The somewhat sad resolution to our own school bullying case

Our older son was pretty miserable last year due to two kids that would continually taunt him during recess. He was continuously stressed out and suffered from very low self-esteem. We were considering changing schools, but first wanted to make sure that we helped him with his issues so that the next school wouldn’t have the same problem.

This year school has been great and our son is super happy and hasn’t complained about bullying at all. We asked him the other day why they weren’t bullying him anymore and his answer was “There’s a new Chinese kid in our class and the bullies bother him now.”

I think one of the reasons that Spain is far behind the curve on dealing with school bullying is twofold: first, it’s a society that has a very strong group instinct. My guess is that in order to develop such a strong group feeling, non-conformists need to be punished and humiliated. In North America, this would probably be considered psychological bullying. Here it’s called “formación del grupo”.

Secondly, the US has had some incredibly tragic events (such as the Columbine massacre), which caused many school to implement and fund anti-bullying policies, such as the Olweus program:

One of the largest of these initiatives is the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, which has been implemented in several thousand U.S. schools. It is a comprehensive program that includes forming an anti-bullying committee, training staff to intervene immediately if they observe bullying and meeting with students and parents when problems occur.

In fact, a recent study showed that the percentage of kids who reported being physically bullied in the US declined from 22% in 2003 to 15% in 2008.

The Lleida school bullying case

There was a sad story in December about the case of a 10 year old boy who had been suffering from four years of bullying at school, which was so severe that it ended up putting him in hospital several times due to injuries and anxiety.

In the end, rather than dealing with the perpetrators, the school ended up sending the victim to a different school. Problem solved, right? Except perhaps for the poor kid that is on the next rung up on the totem pole.

This is still pretty typical for Spain. There isn’t really the recognition of the psychological aspects of bullying, and the burden of proof for victims is very high. There are a couple schools in Barcelona with good anti-bullying practices, such as the American School of Barcelona.

Scamming your way into a concertada school via Celiac disease

There are a couple super-exclusive concertada school (partially state supported, so cheap and good, perfect for any self-respecting Catalan) in Barcelona that parents are willing to do just about anything to get in.

All concertada schools have to (by law) use a points system for accepting students in order to ensure fair access for normal kids. Of course, this is Spain, so the next obvious step for people is to figure out how to scam the system.

The latest scam is to get a doctor's certificate (from a friendly enchufe doctor) saying that your kid has Celiac disease. Since this requires special meals (gluten free) for the kids, the parents can get an exception from the points system to jump the queue for their kids. The supposed justification being that the parents need to take their kids for lunch, so they require a school near work.

In the case we heard about, the parents were too lazy to actually take the time to take their kid out for lunch, so the school figured they'd been scammed and kicked the kid out.

Private school life insurance scam

We asked the school the other day what this mysterious €20 life insurance charge was for on our monthly bill. It turns out that the school decided to opt-in all the families into a policy and charge the parents for it (and never explain it or tell us what the benefits are, etc).

What exactly do you receive for this? If the father (for €10 per child per month) or either (for €18 a month) dies, then they will pay the tuition for the rest of the year. That's it.

Want to know what a complete rip off this is? For $8.22 per month, I can buy a $100,000 10 year term life back in the US, which should be enough to keep the kids in a good school until they graduate, and still have a bit left over for college.

Homer Simpson in Spain

One of the running jokes in the Simpsons is that Homer failed the second grade. "Ha ha ha!" laughs the American. "How can you possibly fail the second grade? What a looser!"

Homer Every Day from Noah K. on Vimeo.

I'm not sure this joke would be as funny here, since failing in school seems to be no just a habit, but a way of life.

Social stigma is an amazing motivational force. In this respect, the Spanish system seems to be the completely opposite of the Chinese, who spend their entire youth studying for that one big exam that will make or break them.

Myths and misconceptions about learning a second language

An interesting paper about best practices when teaching a second language to children.

One point that struck me regarding English speaking kids who are put into French immersion in Quebec:

English-speaking children in late immersion programs (in which the second language is introduced in grades seven or eight) have been found to perform just as well or better on tests of French language proficiency as children who began their immersion experience in kindergarten or grade one.

Combined with this report, it makes you wonder about the wisdom of forcing immigrant children into immediate Catalan-only immersion:

The first predictor of long-term school success is cognitively complex on-grade-level academic instruction through students’ first language for as long as possible (at least through Grade 5 or 6) and cognitively complex on-grade-level academic instruction through the second language for part of the school day, in each succeeding grade throughout students’ schooling. Here, we define students’ first language as the language in which the child was nursed as an infant.

