#12: Perpignan and the Bressola Schools

On Thursday morning I woke up and went to breakfast.  The hotel breakfast in France was MUCH more filling, like the breakfast at the 1st hotel in Barcelona.  (The hotels in between had been pretty skimpy.)  I was very excited to see Bonne Maman preserves on the buffet line.  It's my favorite type of fruit spread--I had it for the first time in high school when my French teacher brought some in for the class.

On the itinerary that day we visited the Bressola schools, which are Catalan-language immersion schools.  Basically, the Catalan language was banned in France by King Louis the 14th in 1700.  People still spoke it at home, but it started to die.  By the 1960s, the French Catalans had actually been taught to believe that children who spoke Catalan at home would have behavior problems at school and possible learning setbacks.  The goal of the Bressola schools was to help preserve the Catalan language, culture and identity by proving that with a fresh generation, success was possible for Catalan speakers.

For the past 30 years, the Bressola schools have faced difficulty on several fronts.  First, there wasn't any funding from the French government, because the French constitution states that French is the only language of France and the Bressola school was in direct violation of that.  (By the way, Catalan is still not recognized by the French government on the national level, but was only recognized regionally in 2008.)  Then, most of the people who wanted to send their kids there didn't have the money to pay for high tuition costs.  Finally, there was the challenge of creating a curriculum from scratch and hoping to succeed.

Today the Bressola schools have two levels, elementary (ages 2-11) and upper (ages 12-15).  Unfortunately, there's no Bressola school for high school students, so the kids choose to go to a high school of their choice and hopefully maintain their interest in Catalan later in life.   The elementary school was so cute!  The kids flocked around us and we had third graders as tour guides.  My tour guide was a little girl who was of Gypsy parentage.  (Interesting fact:  the Bressola schools are surprisingly racially diverse, because Catalans are open to anyone who wants to learn the language and join the culture.)  According to the director of the school, most Gypsy families never sent their kids to school so they always spoke Catalan (and sometimes not even French as well).   My little girl was the same way because she didn't understand French or English (students in the elementary school start French around the 1st or 2nd grade and English in 3rd or 4th, with an additional Spanish option as well).

We got to observe the classrooms and the teaching methods.  The kids were having a snack in one of the rooms I entered.  The teacher explained that every day, the parents take turns donating healthy snacks (fruits, bread, finger sandwiches and the like) to the entire class.  This helps to foster the sense of community within the students.  They have typical reading, writing, basic math and science classes along with art, nutrition and hygiene, and history classes.  Some of the teachers at the elementary school actually moved from Spain to France because they believe in the cause and wanted to do their part to save their language.

in this class, some of the kids knew their numbers in English and were excited to demonstrate.

even from childhood, Catalans are very proud!  what a lovely senyera!

the older kids having shared snacktime (they offered us oranges)

me and my tourguide!

The second half of our visit, we went to the suburbs outside of Perpignan to visit the upper level Bressola school.  There was only one upper level school, to which all 5 elementary schools matriculated.  It wasn't very crowded because after the elementary years, some students decide not to pursue Catalan, or their parents can't afford to keep sending them (although tuition is prorated according to income).  The junior high students, who spoke excellent english, said that they made the decision to keep attending the Bressola school, and were willing to sacrifice other things to help with tuition.  I was very impressed!

The upper level school is only 3 years old, so the facilities were very nice.  After the tour, all of us agreed that we would have liked to have gone to a Bressola language immersion school, especially with such great amenities.  Their science lab rivaled the ones at our college!

One of the most interesting things from that visit, I learned by asking a question:  I asked the director of the Bressola School if he thought of himself as a French man of Catalan heritage or a Catalan man living in France.  "I am a Catalan living in Catalonia," he said.  No matter what the political maps say, the people of Catalonia still think of it as one nation.

After our tour of the secondary school, the class wanted lunch.  We rolled off the tour bus and into a tiny French village.  A brief look around main street revealed only one available sandwich shop.  Most of us all crammed inside and ordered our sandwiches, which completely overwhelmed the one owner/chef and  his friend who had come to hang out during the slow lunch.  It was kind of funny, but in the end we all had a filling lunch and the owner probably had made a week's worth of business from our appearance!

Directly after lunch, we went to Cazes, a certified organic wine company.  We drove vineyard and had a tour of the vines, then a tour of the grounds and finally, a sampling session of 6 different bottles.  It was a lovely experience, even though I'm not particularly fond of wine, and I learned a lot.

Finally, we got back on the bus and went to the hotel.  Lindsey and I took the class back to the Visca shop to meet the shopkeeper and buy more of her stuff (and we bought a lot--again, probably giving her a week's worth of business in 30 mins).  Some of us stopped at a local bakery and bought croque monsieurs (toasted sandwiches with a layer of baked cheese on top) and pastries for dinner.  We had to be on the bus super early the next morning (6:45am!) so I retired early.