The Minister of Education of Spain, José Ignacio Wert, explained a few days ago the reforms that will be carried out soon in education. Among the proposals, we will focus on the referred to certain changes in Early Childhood Education: the reform is committed to promote bilingual Spanish-English teaching.
To enhance the knowledge of languages, the teaching of English will be improved from the second cycle of Early Childhood Education and to the Baccalaureate, "replacing the old approach of studying English to move on to study in English."
As there are Autonomous Communities that have competences in Education, it is planned to hold a meeting among all in order to design a common bilingual program, which could be planned at the end of 2012, to be implemented from the 2013-2014 academic year.
In addition, the teaching of a second foreign language will also be enhanced in the new system and Information and Communications Technologies will be promoted as a fundamental tool in the process.
Taking into account that Spain is one of the EU countries with a lower index of foreign languages learned per student, any measure to improve this data seems positive to me, although I question that there is talk of "bilingualism".
It is a matter of terms, yes, but although the classes are in English (which may be new with young children, but not at other levels) a second language is still learned in which the student (usually) cannot to unfold
I believe that the "good reputation" and the well-known advantages of bilingualism makes that term be used for everything that has to do with a foreign language and give a halo of prestige to teaching. But remember that children who have not been spoken since birth in two languages and acquired as their own, they are not bilingual.
In them, there is no acquisition of a second language but an apprenticeship, and although linguistic immersion is the ideal method to become bilingual, it is not the case, say, two hours of class in English a week.
Many schools already start teaching English before the age of four, or at least on paper. How will the proposed new measure change the teaching of English to the little ones? Will there be specialized teachers or will “recycle” the current ones? How many hours of English will there be per week? Will other subjects be taught in English?
Many unknowns still surround this issue, we will wait to see what are the real measures to implement this "Promotion of bilingualism" from Early Childhood Education, and for now we remind you that you can leave your opinion also in the question of the week.
