By the way, I do not hate anyone, and even less you. I simply disagree with you and try to make my point. I have the right to reply when someone criticizes my country, my language, my people, but still insists on living there and enjoying the many positive things we have. We are not perfect, I know, but who is? But if I would ever decide to hate someone, it would be someone more relevant than you.

And you also remind me a daycare friend called Luisito, when you do not like something, you try to have the teacher ban it. And what you call stamp feet and scream, I call intelligent debate. But you know I was educated through immersion and what can you expect from such an individual?

@Ian: When you say that “It is clear that what you do not like is Catalan and Catalonia. Immersion is just an excuse.” you remind me of Sharon at my primary school, who, when someone disagreed with her, used to stamp her feet and scream, “Why do you all hate me so much?” Can I call it Ian Syndrome?

I wouldn’t classify it as ‘bad’ but I’m not sure how well immersion works solely on its own merits. The thirty or thirty-five year history of the popular French immersion program in the province of Ontario has produced very few bilingual people. The point is probably that if the languages are not used at home, then a kid probably learns what he needs to. In Canada’s case, it probably provides a fertile breeding ground for future federal civil servants. And in any case, the mere possibility that it teaches kids that there is another world beyond the typically parochial one presented in most public education systems is plus in itself, regardless of its immediate success, or lack of.

Let’s compare some of Lambert’s statements to mine:
Ian: “The academic failure rate that you mention, has nothing to do with immersion. It has to do with the economic and cultural backgorund of the families”
Lambert: “requisitos para el éxito. Primero, alto nivel sociocultural de los padres”

Ian: “and the crappy education system in Catalonia and Spain ”
Lambert: “tercero, tratamiento pedagógico específico”

I do not buy the second argument. I have asked my 2 year old who has learnt English in his 5 months at daycare whether his learning success is due to the prestige of English, and he was not able to elaborate. It is the same as Artur Mas trying to encourage children to learn foreign languages giving them tax deductions.

The only point I agree with, although I do not know whether Lambert meant this or not, is that the will of the parents plays a role. If parents do not support it, success can be in danger. If parent do not see the positive side of having his childen fully integrated in the society, it is going to be more difficult.

Trevor, your conclusion is absolutely out of whack.

My conclusion is very different:
If done properly, immersion works. Immersion not only provides a second language, but allows integration in the future. An accentless individual(accentless in both the mother and the acquired language) has a competitive advantages at all levels of society. But nothing comes for free, it may require some additional effort.

It is clear that what you do not like is Catalan and Catalonia. Immersion is just an excuse. But with your own money, you can do what you want, I assume Gaelic and Frisian may be your languages of choice. But with the public money, we will do what our elected officials decide. This is democracy.

Carmen Leal writes in today’s La Vanguardia:

La inmersión consiste en un cambio de lengua hogar/escuela. Desde el primer día todos los conocimientos se transmiten en una lengua que desconoce el niño. Es una buena forma de aprendizaje de una segunda lengua, pero tiene unos riesgos para el desarrollo intelectual del niño si no cumple una serie de condiciones. En 1965 en Montreal, Lambert aplicó la inmersión a unos niños anglohablantes en francés. Aprendían francés y en francés. Fue un éxito, consiguieron mejor rendimiento intelectual y un nuevo idioma. Trasladado el experimento a Estados Unidos con los hispanos para que aprendiesen inglés, los resultados fueron catastróficos. Ni aprendieron inglés ni su razonamiento lógico mejoró. Lambert estableció tres requisitos para el éxito. Primero, alto nivel sociocultural de los padres; segundo, lengua materna del niño que tenga prestigio; tercero, tratamiento pedagógico específico y voluntario. Ninguna de ellas se cumplen en Catalunya. Ni el nivel sociocultural de todos los padres es alto, ni el castellano tiene prestigio en Catalunya, porque no se emplea para las funciones altas de la sociedad: Parlamento, Administración, docencia, etcétera, ni es voluntario porque no hay elección de lengua.

You say you’d prefer a trilingual system, which may have merits. I’d give parents and/or children the right to spend their share of the educational tax cake on schools as they see fit, and if they want to learn (in) Mandarin and Aranese, then good luck to them, and may the market take the hindmost. In any case, immersion is economically damaging and morally embarrassing and has got to end.

My personal experience for 15 years in this kind of schools, where I met hundreds of Catalan speaking children in this Castilian immersion environment, is that they (we) did not perform below average, much to the contrary.

I challenge those psychologist that you quote to make a study of those millions of native Catalan speaking people aged 70 to 25, and correlate their academic results and average income with those children who were raised in Spanish and attended the same Castilian only schools (all schools were Castilian only during those 40 plus years).

Until this study is published, based on 100s of thousands of cases readily available with statistically significant samples, I continue to proclaim that those studies are a piece of manure and after they are published it will be clear that what they say is a fallacy.

They can also conduct similar studies with Chinese children (raised in mandarin or other Chinese dialects by their parents) and educated in US schools in English only.

Point well taken about the quality of English spoken (or castellano in Cazorla, for that matter). No argument here.

But I’m not sure what your point is. Is it that regional governments should support unilingualism in a bilingual social context? I don’t think so, judging by your waxing poetic on the prowess of your own children.

Regardless, the end result of linguistic exclusionism and protectonism is really no different from that of the two centuries that les Québecois spent having all their relations with the outside world mediated by the clergy and certain elites. That’s not Cataluña, by the way, despite the parallelism that many there see between La Belle Province and the Condado. It’s Euskadi.

Regards

And by the way, which English speaking continent is Charles talking about? In most of the continent, they speak like in Cazorla.

Ian Llorens
Massachusetts, USA

And now the political profiteering from the issue in Madrid…