Spanish Supreme Court opens the door to destroy a model of success

The ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court declaring that Spanish must also be a school teaching language is going to trigger plenty of linguistic conflicts next year. The Partido Popular and Ciudadanos will lead an offensive intended to roll back the gains made by Catalans on the language front, using the ruling from the Spanish Supreme Court to encourage those who want to prevent their kids from learning the language of the place they live in on the grounds that kids at school must be tought in their mother tongue. At the end of the day, this argument leads to less language knowledge, less skills and less opportunities for their own kids. But some will swallow the bait and will fight in courts to try to dismantle the Catalan educational system, which has proved the best tool to ensure that kids know both Catalan and Spanish when they finish school. 

In Col·lectiu Emma's website you'll find a highly interesting article entitled "Language immersion: a success story in Catalonia" from which I've choosen a few quotes:

"A cohesive society shares, first of all, a common language allowing its members to cooperate in building a project for their future."

"More than 100 languages are represented today in Catalan schools, and children speaking those languages at home need to be integrated fast through a common language."

"Children should, in their own interest, be able to speak the language of the country in which they live to ensure that they are not subject to discriminationin the course of their education or subsequent training and are capable of taking part in all activities on an equal basis."

"Findings such as these from academic studies and the decisions adopted in European political level should have been enough to settle the matter, but facts have never been an obstacle for Spanish nationalists, who have now turned to their own court system for help in a renewed campaign against the Catalan language."

"The negative effects of the two-track education system that some would like to impose in Catalonia can be seen in the neighboring region of Valencia, where schoolchildren are segregated according to the language they speak at home. [...] The result is a deepening split in society along linguistic lines and a retreat of the language of the land in areas where it used to be predominant not very long ago. Which sounds a lot like the scenario that Spanish nationalism has in mind for Catalonia as well." /Web