The Department of Education of the Generalitat has warned of the decline in the use of Catalan in the classroom. To stop and reverse this fact, it has announced a new measure that will allow educational centers throughout Catalonia to request up to €1,300 to finance specific actions that promote the Catalan language.
One of the recommended resources to combat this regression is the Digital School Magazine (RED) project, a network of school newspapers run by primary, secondary and high school students that was launched in 2018. Five years later, the journalistic proposal has not stopped growing and already has more than 100 educational centers that have their own header and that have the advice of a professional journalist who guides them in the preparation of content during the course.
The project, which has spread throughout the Spanish and Andorran territory and has crossed the Charco, has been presented as a benchmark in Catalonia. The young writers who are part of the initiative have the opportunity to write informative pieces in Catalan, be they news, chronicles, interviews or opinion articles, and sign them with their name.
The Escola el Pilar, in Premià de Mar, was one of the first centers to participate in the RED project and has maintained its commitment over the years. The teacher Roser Montañola explained that although “we also look for information and practice writing in other subjects, this project motivates the students much more. They know that their articles will be published and that they go far beyond a class exercise.
Documentation, writing and correction tasks encourage linguistic immersion in schools and institutes in a different way than what young people are used to. In addition, many times your work has a return. Montañola stressed that the students "see a real result" when Anna Rosa Cisquella, an actress from the Dagoll Dagom theater company, "read part of a published criticism" in El Pilar Report in "the presentation of the Teatre Poliorama for next season of shows for schools”. "When I told them, they hallucinated", the teacher has sentenced.
Being in charge of coordinating a header forces them to act as professionals and to cooperate, but it also allows them to express their opinion from a critical perspective. "They can choose topics that they like, because sometimes they have the feeling that they don't have space to express themselves," added Montañola.
At the same time, students can participate in JR GO outings, where they will cover important events in the world of sports, culture or Catalan politics. In fact, a few weeks ago students from all over Catalonia interviewed their mayors, including the mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau.
Montañola explains that "the JR GO outings motivate them a lot" because they have a press card for places where they would not normally have access. According to her, he also encourages them to have their texts chosen for RED Report, a collaborative magazine that publishes the best content selected by the RED project coordination team.
All in all, the El Pilar teacher says that students make more effort when it comes to writing in Catalan because they know that they are getting real results, that concern about the disuse of the language "is growing" and that "we need all possible tools to promote it”.
