Multilingualism in Schools.

According to this wikipedia entry, updated last on December 9th, 2014: List of languages by number of native speakers, the most spoken language is indeed mandarin with a 14.4% of world's population, followed by spanish with a 6.5% and later english with a 5.3%. Surprisingly enough, few schools around the world are teaching their students mandarin or spanish as a mandatory subject, unlike English. Why? because english is the international most recognized language throughout the world, not only socially speaking, but far and foremost in formal environments: political, economical, scientific, and of course, educational.

When looking at our spanish education system, we encounter "semi" bilingual curriculum taught by the same teachers that taught before the bilingualism was established in schools, and even more tragic, only a small percentage of them are fluent or even posses the sufficient level of the language, even less why the system should be bilingual to start with. Therefore according to this article by Ricardo Martínez de Rituerto: Suspenso en Inglés, in 2012 statics showed that only 24% of ESO students were capable of effectively understand English, reaching a merely level B1 or B2 on the European Scale.

Image taken from Suspenso en Inglés, El País, 2012.

We should ask ourselves if the reality of this tragic situation in primary and middle schools (ESO) has changed at all in the last two years or if we continue to teach traditional, old and misguided English curriculums in our schools, disguised behind the "bilingual program".

English in Universities, what are we waiting for?

Not few but many studies, comparisons, articles, etc; have been published about the need to establish a bilingual education in our superior education system. It seems a waste of resources, human and economical, to change basic education looking forward to a better development of abilities and allowing spaniard children to lead the future markets, and then forgetting all of it when they go to any university around Spain. How can any concerned and responsible parent allow their child to waste all of that knowledge in three, four or five years in uni? The answer is simple, send them abroad to another more qualified institution, if you can afford it.
Susana Pérez de Pablos writes in her article: La Universidad Europea ya habla inglés. Y el alumno? about the differences in european higher education systems, and how English is approached in them. She mentions one of the intrinsic goals of the European Union, which is evidently the disappearance of borders, educationally speaking as well; and then goes to question how our students could confront the situation of exchanging countries and universities if they won't even be able to communicate to begin with.
It seems like we're waiting for the new generation of kids who are mediocrely learning in two languages, to turn 18 and finally go to uni to start thinking about institutionalize English as a second and mandatory language in our Universities. Spain will be then, a full generation behind (maybe even two) the rest of the northen european countries which we so much want to resemble to.
Elisa Silió in her article from 2013: El inglés, nuevo latín de la Universidad Europea, mentions the case of the Universidad de Alcalá in which some of the degrees are being taught in English, but of course with the resiliency of some teachers reluctant to "lose" the value of our native language. Today, the Universidad de Alcalá hosts students from around the world that are given the opportunity to study in English and in Spanish, providing the learner with an extraordinary experience.

When it comes to languages, not just the spoken ones are important.

If we take too long to think about this bilingualism in our institutions, not just when English is on the table, but other languages like Chinese, German or even Catalan or Valencian, there's so much time we're waiting that we could use to invest on introducing other types of languages indispensables in the near future (let's not say now and start panicking). In this article from David Bollero, 2014, we can read about the current initiatives taking place in countries like England, in which children of 5 to 7 years old will be introduced to programming basics within the next few years. That initiative is going to be introduced here, but in a much different way, starting at around 10 to 11 years old. That means that british children of the same age will indeed have a clear advantage of 5 years ahead of spanish kids. Shouldn't we stop to think about this for a minute? Aren't we running behind already? Shouldn't we, primary school teachers, nonetheless university and secondary teachers, learn how to do some basic programming? Just like we should know English, programming should be mandatory not just for students, but for teachers as well.

In this TEDxTalk Gijon, Luis Toyos brings to the table this obvious need in education: the imminent necessity of our kids to learn how to write, not just read computers.

In his blog we can read about programs ran in different schools in Asturias, using Arduino, a basic and very simple programing software for kids (and so young...).

More articles on English as a second language and in education found in the Education Section in El Pais, which I personally think is fantastic. Enjoy:

Por qué nos cuesta tanto hablar inglés. Pantaleoni, Ana. 23 Marzo, 2008.

La mejor gimnasia para el cerebro es el bilingüismo. Álvarez, Pilar. 21 Noviembre, 2014.