About Txindoki, our school

By Aitor Z and Amaia L

Beasain Instituto Publico (BIP) is located in Beasain and it’s a school created after the fusion of three different public school campuses: Alkartasuna, Loinazpe and Txindoki. The one in which we study is Txindoki. It’s a high school for 16-18 year olds, we call this level bachillerato. There are four different tracks: science, arts, technology and humanities. Our high school is the only one around Goierri that gives the opportunity to study arts. Moreover, there’s the option to study some lessons in English, such as maths, economics, history, and geography. The name of this project is the multilingual project.

            Regarding the amount of people in Txindoki, there are 167 students in the first year and 149 students in the second year, plus 6 students in our special education/work training program for people with disabilities. Our classes can have as few as 7 people and a maximum of 30. Most have around 20-25 students.

            As far as the people that comes to the school is concerned, we can find people from Goierri county (which consists of the towns of Lazkao, Idiazabal, Beasain, Ordizi, Zegama, Zerain, Zaldibi, Segura, Mutiloa, Ihurre, Ataun), Tolosaldea county (which includes towns called Tolosa, Ikaztegieta, Alegia…) and Urola county (Zumarraga, Legazpi, Urretxu…). Taking into account that Txindoki is a high school, teenagers of 16, 17, and 18 years old come. Nevertheless, there’s also people older than 18 years old, because they are doing the same school year again or because they want to study to gain knowledge.

            People normally graduate at the age of 18 after finishing the second course having passed all the subjects. After it they give to you a degree assuring it.

            In addition, there are some special lessons apart from school to help you with the subjects that you find more difficult. For example, maths. However, people that need more help or wanted to know more about the subject take private lessons.

            Finally, we adress our teachers with their first name without using their last name. What’s more, we don’t use “usted” and we speak in a more familiar language. However, respectfully.

College Admissions in the Basque Country

By Ander and Mikel U.

What´s required to be admitted to college (university) is firstly to have the LH (primary school), DBH (secondary school) and DBHO (bachillerato—advanced seconday) diplomas. Plus you must take the “selectivity” (selectividad) exam.

The selectivity exam is a special exam that teenagers of age 18 take. This exam permits you to enter college if you pass the exam with a certain score. It’s important to comment that every university department has its own passing mark. For example, to get into medicine you must pass with 11.3 out of 14.

To explain how the college admissions are weighted we should say your grades from the first course of the bachillerato is 3 of 14, the second course of the bachillerato has the same value, and finally the selectivity exam has 8 of 14.

This exam has two parts: in the first one, called “General Exam”, we take  five exams: Basque, Spanish and English; history or philosophy (the one you choose), and one subject you chose from your modality. This part is compulsory and must be passed in order for you to be able to enter college. The highest mark you can get is a 10. For some degrees, though, they ask higher marks than 10, and so, there is the other part, which is called “Specific Exam” and it’s not compulsory. Here the 2 other subjects from your modality are chosen, and universities value them with 2 points, 1 point or none depending on the degree you want (this is, the same subject won’t have similar weight in one university and in another). For instance, biology could be valued at 2 points by the Basque University of Medicine, because they are interested in people having that experience, whereas it won’t have any value for the Basque University of Translation and Interpretation, which would value by 2 points people having learned Latin. Thus, the highest mark you can get with this method, called “the Bolonian method”, is of 14.

The Educational System of the Basque Country

By Aitor V, Ana B, and Nahia

Pre-School (Educación infantil). From ages 2-5. During this time children learn to read and write. Most often, they attend the same school as the primary school students.

Primary (Educación primaria) From ages 6-12.  We call these schools “colegio” in Spanish and “ikaskola” in Basque. When they are in primary, children start learning different subjects such as maths, natural sciences, and different languages (we have most of our subjects in Basque at this level, but have one hour a day of Spanish language arts and a couple hours a week of English).

Secondary (Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO) in Spanish;  “DBH” in Basque). From ages 12-16. We call these schools “instituto” in Spanish and “institutua” in Basque. We have four years of required secondary school. We don’t call them 7^th to 10^th grades like you do in the U.S., we say “primero de secundario,” “segundo de secundario” We continue developing the subjects, and in the last year, we have to start choosing some subjects of the modality we most like: sciences, humanities or arts. You must stay in school until age 16.

From here, you can decide to carry on studying, and so you will do the bachillerato (2 years of non-obligatory secondary education), or if you prefer to start training yourself to work immediately and study specifically for this work, you will do a mid-level work formation.

Work formation (high-level). Once you do the mid-level work formation, you can put yourself in the work world, and start working, or you can improve your practice in a high-level work formation. Once you finish this, and if you want to study a career, you make an entrance exam to college; or if you prefer, you can start in the work world.

Bachillerato From ages 16-18. This is a two year diploma in which you work in your modality (your specialty). All students are required to take all three languages (English, Spanish and Basque) both first and second year, as well as philosophy and history. Depending on your options you can work three different modalities: science (here you can chose technologic science or biomedical science), humanities (among which there are social humanities and pure humanities) and arts. When you finish, you get a degree that allows you to go to college, after passing an exam called “Selectividad” (see the separate blog entry about that) which lasts three days.

