The president of the teachers' union AMES, Antonio Jimeno, wrote a commentary on the expected language policy under the above-mentioned title and „The teaching of the mother tongue should continue until the end of primary Elementary School, that is, until the age of 11.“ The Elementary school in Spain usually lasts 6 years, after which the ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) follows.

I have translated the comment.

With the recent regional government pacts and the forthcoming general elections on 23 July, much is being said about the right of pupils to be educated in their mother tongue. The following are a series of assessments arising from teaching experience and others related to the politicisation of education.

In autonomous communities where there are two languages, what is best for children starting school is to be spoken and taught in their mother tongue. Then, if that child is going to live in a bilingual autonomous community, the best thing for them to be able to access the world of work and to facilitate social relations is to master the two co-official languages spoken in his community, to the best of their abilities. Evidently, in the case of children who are only going to spend one, two or three years in that community, what is best for them is that all subjects are taught using only Spanish.

Mother tongue education should continue until the end of primary school, i.e. up to the age of 11. This implies that schools should establish groups teaching in Spanish and groups teaching in the regional language. This is the so-called „language choice model“.

Then, in ESO, it should be possible to choose between three linguistic options, which are: 1) Progressive bilingualism or . This consists of starting in 1st ESO with the introduction of some subjects in the other language, and finishing in 4th ESO with approximately the same number of hours in one language as in the other. 2nd) Monolingual model in Spanish. This is the appropriate model for pupils who are only passing through the Community. In this model, everything would be taught using the Castilian language, with a regional language subject. 3) Monolingual model in regional language. This is the model in which all subjects are taught in the regional language, with one subject in Spanish. It is suitable for those pupils for whom it is found that studying in both languages is detrimental to their academic performance. In summary, in ESO, families could choose between three linguistic models, one of them being the dual-language model, which, according to the surveys, is the one preferred by families.

The establishment by law of the freedom of choice of language models can be breached if the necessary measures are not taken. One of them is the implementation of an external assessment at the end of ESO directly dependent on the Ministry of Education, the passing of which is essential to obtain the ESO diploma awarded by the Ministry of Education. This would make it possible to check whether pupils have reached the minimum level in languages and in all other subjects.

One might think that we are overemphasising language in education. Unfortunately this is not the case, because the two things that differentiate nations from each other are language, if it is different, and the way history is explained in each nation. If in one region of a country the regional government is allowed to exclude the use of the common language from education and to give a version of history in which it is said that the central government has always been against the language, culture and economic interests of the region, within a few decades a society will have developed in that region that will want to separate itself from the rest of the country.

Proof that this is happening in Spain is that the Catalan government's defence of Catalan has not been done to defend a minority language in danger of disappearing, because if that were the reason, it would also have helped to save Valencian, Mallorcan, Menorcan and Ibicencan, while what the government has done is the opposite, it has supported the imposition of Catalonia's standardised Catalan in all these regions. Never have these languages and variants been more threatened than now, because the aim is to build a future nation called „Països catalans“ (Catalan countries) with a single common language. Another proof of this is to look at the history books that are used in compulsory education in all schools in Catalonia. They always present the rulers of Spain as enemies of Catalonia and the rulers of Catalonia as altruistic heroes or victims.

The upcoming general elections on 23 July are in reality a plebiscite on Spain's territorial unity. On the one hand, there are regional parties that want to separate from the rest of Spain and national parties willing to provide them with the legal instruments to do so. On the other hand, there are parties that want to maintain the territorial unity of the nation and that consider that if a consultation were to be held on this issue, all Spaniards should be able to vote on the future of their nation and not just those of one region.

If the former obtain more votes, the new nations that would emerge would obviously be societies with a single language, a single culture and would be made up of victorious citizens and defeated citizens, the worst imaginable scenario for the individual liberties of the defeated citizens. If the latter obtained more votes, Spain would continue to be a nation with a diversity of languages and cultures, since those who defend this model do not intend to prohibit the use of regional languages in education, nor to fail to recognise the contributions of regional rulers and illustrious individuals to the progress of the common homeland. Evidently, the new central government should design and apply mechanisms to avoid the disloyalties that some regional governments have committed. If they do not do so, we will be back to square one at the next elections.

This article appeared in the original on elCatalán.es