Shouldn't Spanish schools all teach in Spanish (Castilian)?

One of the reasons that minority languages don't die out is because of the actions of nationalist groups to artificially keep them alive. Whilst I certainly don't condone the forced integration of minorities into a greater national entity and the extinction of their regional identities (as the English did with the Welsh and Franco tried to do with the Catalans and others) nor do I support the idea of small nationalist groups trying to rally political support around the flag of a regional language. Both are completely against the natural development of language. Language is not a static thing and the speed of change increases in a more globalised world. My comment that without artificial support minority languages would most die out within a few decades is a prediction based on the rate of change in the 21st century. Welsh is a perfect example of something that would now be extinct were it not for Welsh nationalism's efforts to keep it going. But to think that artificially keeping alive a minority language has a use other than to bolster nationalist groups is a bit naive. No one would seriously argue that people in a certain region should confine their language to the secondary minority one - what would, say, Wales be like if the people only spoke and understood Welsh? (Think 'Albania!') Being realist the future of language has no real place for secondary regional languages. The whole point of language is to communicate and now we communicate with the world, not just the people in our village. The evidence? How many pages on the Internet are in Welsh/Catalan/Albanian?!

Bede, you present an eloquent argument, although I don't agree with all of it, especially when you say that only nationalist groups are behind the continuance of minority languages - I don't think they have that much influence in the general population. And the Welsh (national, not regional - we're not a region) identity hasn't been extinguished.  I was brought up speaking no Welsh but having a very strong national Welsh identity.  And I am currently sitting in a Costa Coffee in the valleys of South Wales, listening to two sets of people nearby speaking Welsh - no-one's got a stick behind them.   I do agree though that sometimes the artificial promotion of these languages can be grating and, in fact, my kids are cursing me for having put them in a Welsh-medium school as they prefer English.  But as a parent you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.  Many Welsh people of my generation are very resentful that we didn't have that opportunity. 

Sometimes the artificial propping up of languages is also implemented with regard to majority languages.  In France, for instance, where they've tried to stop the encroachment of English on radio stations, the populace has had inflicted on it the awfulness of French music when they could be rocking along to infinitely superior British and American offerings.  That is obviously a travesty or at least a crime against music.  On the other hand they're trying to stop the kind of processes that lead to the French using phrases like 'le weekend,' instead of the preferable 'fin de semaine' which I learned in school, so maybe it's necessary.  This illustrates how even languages spoken by a large number of people can feel under threat from the omnipresent English.  And wouldn't it be a shame if we lost all the diversity of all of these languages?  Don't they need a bit of help?

I think you'll find that my argument about 'minority' languages dissappearing naturally (in the 21st century) can be applied to the example you give of the French trying to stop the encroachment of english.....french quickly being a minority language since having lost its place as the language of diplomacy, a throwback to Napoleanic times, and becoming no more than a one nation language within Europe at least. Returning to the original thread, however, of course we can force our children to reluctantly be educated in a minority language......but are we doing them any favours? And the Catalan issue is that they don't want to give any sensible options....and the language is most-definitely one of the banners of a somewhat-misguided and dangerous nationalism. Most Catalans don't have a clue about their own regional history and, unlike, say, Wales or Scotland with histories going back a couple of thousand years at least, any claim that a 'nation' of Cataluña exists seems to be based on the language (arguably a dialect) rather than the ping-pong ownership of the Principality of Cataluña over the last few hundred years.