Generalizing is never advisable. It is the easiest way out when seeking to criminalize specific groups. If a Moroccan steals, all North Africans are thieves. If a foreign student does not perform in school, all immigrant schoolchildren are bad students. La Vanguardia seeks, with this report, to turn these “sentences” around, especially when culprits are sought for the poor quality of the Catalan educational system. With examples given, yes, but when this exercise is done the conclusion falls of its own weight: being a dedicated student and coming from abroad are not at odds.
Jiafu and Jiakang are like British watches. Every afternoon, very punctual and at the same time, these twins of Chinese origin (they are 16 years old) share a table at the El Taulat bar run by their parents, in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona. With their notebooks, notes and computers. It's time to do your homework, to review what you studied and learned during the school day at IES Front Marítim.
They have developed a peculiar ability. They know how to abstract themselves from the commotion, movement and noises typical of a bar. While their parents, Dan and Chaofeng, serve the business's customers, Jiafu and Jiakang take advantage of every last minute to advance their academic knowledge without looking up from the table. It's like they live in another world.
Jiafu and Jiakang arrived in Spain when they were 5 years old. His profile breaks with that legend – the one initially put forward by the Generalitat itself in its first response to Catalonia's resounding failure in the last PISA report – that the student coming from abroad would distort the results of the study. These two Chinese twins are studying the Scientific and Technological Baccalaureate. “We are doing very well in math,” they say. It is the subject that most chokes Catalan students.
Jiafu and Jiakang are extremely cautious in their statements. And even more so when they are asked to give their opinion on the educational level of the institute where they study. They do make it clear that not all of the blame always lies with the teacher. There are students, they imply, who do a lot of their part so that the classes are not as effective as the most diligent ones expect. And this, they strive to clarify, is not about nationalities. “There are bad students from here and abroad,” says Jiafu. They place themselves, with excessive modesty, in the group of those who apply themselves. And they are grateful. They owe their academic training in Catalonia to the efforts of their parents, for whom this radical change in life has not been easy at all.
After remembering that their first big obstacle, when they first set foot in a Catalan school, “was the language and, especially, Catalan”; Now they agree that what is most difficult for them to pass this course is the change in academic requirements with the start of the Bachelor's degree. “Maybe we didn't arrive sufficiently prepared from the ESO stage,” they criticize in a very low voice. But they do not look for culprits; They have understood that overcoming this lack of preparation now depends only on their daily effort.
These two twins do not hide that they have felt singled out in the classrooms, among those classmates prone to harassment, due to their Chinese origin. But they assure that the few problems they have had in that school coexistence "have been with students from other classes, people who don't know us." They repeat that they are fully integrated into their school universe and Catalan society and that their intention (although they have not decided what they will study) is to go to University. His parents point out, upon hearing that phrase, that it will not be for them: “we will work so that they see that dream come true,” says Chaofeng, who does not hide his pride in the effort in his children's studies.
At the school where they studied ESO, before moving on to IES Front Marítim, they witnessed “a very significant increase in students from abroad during the pandemic.” This makes them witnesses of the adaptation difficulties of many of them, mainly due to the language. It is the subject that Jiafu and Jiakang had the hardest time passing. Now they have passed it with flying colors: they both use Spanish and Catalan with the same fluency.
Nazarii “already only thinks in Catalan,” says her mother, Olha. And when she speaks Ukrainian “it seems like she is forgetting that language,” says Alex, his older brother. Olha Uykovych has brought his two children to Catalonia. Nazarii arrived when she was 7 years old and is now 12. Alex came before: he was 9 years old and now he is about to turn 18.
First they lived in Alt Empordà and then they moved to Barberà del Vallés. What has been the least difficult for these two brothers, in their new life, has been learning Catalan and Spanish. Nothing to do with what students of other nationalities suffer, whose academic performance is diminished in the first months and even years due to the language barrier.
Olha runs the Andalucía bar on Espronceda Street in Barcelona and when asked about the education her children are receiving in their new residence, she could not be more delighted. “I have no complaints about any of the schools they have been through in the last five years; From those centers they have always been very attentive to me and them. A ten,” she states.
Alex has gone through different schools. And the best memory of him is from a private person. There he attended the third year of ESO. “In that center I detected that the teachers gave the students much more freedom, everything was not as programmed as in the other institutes and that, at least in my case, awakened the desire to study more.” After completing ESO, Alex went on to Vocational Training. He is taking the first Commercial Attitudes course at the Ramar FP center in Sabadell.
His time at the institute is still very fresh in his memory. He affirms that in his case, by learning Catalan and Spanish in almost record time, adapting to this new academic world “was easier.” Other foreign students with whom he has met “had it more complicated,” he confesses. Furthermore, Olha, his mother, brought him to Catalonia in the summer. Good strategy, “because she had a few months to adapt and become familiar with the language before classes started,” says the woman.
With Nazarii he did the same. Olha brought it for the Christmas holidays. She gave him a couple of weeks “of acclimatization” before taking him to a Catalan school for the first time. The woman has high hopes for her youngest son (this weekend she expected to give birth to her third child, Mateo). “His studies are going well and I hope he goes to university,” she says. If he puts his mind to it “he could be an architect, since he draws very well.” It is therefore clear that the Catalan educational system has fulfilled, with these two Ukrainian brothers, what is expected of it. With the collaboration, of course, of those two students.
Isa (the name is fictitious) describes another very different scenario from the Catalan school to the one drawn by these two families of Chinese and Ukrainian origin. She is from Colombia and has a 15-year-old daughter. The adaptation of this minor to her new life in Barcelona has been much more complicated. “She hasn't found a welcoming environment at school,” Isa reveals. She prefers to avoid revealing what she thinks of the teachers at the center where her daughter goes. “I haven't found any help or empathy there either.” And she assures that other immigrant students "are going through the same situation." The first barrier that Isa's daughter is trying to overcome is that of Catalan. “She is having a hard time and she misses many of the things that are said in class,” she adds. This minor now requires psychological support.
The Catalan educational system fails with a crash in the eighth edition of the PISA tests. The Government's first excuse, only knowing the study, was to attribute these results to the overrepresentation of immigrant students in the sample it examined in mathematics, reading and science. Twenty-four hours later the Department of Education rectified: it was unfair to focus all the blame on those students who came from abroad. As Jiafu, a 16-year-old Chinese student from Barcelona, says, “there are bad students from here and abroad.” He and his twin brother stand out, for example, for their grades in mathematics and science subjects. Like Nazarii or Alex, Ukrainians who have successfully adapted to the Catalan school, or a student from Venezuela, who has just arrived in Barcelona with knowledge, her classmates say, much higher than the average level of her class. These are just a few examples. But it is unfair to point out that all immigrants are guilty of the devastating PISA report. It is also true that many of these students find it difficult to adapt, as is the case of Isa, born in Colombia. She does not find in that Catalan educational system the support that she expected.
