The 90 public cabbages that abandon bilingualism: “Students do not think; they only memorize”

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Bill Enar Rubio, director of public school Valladolid Antonio Allué Morer, that when his center had the opportunity to be the first to be part of the bilingual program of the Junta de Castilla y León, in 2007, it was something extraordinary for everyone. Undoubtedly, then, it represented a qualitative leap in teaching and a way to begin to correct from the base that historical complex that Spaniards learned English badly.

However, it took only a couple of years for them to realize that the system not only did not work, but also impaired children’s learning. Mainly for two reasons. The vocabulary and grammar of the books for subjects such as science or history were much more advanced than those for English, so the students had a hard time understanding the lessons and had no other solution than to memorize the content.

So that you understand it more easily. While the student was learning the present simple in the subject of English, he encountered the present perfect and passive sentences to understand the functioning of the body in the science book. What was the result? “That the students knew, for example, the name of the bones by heart, such as clavicle (clavicle) o ribs (ribs), but they didn’t know how to identify them “, remembers Enar Rubio. Although that is already history at the Antonio Allue.

This Valladolid school has abandoned this year the bilingual program of Castilla y León, since it was launched by the Junta 13 years ago. “Being aware that there was a great gap between the students, we decided to take the issue to the teaching staff and the school council, where it was voted unanimously to leave the program. What the students really need is linguistic proficiency in a foreign language , not in Science (Sciences), learn to hold a conversation in English and not how to say a seagull, when they have never seen one in Valladolid, “says the head of the center, in an interview with EL ESPAÑOL.

More motivated students

Now, he says, they are going to start the house with the foundations and not with the roof. As of this course, within an autonomous project, the hours of English will increase in both nursery and primary school so that all students enhance and acquire the same curricular linguistic level. And so, maybe in the future, they can understand science subject in English.

Ruben Garcia, professor of Sciences —of Science, until a course ago– in the center, he could not agree more with his director. “Having taught the classes in English has caused a great demotivation in them. The students did not think, they only memorized, and what I want is for them to be motivated to learn. This should be a wake-up call for the administrations, I am not against bilingualism, but they must change the approach in the classrooms “. For bilingualism to be effective, according to experts, it is necessary that the language is taught between five and seven hours weeks. As it happened in the school of Wyoming (EEUU), where Rubén was teaching for a few months. “There they gave Spanish three hours a day and also literature and mathematics,” he says.

Although classes have started a matter of a month ago, what is also finally being effective, according to this teacher, are his science lessons. “We have just eliminated bilingualism and the students are super motivated. We are working on the volcanoes, because of everything that happened on La Palma, and they are crazy about it. Before we would go out to the park to see flowers and they weren’t able to ask me anything.”

498% more

The question, however, does not remain in this Valladolid center. Along with him, another six centers in Castilla y Leon (of the 374 that follow) have abandoned bilingualism. And so have schools and institutes in other autonomous communities. In Castilla-La Mancha there are already 80, out of 271 centers in total, which have left the program, that is, 20 percent. And in Navarra, where 114 schools are bilingual, a school has also managed to stop bilingualism as of next year. The requirement to backtrack in most CCAA is to get the consensus of teachers, families and students. However, in regions like Madrid, “there is no official mechanism” for this.

The boom in bilingualism has not ceased since the CCAA launched it at the beginning of the century, allowing public and subsidized centers to join voluntarily. In the last 10 years, according to data from the Ministry of Education, from 240,154 students enrolled in this program in 2010, it has risen to 1.4 million in 2020. A growth of 498%. A boom, however, that may have peaked.

An example is the Albacete municipality of La Roda, where at a stroke less than half of the centers with offer in languages ​​have remained because both the public school Juan Ramon Ramirez As the IES Doctor Alarcón Santón two years ago they left the bilingual program launched in the 2005-2006 academic year by the Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha.

In the case of this La Mancha institute, according to its director, Miguel Escribano, the reasons were three. The demand from the students was not great, the resources available to the teaching staff were minimal and an absurd system in which teachers like this person had to give the class in English and later, in Spanish, so that the students understood the matter. In other words, everyone had to work twice, both the teacher and the student.

The faculty

“I have known the program as a teacher, because I have taught, as a father, because my children participated, and within the directive program. natural Sciences, Geography e History in English, which required a good level, fluency and a lot of preparation. But even though the student body was quite good, we realized that it was less. I myself saw that my children acquired a lower level of knowledge and tried much more. So we decided to abandon it in 2018 “, Escribano explains to this newspaper.

Like other teachers, he believes that the solution is to strengthen the English departments, increasing the number of classes and including in them a conversation assistant, a native teacher. Others, however, have decided not to wait and take the initiative, such as the CEIP Antonio Allué Morer or the IES Leopoldo Cano, also in Valladolid. This last center stopped being bilingual in French two years ago and now it is going to launch “an autonomy project to put more hours of French and English at the expense of other subjects” or extracurricular, according to its director, Angel Hidalgo.

At CEIP Juan Ramón Jiménez, on the other hand, they knew how to stop on time. They started in the bilingual program with the subjects of Plastic and Music, but when they had to expand it to Social or Natural Sciences, they considered abandoning it because the staff was not sufficiently prepared to give those classes and, in any case, “the student was going to memorize and not to learn, “says Ana Isabel, director of the center.

“There were prepared personnel, but it was not enough,” he adds. The level of language required to teach bilingual teachers may be different in each community. For example, in Asturias, Andalusia or Castilla-La Mancha they ask for an intermediate level (B2); and in others, such as Madrid, they require an advanced level (C1).

Madrid

Although at the moment the dropouts in the program have only occurred in three autonomous communities, criticism of the model among teachers is increasing in other regions, such as in the Community of Madrid. It’s what counts Paco Serrano, a primary school teacher in a public school in Madrid and author of the documentary The botch of bilingualism.

He qualified in the bilingual section because he knew that in the face of competitive examinations he would have a better chance of obtaining a place. So it was. He began, he says, with all the illusion in the world until he realized that the program did not work. “It’s nonsense, it’s ridiculous,” he insists.

This teacher uses all his effort to teach in a language that the students, ages six to 12, in his case, do not understand. “You lose all the naturalness, the spontaneity; when you are explaining in English every day you realize that even when you make a joke, they don’t understand it, so you have no choice but to intervene in Spanish,” says Serrano.

Segregation

On the other hand, the bilingual program of the Community of Madrid, according to Paco Serrano, has segregated the students. In schools and institutes, there is what is called the section, the class attended by the students with the best grades in the bilingual program; and the other class, to which the other failing students are destined and which is generally a lower socioeconomic level.

“This model is a trap and we have been accomplices. In practice it divides the students into good and bad. But the truth is that this boom It has reached its peak and is being seen in all the cabbages that are being thrown back. We have gone a bit crazy with sacrificing everything for the bilingual, it is more important that the child understands everything that is around him, “says Paco Serrano.

Such is his conviction that in November he is organizing a major act against bilingual education in the Community of Madrid, with the participation of various educational platforms. In CAM, there is no legal way for public centers to abandon the program. So if they don’t let them back down, “they will ask for a reformulation of the system.” “There must be improvements in learning, more teacher splits, more hours … A child from your country cannot learn his story in English,” he sentenced.

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