening. There is more to it.
Teaching in Catalan is also an educational issue, but it is also very much a political issue. The teachers at Pau Casesnoves did, in a sense, give the game away by holding up the Catalan flag. This is a strike, where some teachers are concerned (and again it may be a majority or it may not be), about teaching in Catalan.
If it is concerns about Catalan which are really at the heart of the strike, then it is a strike which been months in the making. Despite attacks by the regional government on Catalan in other ways - reducing or eliminating requirements to speak Catalan in some public-sector jobs, banning the use of "symbols" (such as the Catalan flag) and the display of the flag on public buildings, even the nonsensical proposal to change place names to Castellano (now forgotten about it seems) - there hasn't been concerted industrial action. The teachers' strike is that concerted action, and it has been action that unions and some opposition political parties have been angling for. They now have it.
It will be lamented that schoolchildren will be the ones to suffer and are the ones who least deserve to be in the firing-line of the divisions caused over Catalan. But there are a great number of parents who support the teachers, not just over TIL but also over Catalan teaching. This is not a strike without popular support, and the unions know this.
A reflection of this support lies with what was the government's first "assault" on Catalan teaching. This was the so-called free selection of teaching language whereby parents (at primary levels) could choose between Catalan and Castellano as the language they wished their children to be taught in. It has been a colossal flop in that the percentage of parents opting for Castellano has been nothing like that which the government would have hoped.
In the space of two years since it came to power, the Partido Popular government has introduced two major changes to education - one was free selection, the second is TIL. I am convinced that TIL, and its rushed agenda, is a direct response to the failure of free selection. The government has sought a different way to reduce Catalan teaching and has found it in trilingualism. It is for this reason that the strike is as much political as it is educational.
But then there are also grounds for believing that teachers might have taken strike action had the issue solely been an educational matter to do with TIL. It would have been an extreme form of protest but one must ask why the government appears to think that introducing TIL, and especially in the ham-fisted way in which it has been introduced, will be successful in the Balearics when the islands start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to trilingualism - a disadvantage from generally low educational standards anyway and the absence of a true foreign language culture. Why also does the government believes this might be a success where the Basque Country and other parts of Europe have demonstrated that trilingual education is far from straightforward. Has the government genuinely consulted with educationalists and academics? If it has, it should present the findings of its research. It should be transparent in pointing to how, educationally, trilingualism will be rolled out effectively.
I doubt that it will because I doubt that it has any findings. Not ones that would be convincing. TIL has merits, but the government has gone about it in the wrong way. A very bad way.
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.
Thursday, September 05, 2013
Supermarket Sweep And The Costs Of Education
Four years ago the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) in the Balearics was given school material to the value of 11,310 euros. This donation formed part of a benefit "return to school" campaign in which the Cruz Roja was also able to put out tables to receive personal donations of school materials, which were destined to go to hard-up families. These different donations were arranged by the charitable foundation operated by the Carrefour supermarket chain.
Last week, SAT, the Andalusian Workers' Union, organised a "raid" on a Carrefour supermarket in Seville. Activists swept through the store, lifting school materials that were to be given to families in need and which were said to have been worth around 2,000 euros. The union has asked the store to treat this haul of school materials as a donation.
Whether the store agrees or doesn't agree and so whether charges will be pressed or aren't pressed, SAT's act (and it is not the first time it has arranged such a raid on a store) was theft. Robin Hood it may have been, but it was still shoplifting.
One can appreciate that the raid was a spectacular way of drawing attention to the plight of needy families, and much though one might sympathise with these needy families and even with the action taken by SAT, it cannot be condoned. If it were to be, then what?
Carrefour in the Balearics showed four years ago that help can be arranged via normal charitable means. It didn't have to arrange such help and nor does it have to now. Retailers are not the cause of financial hardship, but they are in its frontline. SAT's raids earlier this year bagged food and other staple items that were intended for distribution to NGOs for their ultimate distribution to the needy. The NGOs, just like Carrefour, were placed in a very awkward position. Apart from anything else, they would have been liable for handling stolen goods. SAT's spectaculars are counterproductive, as they alienate the very organisations who shouldn't be alienated when it comes to helping the needy, and these include large retailers with charitable divisions.
