[squeak-dev] New smalltalk website and Smalltalk activities in Barcelona

Jordi Delgado jdelgado at lsi.upc.edu
Thu Feb 12 21:34:50 UTC 2009


Hi everyone,

> If you, translate to spanish instead Catalan (is the same work, and all 
> catalonians speaks spanish), all spanish and catalan speakers (spanish 
> information is small too) could benefit of this.

I was afraid someone would comment on the choice I did when I decided
to translate the book. Apparently the argument could not be more
convincing: Why translate to Catalan when a Spanish translation would
reach much more people?


<please, read>

First let me say that I am aware that this is completely off-topic, so
this will be my last message on this topic in this list. If any of you
wants to continue the discussion I will be glad to do it, but please
send your comments to my personal e-mail address.

</please, read>


Spain is a state politically split into "autonomies" (sort of
federal states, but not that much autonomous), and Education is one of
the aspects on which every autonomy has complete control. That means that
all the matters on education of kids, from 0 to 18 years old, depend not
on the central government, but on the autonomic government. In this case, 
the catalan government. Here, in catalonia, the "official language for teaching"
in public and semi-private schools is catalan (this a bad translation of
"lengua vehicular", my english is not good enough to find a better one). This
is the reality of the education where I live, whether we like it or not. I am
not going into a discussion about whether this is right or wrong. This is the
way it is, here and now. Period.

Thus, if one's purpose is having all the kids learning to program, and I said 
ALL, one needs to convince a lot of teachers that this is a good idea and that
the better way to do it is with Squeak. Therefore, one's target are not the 
kids, not the schools, not the teachers. The right target is the government,
specifically the ministry of education. Here is why I translated the book to
catalan and why there exists a smalltalk.cat site completely in catalan. 
No catalan => no ministry => no kids programming.

To make a (only one year) long story short, currently we ARE already working with
the ministry of education: 

- All the schools in catalonia have a Linux distribution (Linkat) with Scratch, 
Botsinc (I translated the Botsinc image as well) and Squeak inside. This has been 
distributed by the catalan government. 

- We are preparing a Scratch on-line course for teachers that will start next september 1st.
Thus, any teacher in catalonia (around 60.000) will be able to get in touch with a 
programming tool for kids, so they may be able to teach programming with it. 
The department in the catalan ministry of education that asked us for this course is 
currently considering Botsinc for the next year. 

- Currently the ministry of education is getting ready (a matter of weeks, perhaps of
months) a web site with only Scratch, Botsinc and Squeak material for teachers
and students. This site will be linked directly from a web site with an average of
140.000 daily visits (www.edu365.cat).  

- We have a proposal by the ministry of education to create a start-up to make
educational software with Squeak, with some amount (unknown to me as of today)
of initial funding. This is not a short-term proposal, but it is on the table,
pending of further discussion.

- There are also some other minor things that perhaps do not deserve any space in this
already too long message.

And I can assure you that having translated the Botsinc book and software to catalan
was helpful (among other things) to make clear how serious we are about all this stuff.

Maybe it is a paradox that targeting less people we are in fact reaching much more people.
If I had translated Botsinc to Spanish, I would end up depending on much more people just
to make things start to happen. And I am pretty sure that the result, as of now, would not
be as satisfactory as it is (at least to me). For example, it would be impossible to sell
the idea in Catalonia, and with respect to the rest of Spain it would have been a autonomy
by autonomy job, much harder and beyond our possibilities. As usual, less is more.

Finally, we should not forget that Catalan is my mother tongue. I grow up speaking and writing
Catalan (which was somewhat risky when I was a kid in the seventies. Let us not forget that
30 years ago we were under a militar dictatorship) and this is the language I feel
comfortable writing and speaking. Of course I know spanish, but I write better
in Catalan. Besides, Catalonia has its own culture. Why should Smalltalk not be part of all 
this? When I go shopping I like to do it in Catalan. When I teach I like to do it in Catalan.
When I go to the medical doctor I want to talk about cholesterol in Catalan :-)
So, surely there are people that want to learn programming in Catalan. And this has nothing to 
do with nationalisms and all this crap. I do not want Catalonia independence (which is what
most of you are thinking now :-)), nor any kind of change of the current situation. I simply
want to be able to live using my mother tongue. That's all.

What I find really amazing is that in the year 2009 I need to justify a thing that should
be obvious to everyone.

Okay, let's end this abuse of your patience. Thanks to all of you that get to here. As I said
before, I will not further discuss this topic in the squeak-dev list.

Bests,

Jordi




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