Nowadays only an idiot could deny the importance of knowing English: It’s the language of business, investigation, international relations and so on. In other words, it’s the unofficial language of the world: spoken by 500 to 1.8 billion people, it is also the language most of the culture we consume is created in, so, how is that no spanish prime minister has been able to speak English?.

Should primary and secondary education been reinforced?. Surely, but let’s not forget that we also have access to cheap official languages schools.

Is it then a matter of resources?. Not necessarily: if the media companies decided not to idiotice us they could broadcast their shows in subtitled version by default. As it happens in several other countries society would learn the language effortlessly, for free and without investing extra time.

You see, I start to have a feeling that the lack of culture is part of spanish culture as this isn’t new. For instance, more than a century ago and because of the ignorance of the people we used to call “gosan” to which anglosaxon referred as “gold sand”, or lately we mix up the pronunciation of several terms like: wifi, google, apple, microsoft, etc. I’m not saying if it is good or bad to use spanish or english, but provided that we write them in english we should also pronounce them in english or use the spanish phonetics and spelling, otherwise we would only feed this lack of culture.

The ignorance here discussed is also part of the spanish academy of the cinema because of the fact that they want to subtitle every foreign movie not for the honorable shake of learning new languages but to benefit the national industry.

Talking about medias and culture, when the ministry of education publish scholarships in order to learn english both in spain and abroad people think of them as ‘free vacations’ in the way that they prefer socializing instead of learning anything to the extent that spanish people are known in foreigner study centers to keep speaking spanish before, during and after the classes. We do it so much that the very first day in a multicultural class teachers specify: “No Spanish”. Faced with the almost unique possibility of learning a language and a culture extremely useful defrayed by the state in tens of thousands of scholarships people choose not to do it.

Consistently, it’s hardly surprising that nobody blamed the ministry for reducing 50% the amount of scholarships to learn english abroad this year. This way, if two years ago 53125 grants were announced (BOE núm. 49, 25 febrero 2007, 8116) and las year 51525 scholarships were published (Orden ECI/ 2008, de 4 de febrero) this year only 25000 were published (BOE núm. 37, 12 febrero 2009, 15159) by a supposedly left-wing government!.
Of course, we could ask why this piece of news didn’t appear in the media or why the results have been published in juny (right after the european elections), instead of in march as usual.

On the other hand, if last year 12500 grants were published to study english in spanish university menéndez pelayo (BOE núm. 253, 22 octubre 2007, 42863) this year 18000 scholarships were published (Resolución de 3 de septiembre de 2008, de la Secretaría de Estado de Educación y Formación).
But according to my personal experience it’s way more beneficial and efficient to stay three weeks in a british school in a country were english is the official language (which costs the state 1700 euros all in) than only one week of ‘intensive’ english in spain (which costs the state between 1000 and 1250 euros, and 100 euros plus traveling expenses to every attendee, Resolución de 3 de septiembre de 2008, de la Secretaría de Estado de Educación y Formación).

So where’s the sense in all this?. If the state collected less money both scholarships should have been reduced. In fact, attending to the knowledge acquired and my vital project I put more value on learning abroad rather than in spain. Although maybe all this has another explanation: the grants to study abroad don’t take into account what you learnt and all you need to do is to hand in a certify saying you attended 15 hours a week during 3 weeks. But for the grant in spain you need to take 3 exams, one online, another one on-site before you start the course and another one on-site after ending the course.

Consequently, the reasons why the state dramatically modified the number of grants available could be:

• Saving a huge amount of money.
• Preferring people to attend the menéndez pelayo university.
• Reducing the amount of ignorant, arrogant youngsters that waste the scarce resources we have.

Students from other countries were greatly surprised for the fact that our government offered us 1700 euros to learn english, but is now that I see that the most surprising part of it is that 99% of the spanish students just won’t learn anything. Furthermore: without knowledge of english, low wages, being virtually impossible to become independent and in some cases heavy drinkers and cannabis smokers, etc. What prospects do youngster have nowadays?.

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