There have been no raids of this type in Mallorca, but the fact that Carrefour was organising charitable acts demonstrated that economic crisis had made things difficult for families in the Balearics who were faced by the costs of their childrens' education. Four years on, things are more difficult.
The increase in IVA (VAT) last September meant that school materials were to attract 21% tax where they had only been taxed at 4% (books were kept at the 4% rate but other educational materials rose by 17%). Because the increase was well publicised, purchases could be made before the increase kicked in, but that was last year. Now, in addition to more expensive school materials, families in the Balearics face another additional cost, that of books in English to meet the demands of TIL (the "tratamiento integrado de lenguas"), which is the decree for trilingual education, meaning that certain classes will be taught in English. These books are more expensive than those in Castellano, in some instances by almost ten euros.
Consumer groups have estimated that the cost of this year's return to school will in any event rise by up to 3%. In itself this might not seem that burdensome, but household budgets, squeezed as they are, don't need further costs for textbooks in English as well.
The introduction of TIL seems to have overlooked the fact that families will have to spend more, just as it has overlooked some other factors, such as how ill-prepared some schools are to meet its demands. The Balearics High Court is going to have to move swiftly in making a decision whether to back a suspension to the implementation of TIL, as called for by unions which maintain that there has been insufficient time to prepare; the new school year starts on 13 September. Two unions have already announced that teachers will strike from that date.
The Balearic Government says that there is no "Plan B" if the TIL implementation is suspended. Whether it is suspended or not, the new school year, only a matter of a few days away, is likely to be chaotic.
I have in the past drawn attention to how news reports of this new school year are typified by announcements that the return to school has been "normal". I have often wondered what might constitute an abnormal return to school. It may be that, in Mallorca, I am about to find out. Meanwhile in Andalusia, the return to school is marked by raids on supermarkets.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Last week, SAT, the Andalusian Workers' Union, organised a "raid" on a Carrefour supermarket in Seville. Activists swept through the store, lifting school materials that were to be given to families in need and which were said to have been worth around 2,000 euros. The union has asked the store to treat this haul of school materials as a donation.
Whether the store agrees or doesn't agree and so whether charges will be pressed or aren't pressed, SAT's act (and it is not the first time it has arranged such a raid on a store) was theft. Robin Hood it may have been, but it was still shoplifting.
One can appreciate that the raid was a spectacular way of drawing attention to the plight of needy families, and much though one might sympathise with these needy families and even with the action taken by SAT, it cannot be condoned. If it were to be, then what?
Carrefour in the Balearics showed four years ago that help can be arranged via normal charitable means. It didn't have to arrange such help and nor does it have to now. Retailers are not the cause of financial hardship, but they are in its frontline. SAT's raids earlier this year bagged food and other staple items that were intended for distribution to NGOs for their ultimate distribution to the needy. The NGOs, just like Carrefour, were placed in a very awkward position. Apart from anything else, they would have been liable for handling stolen goods. SAT's spectaculars are counterproductive, as they alienate the very organisations who shouldn't be alienated when it comes to helping the needy, and these include large retailers with charitable divisions.
There have been no raids of this type in Mallorca, but the fact that Carrefour was organising charitable acts demonstrated that economic crisis had made things difficult for families in the Balearics who were faced by the costs of their childrens' education. Four years on, things are more difficult.
The increase in IVA (VAT) last September meant that school materials were to attract 21% tax where they had only been taxed at 4% (books were kept at the 4% rate but other educational materials rose by 17%). Because the increase was well publicised, purchases could be made before the increase kicked in, but that was last year. Now, in addition to more expensive school materials, families in the Balearics face another additional cost, that of books in English to meet the demands of TIL (the "tratamiento integrado de lenguas"), which is the decree for trilingual education, meaning that certain classes will be taught in English. These books are more expensive than those in Castellano, in some instances by almost ten euros.
