Regional and minority languages
sara abdulla
Wednesday, 13 August 2008 14:16 UTC
A recent Nature editorial called for the protection of regional and minority languages in France and elsewhere. A cautionary response on Nature’s Correspondence page, claiming that schools in a third of Spain teach only in minority languages, is itself prompting a bulging postbag of replies including, two of which subsequently appeared on Nature’s Correspondence page, here and here.
What’s your view on the role and effects of minority languages in science education, and about related science education policies?
Updated 05 September 2008 10:53 UTC
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Dear Père,
I find it most disheartening to see in your comment that you believe I actually left Catalonia so that my children would not learn catalan.
If you believe so, you did not really understood my point. I would be happy with my children learning catalan as a second language, as they are learning english now. But I do want my own language, which is also their mother language, the spanish to be the vehicle lenguage for their education. And the reasons for that have been widely discussed and supported by UNESCO and others, as I stated in my previous message so I will not repeat them again.
When I came back to Spain after my postdoc, I did so with the idea of raising my family as best as I possibly could. As a native spanish speaker, it was deeply saddening to me to discover that being educated in spanish was impossible in a part of Spain.
I believe to have only catalan as vehicle language is a disadvantage for my kids education. You will probably not agree with my opinion, and that is fine. But the fact is that in Catalonia I cannot choose my kids to be educated otherwise.
So I choose to leave my job and move somewhere else, not to avoid the catalan language, but to get my children educated in spanish, their mother language.
That the rights of the spanish speaking population are not respected in Catalonia is a fact. And it is not true that spanish is taught throughout Spain exactly at the same level; no public school in Catalonia offers education in spanish.
About the reciprocity, shall you start campaining for schools in the rest of Spain to offer education in Catalan, I will proudly support your petition. And I know at least of an example in which education in catalan was offered in Madrid , but the project was reconsidered after only 11 families applied for it. I would like to see the catalan regional government offering such a deal for spanish-speaking catalans; I bet the applications would exceed greatly that figures.
So please, do not assume that I or any of the people that are leaving Catalonia, Basque Country or Galicia are fleeing from your language; we are just looking for the freedom to choose what kind of education we want for our children.
Sincerely,
Carlos M. Luque
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