I'm happy to know that my children will be able to blame our move for any upcoming academic failures.

Diversity in action

The theme for the school carnival was diversity, so they had the kids dressed up as different cultures.

Eg, there was a bunch of kids dressed up as Chinese yelling:

Manifestación!
Chinitos en acción!

Okay. I suppose it's an improvement over Moros y cristianos.

Looking on the bright side of schools in Spain

At least they don't call the police to arrest twelve year old girls that doodle on their desks:

A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.

[...]

Alexa is the latest in a string of city students who have been cuffed for minor infractions. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was placed under arrest for writing "okay" on her desk at Intermediate School 201. And in 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was cuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten.

I didn't even know they made handcuffs for 5 year olds. Only in the US, I guess.

The kids who say 'ni-ni'

On the radio there was a feature the latest sociologic trend in Spain: The ni-ni generation. It stands for neither-nor, as in neither in a job nor in at school.

There was a study back in 2009 that found that 54% of Spaniards between 18 and 34 have no hope for the career prospects. Considering that the unemployment rate for youth is now 39% (EU27 average is 19%), this isn't all the surprising.

The high school dropout rate in Spain is around 30% (vs 12% in Europe), so it's pretty easy to guess where those unemployed kids are coming from.

Why are they dropping out? Here's a clue:

Repetition rates in lower secondary education across OECD countries

Bring your sick kid to school day

Third day of school and our house already sounds like an influenza ward. Naturally, our kids are going to school anyway.

Here in Spain, the concept of keeping your kids at home when they are sick (but not actually in mortal danger) is not really understood. The fact that other children might also get sick doesn't seem to bother anyone.

A flowchart to illustrate the typical thought process of a Spanish parent:



For that matter, people think that we are weird when we say we'd rather not kiss hello because we are sick and don't want to infect anyone.

First day of school

"Why are you waking me up? It's the middle of the night!"

"It's the morning and it's time to get dressed for school."

"No. It's the middle of the night."

"Actually it's almost 8 o'clock and you still need to have breakfast."

"I don't want breakfast."

"I made pancakes for you with lots of maple syrup."

"I hate pancakes. They are the worst food ever and I hate you too."

Study on Education in Catalonia

A very interesting July 2009 paper on the education system here (concentrating on math and science performance). Some of the more surprising points:

• Spain performs badly in general, compared to other European countries, however, when adjusting for the education level of parents, Spain does better than average.
  
• Catalonia does poorly compared to other regions in the study, either 3rd or 4th from the bottom of 14 regions studied.
  
• Education levels of parents did not affect the results much for Catalonia: ie La Rioja and Castile/Leon outperfomed Catalona in math and science by 35 and 27 points respectively although parental education levels were similar.
  
• Catalonia has a higher concentration of immigrant students, but this was not an important factor in the poor performance of Catalonia.
  
• Only a very weak correlation between PISA performance and school funding across regions.
  

Since the comparisons were in math and science, it suggests that the problems here are not due to linguistic policies (also the immigrants didn't do that much worse), but it does show that there is something severely broken in the Catalan educational system.

From what I've read about the education minister Ernest Maragall (who happens to be the brother of the ex-Generalitat president, you gotta love the nepotism here) is more of an apparatchick who doesn't have any background in education (his background is IT). Sounds like just the guy to fix things.

Choosing schools in Sant Cugat

Update:

Please go here for an updated listing of school here.

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If you move to Sant Cugat, here’s some of the schools that I’ve had direct experience with:

Two general notes:

• Most "good" schools in Spain "cheat" on their high school test scores by making the bad students leave somewhere else before graduation. So don't take the scores too seriously.
  
• There are no Castellano-only schools in Catalunya. There are private French-only, German-only, Italian-only, English-only, but sorry, no Spanish for you. Someone suggested that maybe we should open a Mexican School of Barcelona. If you are moving to Barcelona so your kids can learn Spanish, you are in for a surprise!
  

Europa – Large private pretentious school that emphasizes an education in English, although most of the kids are from Catalan families. Like most private schools, the parents tend to be small-business owners or senior level corporate types. The education is "fire-and-forget" style, where the parents are expected to drop off the kids on time, but not much else. We’ve heard stories about students avoiding discipline due to parents being big donors. It's also very competitive: some classrooms feature a train with pictures of the students on each car, which are sorted by their current test scores.