Consumer groups have estimated that the cost of this year's return to school will in any event rise by up to 3%. In itself this might not seem that burdensome, but household budgets, squeezed as they are, don't need further costs for textbooks in English as well.
The introduction of TIL seems to have overlooked the fact that families will have to spend more, just as it has overlooked some other factors, such as how ill-prepared some schools are to meet its demands. The Balearics High Court is going to have to move swiftly in making a decision whether to back a suspension to the implementation of TIL, as called for by unions which maintain that there has been insufficient time to prepare; the new school year starts on 13 September. Two unions have already announced that teachers will strike from that date.
The Balearic Government says that there is no "Plan B" if the TIL implementation is suspended. Whether it is suspended or not, the new school year, only a matter of a few days away, is likely to be chaotic.
I have in the past drawn attention to how news reports of this new school year are typified by announcements that the return to school has been "normal". I have often wondered what might constitute an abnormal return to school. It may be that, in Mallorca, I am about to find out. Meanwhile in Andalusia, the return to school is marked by raids on supermarkets.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
The Balearic Government's Guide To English
"Flesh on the tenterhooks." This was an introduction some years ago to the peerless standards of translation to be found in all walks of Mallorcan life. It was on the business card of a restaurant, you'll be relieved to learn. It should have said something like "tender meat on ..."; well I don't really know on what, but whatever it was, it wasn't tenterhooks.
Back then, and it wasn't so long ago, lousy translations could be dismissed patronisingly as being typical of stupid Johnny Foreigner. Or it could be considered quaint and so also patronising; oh, it just all adds to the charm, doesn't it.
Actually, it didn't add to the charm. It was embarrassing, and the embarrassment was heightened when one learnt from the poor restaurant owner that the print agency responsible for the cards claimed to be proficient at translations. He didn't know any better. Until someone, i.e. me, told him that flesh (as opposed to meat) in a state of anxiety or nervous anticipation was not the type of advertisement to get the punter beating a path to the restaurant door.
Though it wasn't so long ago, it was in the days before the Google and Bing double-act took to the internet stage, plugged in their machines and performed translations for a worldwide audience which hitherto had been deprived of language understanding. Literal language understanding. Which isn't the same as proper language understanding.
The Balearic Government wishes to educate the children and youth of the islands in three languages (one of them being English). Its attempts at introducing this trilingualism have been ham-fisted, but is it any wonder when one considers the government's own attempts at English (and German and French)?
If you have never looked at the government's website English pages, then I recommend that you do. There are hours of endless amusement to be had, many of them to be spent deciphering the English amidst the Catalan words that simply refuse to be translated. The government has, belatedly, realised just how useless some of this translation is. At the foot of some pages, there is a note in red lettering: "automatic translation, sorry for the inconvenience". As, for instance on the "beginning" page of the ministry of education, culture and universities, there is a menu item inviting "help improvement to us the web", we should all feel duty-bound to help improvement to them the web in order to remove the inconvenience caused by automatic translation.
Cheap is the only explanation for this inconvenience. Actually, it isn't even cheap. It's free. Some bright spark has taken Catalan text, shoved it into Google and come up with ... . Come up with what exactly? So bad has some of this been that the Ibanat division of the environment ministry has been forced to take down its English (and German and French pages) which give literal translations for some place names.
Why were they even bothering to give translations of place names anyway? A place name is a place name. It doesn't need to be translated. There again, the Spanish show a peculiar enthusiasm for translating proper names. Hence, for example, the British royal family has an Isabel, a Felipe, a Guillermo and an Enrique. The British, on the other hand, leave such names well alone. When have you ever mistook the King of Spain for a one-time Leeds United footballer? You haven't. John Charles is not the King of Spain.
But, seemingly believing that proper names should be translated, Ibanat informed us as to the existence of, among other places, "Sleep Fortuny (sic)", "The House of Him Share-Cropper" and "Him Broken Bridge", the latter of which sounds like it was Tonto giving the Lone Ranger instructions.
