Linguistic immersion is a model of success”, declared the authority that opened the event. Then he did what all authorities who open events do: assure that he would love to stay to listen to the presentations... but that his busy schedule... and leave.
It was a shame. Because the 1st Conference on Language Policies within a Federal Spain, which the Federalistes d'Esquerres association held on March 11, was dedicated precisely to asking whether linguistic immersion (monolingual in Catalan) is a success. The answer depends on how we define success.
From a purely educational point of view, there is a worrying fact: the high rate of early school leaving, especially among foreign children, with the consequent risk of social exclusion, as explained by the Social Anthropology professor Silvia Carrasco. Does that data matter? It matters if the student body matters; if the objective is to give the maximum opportunities to everyone, whatever their origin. It does not matter much, however, if the objective is not the people, but the language.
What are educational language policies trying to achieve? Apply the right –denied during the Franco regime– to study in the mother tongue? It is applied, in effect, to those who define themselves as Catalan speakers (36%, according to the Institut d'Estadística), but not to the majority of the Catalan population, which is Spanish-speaking (46%). Guarantee a good level of Catalan? It can certainly be achieved, although it could also be done without excluding the other official language. And a good level of Spanish? It is often said that the Catalan student body knows it as well as those who study in Toledo or Valladolid, but it cannot be proven, because the tests are not the same. It is also said that Spanish does not need to be studied in depth at school because it is learned in the street or on TV, but neither TV nor the street teach educated Spanish, necessary to pursue a career outside of Catalonia.
Could it be that the true goal of linguistic immersion is none of the ones I have listed, but rather another: to make Catalan society monolingual? If this is the case (as the historian Joaquim Coll opined), it is a debatable legitimacy effort (it would be putting the school at the service of non-educational purposes, but political ones), but which, moreover, is not being effective. The same thing happens with Catalan as with Basque – pointed out the former deputy councilor of the Basque Government Lurdes Auzmendi –: its knowledge increases, but its social use stagnates or decreases, because it is perceived as an imposition. Perhaps, after all, what monolingual education seeks and does achieve is to make clear a certain hierarchy between languages, and consequently, between the respective communities.
Perhaps the elephant in the language policy room consists of the fact, obvious but not wanted to be seen, that Catalan society is bilingual. That is why the usual argument that “an Andalusian or a Bolivian in Catalonia have to study in Catalan the same as in France they would study in French” is not adequate. Nor can the Spanish case be compared - explained the professor of Constitutional Law Alberto López Basaguren -, in which there is a language known throughout the world, with countries like Switzerland or Belgium, formed by monolingual communities.
Nor is the argument convincing that if there are two languages in Catalonia, it is because the second was imposed by blood and fire. This is not true – a large part of society began to use Spanish as a learned language long before 1714 – and even if it were, it is not fair to discriminate against current Spanish speakers for this reason. As Ana Losada, president of the Assembly for a Bilingual School, said: “Does my daughter have to give up her linguistic rights because Franco was a dictator?”
Federalistes d'Esquerres was founded in 2013. The fact that it has taken so long to dare to debate language policies, to ask that subjects also be taught in Spanish in schools, and that Catalan be incorporated into Spanish institutions, such as the Senate, is a symptom of the extent to which this topic arouses passions. But that should not make us give up on the effort. As Mireia Esteva, its president, said when inaugurating the conference, all public policies must be able to be evaluated. Also language policy.