Agora –Large private school that caters to similar parents as Europa. Slightly less glitzy parking lot (although the Cheyenne % rate is still abnormally high). They have a small building in downtown Sant Cugat called Patufet that is very nice for P3-P5. It has a better arts program than Europa (but worse sports program) and a nice mix of Catalan, Spanish and English. More emphasis on parental involvement. The school is venture capital owned (they ran into funding difficulties a couple years back and so they had to make a deal with the devil), so there's friction coming from there.

Benjamin Franklin – Has a bus from Sant Cugat, so it’s easy to get to. It’s bit of an Americana bubble though, with pretty high turnover from people that aren’t planning on living here for long. They have about 1/3 American, 1/3 International and 1/3 Spanish students. Very expensive, although I expect many people don’t pay it themselves (ie company pays). There's a core group of very nice parents and if you want a social life via school, it's a great place to go.

St Peters - In Barcelona, but lots of kids from Sant Cugat go there (there's a bus). We know a couple spoiled brats that go there. Nothing like spoiled brats with finishing school accents.

Lycee Francais - In Barcelona, but has a good reputation. It used to be fashionable to learn French, but not so much anymore.

Swiss School - Heard good things about it. Your kids need to know German though.

Aula - A bunch of our neighbors go there. Looks good on paper, but if you talk to some of the alumni, it definitely has a dark side. It's extremely competitive to the point of ruining the self-esteem of kids that can't keep up. If you don't keep up, you get kicked out pretty quick. It has one Spanish speaking track, which at first we thought would be great, but it's full of kids of PP politicians and other right-wing types.

Deutsche Schule – Admissions is run by a old-school German woman that scares anyone who has ever met her. One neighbor's kid goes there and is quite happy. Unless your kids have perfect german and/or you have serious enchufe don’t bother. Montilla sends his kids there, what a hypocrite. They have a bus that goes to Sant Cugat.

La Farga – Crazy right wing Opus Dei Catholic cult-school. If you meet a family with 8 children in Sant Cugat, they go to La Farga. If you happen to drive by in the evening you can sometimes see a bunch of people walking in circles. Not sure exactly what they are doing.

Waldorf School - In Bellatera. In Catalan but with lots of international parents, so English speaking kids won't stick out. Much less academically oriented for the first couple years, more focus on imagination, stories, arts, and music. European Waldorf schools are quite a bit different than their hippy granola-eating North American bretheren, and have a very good reputation.

John Talabot - A very nice small concertada school in Barcelona that focuses on a trilingual education (English, Spanish, Catalan). We know a couple people that go there and love it. We decided against it mostly for logistical reasons.

Public Schools – Catalunya is the better one since it has less immigrants (ie poor south Americans who can’t speak catalan). The combination of Catalan in schools + lots of poor immigrants means that sometimes half the class has no clue what the teacher is saying.

Other concertada schools – usually better than the public ones, and pretty cheap as well. They gotta be in Catalan, although some do clever things like pairing Catalan + Spanish speaking teachers together so that kids can learn more Spanish. Not that I’m encouraging cheating, but just so you are aware that everyone else does it. If you want to get into a concertada school, you need to live pretty close by, otherwise you won’t have the points to get in. Luckily it’s pretty easy to temporarily change your address to a friend’s place that lives nearby. Either get them to sign an authorization form or register your mobile phone billing address there as "proof" to get your empadronamiento changed. If you don’t do this, you basically have zero chances of getting in since everyone else cheats. Some parents in other parts of spain even get “divorced” to get extra points for their kids to get into the right school.

Schools in Catalunya

One of the hopes of living in Spain was that our children would learn Spanish. We knew about Catalan, but assumed that we could pick a Spanish-speaking school with little problem. Unfortunately we didn't realize that Spanish-speaking schools don't exist in this part of Spain. Really.

Meanwhile, our ex-neighbors in the US are sending their children to a Spanish immersion public school.

Instead, all non-international schools must by law teach pretty much everything in Catalan. Catalan is about halfway between Spanish and French. It's cute, but pretty much useless (7 million speakers), unlike, say Spanish (with 500 million speakers). In an effort to make Catalan more useful, the regional (or "national" as they like to call themselves) government tries its best to ban Spanish in as many settings as possible. Even the English teachers must be fluent in Catalan.

There's a long and complicated history that I'm glossing over. Various people were oppressed in the past and now feel the urge to oppress other people just to show how much they were oppressed. Franco was involved. However, I did hear somewhere that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Now that I've got the two things I hate about this place off my chest, I can start talking about the good things... and there are many....