Overseeing the drive towards trilingualism is Juana María Camps Bosch, now the minister for education. The people of the Balearics can have full confidence in Juana María's ability to drive this trilingualism. Just read the following. I need say no more.
"Juana María Camps Bosch (Citadel, 1965), was a general director of Work and Work Health of the Government of the Balearic Islands. She/It is discharged in law/right for the University of the Balearic Islands and estate agent, and since 1990 until June of 2011 he/she/it practised as lawyer in its/his/her/their office in Ciutadella. Between 1991 and 1999 it/he/she occupied several charges/posts in the Town Council of Ciutadella; in particular, she was lieutenant of batle of Treasury, Staff and Police and lieutenant of batle of Treasury. During these two years of legislature as a general director of Work and Work Health, it/he/she has promoted the relation|relationship with the social agents of the Islands; because of that, in November 2012 it constituted the Tripartite Social Board, formed by the Government, the employers and the unions, that he/she/it erects itself/himself/herself as/like the central organ of institutional participation/shareholding in the area of the Administration economic|economical and occupational of the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, which/who substitutes the ancient|antique Board of Social Dialog. One of the most important successes of this legislature has been the implantation of the allowance in the foreseen Social Security for the companies dedicated to the touristic activities, to advance towards the desestacionalització of the economy/economics of the Islands. Thus, the touristic companies and the trades linked to the hotel business that discontinuous permanent workers have hired the months of March and November have been able to resort to this initiative. Juana María Camps has had the reduction in the work loss like one of the priorities. Because of that, it/he/she started off a campaign of work risks prevention, which includes numerous initiatives in this area, among/between which one specific almost for 600 companies of more than ten workers with a loss ratio superior/upper to the average of its/his/her/their sector, he/she/it col ·' laboració with the benefit societies of work and Inspection of Work. In 2012 the industrial accidents in the Balears brought one 17,8 down in relation to the former year and the lower figure of accidents was attained since 2004. On the other hand, Camps exercised/exerted its/his/her/their task of intermediation with success, with which it/he/she contributed to avoiding conflicts in the areas of the hotel business, the cleaning or the discretionary transport."
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
(Automatic translation, sorry for the inconvenience).
Back then, and it wasn't so long ago, lousy translations could be dismissed patronisingly as being typical of stupid Johnny Foreigner. Or it could be considered quaint and so also patronising; oh, it just all adds to the charm, doesn't it.
Actually, it didn't add to the charm. It was embarrassing, and the embarrassment was heightened when one learnt from the poor restaurant owner that the print agency responsible for the cards claimed to be proficient at translations. He didn't know any better. Until someone, i.e. me, told him that flesh (as opposed to meat) in a state of anxiety or nervous anticipation was not the type of advertisement to get the punter beating a path to the restaurant door.
Though it wasn't so long ago, it was in the days before the Google and Bing double-act took to the internet stage, plugged in their machines and performed translations for a worldwide audience which hitherto had been deprived of language understanding. Literal language understanding. Which isn't the same as proper language understanding.
The Balearic Government wishes to educate the children and youth of the islands in three languages (one of them being English). Its attempts at introducing this trilingualism have been ham-fisted, but is it any wonder when one considers the government's own attempts at English (and German and French)?
If you have never looked at the government's website English pages, then I recommend that you do. There are hours of endless amusement to be had, many of them to be spent deciphering the English amidst the Catalan words that simply refuse to be translated. The government has, belatedly, realised just how useless some of this translation is. At the foot of some pages, there is a note in red lettering: "automatic translation, sorry for the inconvenience". As, for instance on the "beginning" page of the ministry of education, culture and universities, there is a menu item inviting "help improvement to us the web", we should all feel duty-bound to help improvement to them the web in order to remove the inconvenience caused by automatic translation.
Cheap is the only explanation for this inconvenience. Actually, it isn't even cheap. It's free. Some bright spark has taken Catalan text, shoved it into Google and come up with ... . Come up with what exactly? So bad has some of this been that the Ibanat division of the environment ministry has been forced to take down its English (and German and French pages) which give literal translations for some place names.