University. After the selectivity exam, depending on the mark you score, you can enter here or not, but most people do. This is because our government is interested in people having studies and encourages them to do so, so people don’t leave studies almost ever, according to statistics, less than the 7%. Almost all the degrees last 4 years, except for medicine (6 years), architecture (5 years)… After doing the degree you can start working. But it is also an option to continue studying to complement your studies by taking a master degree and after that a doctorate.

Places to visit in the Basque Country

If you should ever come to visit . . . by Maite, Amaia O, Maialen U

Basque Symbols

What is a "lauburu"? by Karolina and Olatz

Bertsolaritza, a unique Basque tradition

Spontaneous sung poetry . . learn more from Mikel U, Joanes, and Laida O

PART 1:

 

PART 2:

Sports in the Basque Country

Pelota: A Basque original, classic and still popular sport by Aitor S. and Elena

Traditional Basque country games/competitions by Patri and Laida P

Basque Myths and Legends

Myths and Legends

by Ander

by Nagore and Ainhoa

Mari Sorgiña by Marta Sargento and Jon S

by Arantzazu, Maddi and Noemi

Art in the Basque country

Amaia L on sculptor Chillida:

 

Food, glorious food

More on traditional food from Amaia H,  Iker and Xabi:

And on the cider houses, from Ianire and Jon P . . .

Basque food and chefs

 Txindoki students' oral presentations on the Basque Country. First topic: FOOD!

 Paula D and Amaia A on Basque food and chefs:

Joseba A on Karlos Argiñano, A famous chef from Beasain:

THE BASQUE COUNTRY AND ITS LANGUAGE

By Clara and Amaia M.

The Basque Country is the name given to the four provinces located in northern Spain (Biscay, Gipuzkoa, Alava and Navarre) and to three provinces located in southern France (Lapurdi, Nafarroa Behera and Zuberoa).

Each province has a capital: 
-Bilbo is the capital of Biscay. 
-Donostia (known also as San Sebastian) is the capital of Gipuzkoa.

-Gasteiz (known also as Vitoria) is the capital of Alava.

-Iruñea (known also as Pamplona) is the capital of Navarre.

-Baiona is the capital of Lapurdi.

-Donibane-Garazi is the capital of Nafarroa Behera.

-Maule is the capital of Zuberoa.

This region is considered home to the Basque people (in Basque known as Euskaldunak), to their language (in Basque known as Euskara), culture and traditions. Nevertheless, the area is neither linguistically nor culturally homogeneous, since the Basque language has influences from Spanish and French and large amounts of immigrants come to our region.

However, Basque and Spanish are co-official languages of the Basque Country, but as Basques are part of Spain, Spanish (which is compulsory to know) is spoken by all of us, whereas Basque is not. This is the reason why there is an official exam called EGA for those who want to prove their Basque knowledge (in our school most of the students have passed it!) and the chance to choose if you want to study in Basque or Spanish.

In addition to this, it should be noted that Basque is the most ancient language of Europe, in fact, it was spoken 8,000 years ago in the Pyrenees. Moreover, its origin is a mystery because it doesn’t come from Latin neither from Anglo-Saxon, nor from any language known nowadays.

Finally, it is interesting to know that, even if there is a standard version of the Basque language called Euskara Batua, which is taught in school, modern Basque shows a high degree of dialectal divergence, sometimes making cross-dialect communication difficult. This is especially true in the case of Biscayan and Zuberoan, which are regarded as the most divergent Basque dialects.

Modern Basque dialectology distinguishes five dialects: 

·        The Western dialect (Biscayan)

·        The Central dialect (Gipuzkera)

·        Upper Navarresse (Nafarrera)

·        Lower Navarrese-Larpurdian (Behe nafar-zuberera)

·        Souletin (Zuberoan)

These dialects are divided in 11 sub-dialects, their minor varieties being 24. In Beasain, the dialect we speak is the Central dialect, also called Gipuzkera.

What is a “local”? 

by Joseba A.

A local is a place were young people can meet. A group of friends rent a commercial space such as a garage or a shop and they can decorate it as they want. You rent that place and you can do whatever you want there. We usually have sofas, TVs, Play Station, computers, fridges, microwaves… It is like a second house for us. There you can smoke or drink or have parties, but usually here people have problems with neighbours because of the noise.

The owner of the shop or the local usually makes a contract where he puts how much you have to pay per month and also he asks for some money if something is broken. Usually the owner goes to the local to take the money every month and he also sees if there is any problem in there. If neighbours call police because of the noise, or the local is too dirty, the owner normally kicks the local to the group of friends and breaks the contract.

Nowadays it is really difficult to have one, because the owners of the shops or garages know that young people here cause lots of troubles and don’t want to have problems.

Here we also have “Gaztetxe” that means house of young people, and the difference between that and the local is that in the Gaztetxe can enter anybody and also the house is occupied, so nobody pays every month. We usually make concerts and big parties in Gaztetxes because they used to be separated from other houses, so there are not neighbours.

We usually prefer the local because you know the people is inside and when there is cold it is easier to heat the place.