Language, identity and education policy in Spain ’s Basque country: Part 1

[Harold Schiffman]

Language, identity and education policy in Spain’s Basque country: Part 1
April 10, 3:41 PM ·

Governing has never been so complicated.  Political scientists the
world over have been scratching their heads over the simultaneous
integration and devolution of governments.  The European Union has
expanded to include 27 member countries and Asia has discussed
development of a European Union-like structure while separatist
movements from Quebec, Canada to the Tibet, China fight on for
sovereignty.  All the while, political and economic commentators from
Benjamin Barber to Thomas Friedman have reflected on the effects of
globalization and what it means for people around the world.

For many, it has meant having to balance economic and cultural
survival.  That struggle is evident in the Basque Country of Spain,
where the regional government is feudally trying to weave a trilingual
web of Basque, Spanish and English among its citizens, making
education policy a hotly debated issue.  This two part series will
explore language in Spain’s Basque Country, education policy and the
current debate.

Spain’s Basque Country is a semi-autonomous region on the northern
coast of Spain near the French border and longtime home to the
indigenous Basque people.  In fact, Basque is believed to be the last
remaining pre-Indo European language in Europe.  Communities in the
Basque region had enjoyed a great degree of autonomy until the late
18th-19th centuries.  Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco (1892-1975)
even went so far as to outlaw the Basque language, nullifying all
legal documents recorded in the language and punishing those that
dared speak it in public.  Since the ratification of Spain’s 1978
Constitution, the Basque Country has been named a “historical region”
and has been afforded a great degree of autonomy.

Unfortunately for many non-Basque speakers, the Basque government
seems to have concluded that the best way to protect the Basque
language is to force it onto others, and that may not be such a bad
assessment.  Language displacement has occurred in many parts of the
world as dominant languages such as English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish
and Arabic have spread.  As a necessity for survival, speakers of the
marginal languages are often forced to learn the dominant language of
their respective regions, creating a generation (or several) of
bilingual speakers that function as a bridge between their cultural
past and the future of their children.  Faced with economic
marginalization, parents will often times raise their children in the
dominant language but will not teach them their mother language, or if
they do, the marginal utility of that language will not be sufficient
so as to warrant its use by the younger generation who often times
will abandon it completely.  Left to evolutionary forces alone, many
marginal languages will simply disappear as they are replaced by
dominant ones.  Simply permitting a given population to speak their
native tongue does not guarantee that language’s survival.  But is
this a matter of survival for Basque speakers?

Perhaps not; there are an estimated 632,000 native Basque speakers
(roughly double the number of Icelandic speakers).  Aggregate numbers
alone, however, do not tell the whole story.  While the Basque people
are largely confined to one geographic location, only an estimated one
quarter of Basque region inhabitants speak Basque as a native
language, and the region’s main center of commerce, Bilbao, is largely
populated by native Spanish speakers, with native Basque speakers
largely confined to the outskirts and surrounding areas.

But to frame the debate exclusively in terms of culture versus economy
is to distort it.  In Part 2, I will explore in further detail Basque
Country politics and the identity debate.

http://www.examiner.com/x-5226-Portland-Cultural-Travel-Examiner~y2009m4d10-Language-identity-and-education-policy-in-Spains-Basque-country-Part-1

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************