Why were they even bothering to give translations of place names anyway? A place name is a place name. It doesn't need to be translated. There again, the Spanish show a peculiar enthusiasm for translating proper names. Hence, for example, the British royal family has an Isabel, a Felipe, a Guillermo and an Enrique. The British, on the other hand, leave such names well alone. When have you ever mistook the King of Spain for a one-time Leeds United footballer? You haven't. John Charles is not the King of Spain.
But, seemingly believing that proper names should be translated, Ibanat informed us as to the existence of, among other places, "Sleep Fortuny (sic)", "The House of Him Share-Cropper" and "Him Broken Bridge", the latter of which sounds like it was Tonto giving the Lone Ranger instructions.
Overseeing the drive towards trilingualism is Juana María Camps Bosch, now the minister for education. The people of the Balearics can have full confidence in Juana María's ability to drive this trilingualism. Just read the following. I need say no more.
"Juana María Camps Bosch (Citadel, 1965), was a general director of Work and Work Health of the Government of the Balearic Islands. She/It is discharged in law/right for the University of the Balearic Islands and estate agent, and since 1990 until June of 2011 he/she/it practised as lawyer in its/his/her/their office in Ciutadella. Between 1991 and 1999 it/he/she occupied several charges/posts in the Town Council of Ciutadella; in particular, she was lieutenant of batle of Treasury, Staff and Police and lieutenant of batle of Treasury. During these two years of legislature as a general director of Work and Work Health, it/he/she has promoted the relation|relationship with the social agents of the Islands; because of that, in November 2012 it constituted the Tripartite Social Board, formed by the Government, the employers and the unions, that he/she/it erects itself/himself/herself as/like the central organ of institutional participation/shareholding in the area of the Administration economic|economical and occupational of the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, which/who substitutes the ancient|antique Board of Social Dialog. One of the most important successes of this legislature has been the implantation of the allowance in the foreseen Social Security for the companies dedicated to the touristic activities, to advance towards the desestacionalització of the economy/economics of the Islands. Thus, the touristic companies and the trades linked to the hotel business that discontinuous permanent workers have hired the months of March and November have been able to resort to this initiative. Juana María Camps has had the reduction in the work loss like one of the priorities. Because of that, it/he/she started off a campaign of work risks prevention, which includes numerous initiatives in this area, among/between which one specific almost for 600 companies of more than ten workers with a loss ratio superior/upper to the average of its/his/her/their sector, he/she/it col ·' laboració with the benefit societies of work and Inspection of Work. In 2012 the industrial accidents in the Balears brought one 17,8 down in relation to the former year and the lower figure of accidents was attained since 2004. On the other hand, Camps exercised/exerted its/his/her/their task of intermediation with success, with which it/he/she contributed to avoiding conflicts in the areas of the hotel business, the cleaning or the discretionary transport."
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
(Automatic translation, sorry for the inconvenience).
Monday, August 05, 2013
This Is Europe: Trilingualism in Mallorca
Guillem Cifre de Colonya is one of Pollensa's most famous sons. The name "Colonya" is known mostly for the co-operative savings bank that he founded; its current-day main branch is situated on one corner of the Plaça Major in Pollensa town. Cifre was a philanthropist. He held egalitarian and republican views. And these views influenced heavily his other highly important innovation in Pollensa; the founding of the Institution of Education. This was the first school in Spain outside of Madrid to be co-educational and to advocate academic freedom and to not be ruled by religious dogma. It was essentially an experiment in public education, one that aimed to empower the working class and to better prepare it for a changing world, even one that had, at the end of the nineteenth century, barely encroached on Pollensa.
When the school opened in 1885, Cifre was visited by his friend, a leading educationalist of his day, Manuel Bartolomé Cossió. In front of the school, Cossió uttered these words - "this is Europe". Cossió couldn't have foreseen what this Europe was to eventually become, but through liberal education for the masses, he understood that backwaters such as Pollensa were not going to be unaffected by developments and that the town, Mallorca and indeed Spain had to begin to adjust to new realities, in which servitude and the disadvantaging of the ordinary man through not having an education had to change and in which the power of "caciquismo", the corrupt system of government, had to be dismantled.
