It has forced me to express in writing, along with teaching responsibility, what I have said many times, both the impossible and the grave of the situation.

Most high school students are unable to express in writing what is read, understood and read in Basque. They are prepared to learn from memory and not to reflect, but this method also fails them when they forget a word and leave it unwritten, or when they put another sonorously similar and in both cases leave the phrase meaningless. They do not distinguish basic words and concepts such as body/body, isolation/reflection, realization/imagination, salt/mal, friend/youthful love, child/husband, story/book... These are just a few examples that I have gathered in the stories read. And after thousands of explanations of the difference between these words, they continue in them. Because they only listen and understand in Spanish? They do not dominate the basic structures of the Basque country.

Our students read very little in Basque (many do not know anything), speak very little in Basque (many do not speak anything). Therefore, they have to read much more in Basque, have to reflect much more in Basque, have to write much more in Basque (and we direct it), have to speak much more in Basque and know how to listen. And you have to know that if you don't, you won't learn Euskara. You can't learn a language without using it. And if you don't know, you can't overcome it. If we surpass them to anything, the suspensions of selectivity last year will multiply and, in any case, leave the centre without knowing Basque. In the situation in which we find ourselves, all we can do to teach Basque and Basque will be little. Perhaps we are facing an impossible one.

I wrote to a cloister of a hundred fully Basque and Basque teachers (and I sent it by e-mail) three months before voluntary retirement at age 60. And I didn't get any answers.

In the first one I thought I made some error in sending an email (I have always been behind in technology and for the first time I sent an e-mail to all the teachers of the center). I asked a seminar if I had received the e-mail and said yes, I sent the e-mail correctly and everyone received it. When I told him that I had received no answer, he replied that my message contained the answer and that I could not answer anything. That same day he told me that another teacher had read my message (this time without having mentioned it before). He gave me the reason, but he told me that the teaching and dissemination of our language is feasible without possibility, but that to do so it is absolutely necessary that foundational spirit of the ikastolas, of being completely united to the parent-student-teacher project.

In the long experience of my institutes (36 years), a professor told me at the beginning of my work another professor about the foundational spirit of the ikastolas, but this time (fortunately) to extol that spirit, because in my beginning that professor reminded me harshly that I was not in an institute the intention to teach and ask for my Basque. And is it legitimate and acceptable for students to leave school without being literate in Basque? Is it legitimate and acceptable that students leave school without knowing how to speak, read and write in Basque? By the way, I know those who have gone to the ikastola and those who do not speak any words in Basque. I think we are all similar at the moment. And has it not been possible to use the money without digitalisation (in Sweden they have already realised the failure it has meant for education) for an external level assessment that guarantees or takes care of literacy and oral communication in Basque?

On March 29, I read Kike Amonarrizi’s opinion article “Teaching Basque or creating active speakers?” For I believe that teaching Basque and creating active speakers are inseparable and not alternative. You cannot teach Basque without creating an active speaker and you cannot create an active speaker without teaching Basque. Teaching Basque is to create active speakers in Basque, but not only to create active speakers, but also active readers and writers. If not, which literature, newspaper, magazine will be the one that nobody reads or nobody knows how to read? There we have a very hard problem.

I was able to do very little three hours a week (although I tried a lot). At the seminar I left four full shelves full of opinion articles, interviews, stories, etc. I couldn't read it for lack of hours and time. I have suffered and been very sad for not being able to do more. And I've felt a lot of dissatisfaction when I listened to the Spanish students, who have sometimes looked for the outstanding and sit in front of the professor. And the professor cannot enter into his intimacy.

For the first time, Diego’s professor of Language and Literature Vasca Ainhoa, a ten-year-old student in the first generation of the D model of Uribe Kosta, told me about her first teaching experience and explained the pain the student had because she was speaking to her in Spanish. I was angry and I couldn't understand, because when they were my students they always spoke to me in Basque. Yes, it's getting harder and harder for me to be an Euskera professor. I've been lucky enough for my students to do me in Basque until this year, because this year few students (specifically two guys) have done it in Spanish, and not only that, you told me to get familiar (that in Gernika). Yes, harm. And what defense does a teacher have? What do you do with all that pain? Tell the event to others? Write in the newspaper? Feeling guilty of suffering?

Whoever in the second high school does not distinguish the words of offensive/revolutionary is above you in command, although in the second high school he has repeated a thousand times that he has to read two books in Euskera, who cannot believe has the command because in society the Basque has been named loser and punitive. Another student, also boy, but silent and embarrassing, explained to me in a beautiful work that if you speak in Basque they have to bear insults “etarra” or “vasquito”, that insults are a few, but that they have authority. This is what a student explained to me in the last study, in response to the drafting proposal associated with the text by Anjel Lertxundi on “History of a Return” by Martin Ugalde, who put himself in selectivity in the July call last year, and telling the changes that occurred in the town. Yes, what we have to bear! It was not yours the only beautiful work, I have other saved works. But not everything is quiet and tolerable.

Yolanda Elorriaga Iturri. Retired professor.

Written in June 2023.