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| The paranoid obsession "Don't touch our Catalan language" |
The
language battle in Catalonia has reached the stage where a publicly funded organisation
can spy on children in school playgrounds to discover which language they are
speaking to interact with each other and with teachers. This is part of a
campaign to eliminate the Spanish language entirely from Catalan schools, even
in children’s free time. A member of the Catalan parliament, Sonia Sierra
Infante of the Liberal Ciudadanos Party, reports that the pro-Catalan-language
pressure group Plataforma per la Llengua (PplL), which receives a hefty subsidy
from the Catalan government, was secretly observing language use in schools.
According to figures
published by the Catalan government itself, Spanish is the usual
language of 50.73% of the population of Catalonia compared to
only 36.29% who speak Catalan.
The Catalan-only policy in schools is a blatant attempt to engineer language
use away from reality towards the nationalist fantasy world.
PplL reached
these conclusions after making “incognito observations” in 50 Catalan primary and
secondary schools of the “language behaviour” of children and teachers. It recognises
that “the schools were not informed of the full reality of the activity” and
that “it was not possible to tell anybody of the purpose of the research to
avoid of risk to the reliability of the data.” The schools where the
observation took place are not identified, calling into question the
methodological reliability of the study.
The
schools did not know that they were being analysed because they had been asked
for permission to do research “from a game activity during playtime that had nothing
to do with language”. In each school, 15 children and one teacher were observed
(the one on playground duty) through a game activity in which, in fact, the
only purpose was to find out what was the usual language that the pupils and
teacher used “spontaneously” with each other without knowing that they were
being investigated. According to the authors, “nobody” was informed of the real
goal of the research in order not to prejudice the reliability of the data,
although the Catalan Education Ministry “knew what we were doing” And it was
not vetoed.
PplL
concluded that Catalan was spoken in only 24% of school playgrounds in
Catalonia and 27% of secondary teachers spoke Spanish with children at playtime,
with the use of Catalan by children
falling to 13.8% “in the areas where it is most necessary”. It describes
this as an “anomalous situation” that is not in line with the legal requirement
that Catalan should be the only language used at all in schools. Catalonia is
the only place in the world where children are denied education in the official
language of the country.
The
Catalan Education Minister Josep Bargalló, of the extreme Catalan Republican
ERC party, denies all knowledge of the matter, claiming to have had no contract
with Plataforma per la Llengua since a previous matter.
“I
have no idea about it. I can assure you that I have no idea of where this comes
from”.
Well,
he would say that, wouldn’t he?
How
the spies acted.
- Incognito. The language spies carried out “incognito observation” because “if the subject of the study is aware, it is highly probable that they will not act naturally”.
- In English. They pretended not to speak either Catalan or Spanish in order not to condition the class. They spoke to the teachers in English and then went on to do the observation.
- Notes.
Then they withdrew to “a corner”, where they “made a note of the language in
which the interactions between each pupil and between teacher and pupils took place.”
(Spanish)
El Mundo
([Catalan
premier] Torra allows spies at playtime to check whether the children are
speaking Catalan)
ABC
(Spanish
esxceeds Catalan by 14 points as thge suual language in Catalonia)
El Español
‘Topos’
en el recreo de los niños catalanes: así les espiaban cuando hablaban
castellano en el patio
(“Moles”
at playtime for Catalan children: how they were spied on when they spoke Spanish
in the playground)
(Catalan)
The
29-page PplL report (pdf)
Update 17.20 CEST 19 July 2019. This link now returns a 404. The report has already been pulled by PplL. It certainly existed. I have a pdf file.
Update 17.20 CEST 19 July 2019. This link now returns a 404. The report has already been pulled by PplL. It certainly existed. I have a pdf file.
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