Cifre's wife, Clara Hammerl, continued his efforts at the school and also at Colonya bank. Last month, she was named as an adoptive daughter of Pollensa (she was German). Those efforts were put a stop to in 1936. For over 40 years, it wasn't only the school which fell into neglect, so also did the name of Guillem Cifre. Everything he stood for was anathema to the Franco regime. In 1977, a public lecture reminded the people of Pollensa who Cifre was. Nowadays, there is no one who doesn't know who he was, and the town's secondary school proudly bears his name.
On this school's website, there is a link to something called "Projecte TIL". It is explained in Catalan. No judgement is made of the project, but there is a telling word in its opening sentence - "obliged". The school is obliged to having to introduce a system of trilingualism for this coming school year; TIL stands for the integrated treatment of languages.
Obligation doesn't mean that the school wants to introduce the system. Indeed, it, as with many other schools in Mallorca, doesn't want the system. So great is the opposition to TIL that public education in Mallorca and the Balearics is on the point of descending into chaos. Rebellion against TIL is such that the Balearics education minister, Joana Maria Camps, has suspended directors of three secondary schools in Menorca because of their refusal to devote more teaching hours (as required) to classes taken in English and Castellano. A platform called Crida has called on other directors in the Balearics to resign en masse. In Menorca, the administration of public education has become a total mess, the delegate for education on that island having resigned last week because he didn't agree with the pace of the introduction of TIL, and his successor, a professor of religion, having resigned two days after being appointed because of the flood of criticism that greeted his appointment.
The new school year, still a few weeks away, could signal even more chaos. Strikes are being threatened, directors might choose to walk out. And the chaos all has to do with language policy, one dictated both by regional and national government. It might be difficult for foreign onlookers to get their heads fully around why this is causing a fuss that might see the education system collapse. It is summed up in two words that have been used to describe the introduction of TIL: "cultural genocide".
At the heart of it is an undermining of Catalan. But it goes beyond this alone. It is seen as an attack on liberal principles such as those that Guillem Cifre espoused. The timing of the honouring of his wife has been symbolic, because Pollensa, more than many other towns in Mallorca, has a tradition of liberalism that is encapsulated in its historic place in educational history.
Yet for all that TIL represents an attack on Catalan liberalism, there is perhaps a contradiction. It lies in those words of Manuel Bartolomé Cossió. For current-day Mallorca, does trilingualism not better serve "Europe" than the monolinguistic romanticism of Catalan?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
When the school opened in 1885, Cifre was visited by his friend, a leading educationalist of his day, Manuel Bartolomé Cossió. In front of the school, Cossió uttered these words - "this is Europe". Cossió couldn't have foreseen what this Europe was to eventually become, but through liberal education for the masses, he understood that backwaters such as Pollensa were not going to be unaffected by developments and that the town, Mallorca and indeed Spain had to begin to adjust to new realities, in which servitude and the disadvantaging of the ordinary man through not having an education had to change and in which the power of "caciquismo", the corrupt system of government, had to be dismantled.
Cifre's wife, Clara Hammerl, continued his efforts at the school and also at Colonya bank. Last month, she was named as an adoptive daughter of Pollensa (she was German). Those efforts were put a stop to in 1936. For over 40 years, it wasn't only the school which fell into neglect, so also did the name of Guillem Cifre. Everything he stood for was anathema to the Franco regime. In 1977, a public lecture reminded the people of Pollensa who Cifre was. Nowadays, there is no one who doesn't know who he was, and the town's secondary school proudly bears his name.
On this school's website, there is a link to something called "Projecte TIL". It is explained in Catalan. No judgement is made of the project, but there is a telling word in its opening sentence - "obliged". The school is obliged to having to introduce a system of trilingualism for this coming school year; TIL stands for the integrated treatment of languages.
Obligation doesn't mean that the school wants to introduce the system. Indeed, it, as with many other schools in Mallorca, doesn't want the system. So great is the opposition to TIL that public education in Mallorca and the Balearics is on the point of descending into chaos. Rebellion against TIL is such that the Balearics education minister, Joana Maria Camps, has suspended directors of three secondary schools in Menorca because of their refusal to devote more teaching hours (as required) to classes taken in English and Castellano. A platform called Crida has called on other directors in the Balearics to resign en masse. In Menorca, the administration of public education has become a total mess, the delegate for education on that island having resigned last week because he didn't agree with the pace of the introduction of TIL, and his successor, a professor of religion, having resigned two days after being appointed because of the flood of criticism that greeted his appointment.
The new school year, still a few weeks away, could signal even more chaos. Strikes are being threatened, directors might choose to walk out. And the chaos all has to do with language policy, one dictated both by regional and national government. It might be difficult for foreign onlookers to get their heads fully around why this is causing a fuss that might see the education system collapse. It is summed up in two words that have been used to describe the introduction of TIL: "cultural genocide".
At the heart of it is an undermining of Catalan. But it goes beyond this alone. It is seen as an attack on liberal principles such as those that Guillem Cifre espoused. The timing of the honouring of his wife has been symbolic, because Pollensa, more than many other towns in Mallorca, has a tradition of liberalism that is encapsulated in its historic place in educational history.
Yet for all that TIL represents an attack on Catalan liberalism, there is perhaps a contradiction. It lies in those words of Manuel Bartolomé Cossió. For current-day Mallorca, does trilingualism not better serve "Europe" than the monolinguistic romanticism of Catalan?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Poor Grammar: English teaching in Mallorca
Prepare yourselves for a grammar lesson.
Ok, so you haven't switched off. Then I shall begin.
Amidst the debate as to the language of teaching in the Balearics, a third language has appeared. English. Its appearance is not new, but the regional government intends to formalise this appearance by having certain subjects taught in English; again, not a new idea.
According to the government's education minister Rafel Bosch, "it is evident that society demands a commitment" to the teaching of the third language, one that goes beyond its being taught as a subject.
Bosch is one of the more impressive of the government's ministers. He comes across as reasonable and as being prepared to listen. For all the jibes that he is attempting to take the Balearics back to the days of Franco, he has never once proposed that Catalan be eliminated as a teaching language. There is to now be parental choice as to the language of teaching as part of a system of trilingualism, in which English will be the third part.
Teaching certain subjects in English raises a number of questions. Which subjects? Do the pupils already have sufficient understanding? Are the teachers proficient? And would the teachers become teachers in both language and subject?
It is not an easy system to introduce. Ideally, it would start from the earliest possible age at primary school and be used for instruction in something like art which, because of its visual content, would be ideal. A combination of sound and vision is a powerful means of instruction.
A problem would be in now introducing it for older pupils. The standard of English, as has been well reported, is not good in Balearics schools. It isn't particularly good at university level either.
The British Council is already involved with the teaching of subjects in English in some schools. If this means that it supplies either native speakers or those proficient in English and trained satisfactorily as language teachers, then fine. What you cannot have are teachers who are not armed with the necessary language skills.
When I was 14, I attended a school in Germany, a country that even back in the late sixties and early seventies placed great emphasis on the teaching of English. The lady who taught English, nice enough, wasn't that good. She made mistakes, mostly of a grammatical nature.
More recently, when working in Germany, a female colleague (American and herself a language teacher) was obliged to take issue with the English teacher at her son's school. The boy had been marked down for a grammatical error that wasn't. He understood more about the use of the past continuous tense than his teacher did.
A couple of anecdotes don't prove a point, but if it is the case that in Germany, with far superior standards of English than in Mallorca, teacher mistakes can be made, then how would English instruction be in Mallorca? Who corrects the teacher?
The more complex a subject is, the more complex the language has to be, which means that the grammar is likely to be more complex. English grammar, at a basic level, appears far more straightforward than, say, Spanish or German, and this is due partly to simpler verb conjugation. It's when you go beyond the basic level, that it becomes anything but straightforward.
With English, you can seem to get away with things grammatically, but this is no reason for a teacher to think that he or she can, especially in a teaching environment where rules of grammar are more formally taught, as is the case with Spanish or German, and where pupils are used to a structured grammatical approach. Unfortunately, and even for some native-speaker teachers, English grammar is not well understood.
Grammar is only one aspect of the teaching of language, and for pupils in the Balearics, those reared on Spanish (and to a lesser extent Catalan), there is a major issue when it comes to English pronunciation. This is the far lower number of sound registers in Spanish compared with English. Tackling this should be a fundamental in teaching English in schools, but if not, the result will be that, for all the good intentions, the standards of English will not rise as much as minister Bosch might hope. I wish him luck.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Ok, so you haven't switched off. Then I shall begin.
Amidst the debate as to the language of teaching in the Balearics, a third language has appeared. English. Its appearance is not new, but the regional government intends to formalise this appearance by having certain subjects taught in English; again, not a new idea.
According to the government's education minister Rafel Bosch, "it is evident that society demands a commitment" to the teaching of the third language, one that goes beyond its being taught as a subject.
Bosch is one of the more impressive of the government's ministers. He comes across as reasonable and as being prepared to listen. For all the jibes that he is attempting to take the Balearics back to the days of Franco, he has never once proposed that Catalan be eliminated as a teaching language. There is to now be parental choice as to the language of teaching as part of a system of trilingualism, in which English will be the third part.
Teaching certain subjects in English raises a number of questions. Which subjects? Do the pupils already have sufficient understanding? Are the teachers proficient? And would the teachers become teachers in both language and subject?
It is not an easy system to introduce. Ideally, it would start from the earliest possible age at primary school and be used for instruction in something like art which, because of its visual content, would be ideal. A combination of sound and vision is a powerful means of instruction.
A problem would be in now introducing it for older pupils. The standard of English, as has been well reported, is not good in Balearics schools. It isn't particularly good at university level either.
The British Council is already involved with the teaching of subjects in English in some schools. If this means that it supplies either native speakers or those proficient in English and trained satisfactorily as language teachers, then fine. What you cannot have are teachers who are not armed with the necessary language skills.
When I was 14, I attended a school in Germany, a country that even back in the late sixties and early seventies placed great emphasis on the teaching of English. The lady who taught English, nice enough, wasn't that good. She made mistakes, mostly of a grammatical nature.
More recently, when working in Germany, a female colleague (American and herself a language teacher) was obliged to take issue with the English teacher at her son's school. The boy had been marked down for a grammatical error that wasn't. He understood more about the use of the past continuous tense than his teacher did.
A couple of anecdotes don't prove a point, but if it is the case that in Germany, with far superior standards of English than in Mallorca, teacher mistakes can be made, then how would English instruction be in Mallorca? Who corrects the teacher?
The more complex a subject is, the more complex the language has to be, which means that the grammar is likely to be more complex. English grammar, at a basic level, appears far more straightforward than, say, Spanish or German, and this is due partly to simpler verb conjugation. It's when you go beyond the basic level, that it becomes anything but straightforward.
With English, you can seem to get away with things grammatically, but this is no reason for a teacher to think that he or she can, especially in a teaching environment where rules of grammar are more formally taught, as is the case with Spanish or German, and where pupils are used to a structured grammatical approach. Unfortunately, and even for some native-speaker teachers, English grammar is not well understood.
Grammar is only one aspect of the teaching of language, and for pupils in the Balearics, those reared on Spanish (and to a lesser extent Catalan), there is a major issue when it comes to English pronunciation. This is the far lower number of sound registers in Spanish compared with English. Tackling this should be a fundamental in teaching English in schools, but if not, the result will be that, for all the good intentions, the standards of English will not rise as much as minister Bosch might hope. I wish him luck.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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