I'm going to write about the programa nacional de bilinguismo" because it's an important topic for our career, people who is learning about education policies and english teaching will be interesting in this essay wich  I will try to show the inequalities in Colombia education and its influence in the failure of the PNB.

Inequalities in Colombia: main problem for PNB success

Andrés Felipe Arenas

 In the last years our country has experienced a revolution in the field of teaching foreign languages with the National Bilingual Program (PNB by its initials in Spanish), a strategy that aims to offer the possibility of becoming bilingual in English and Spanish “as part of a vision of increased productivity in a globalized world” (Mejía, 2011:07).  There are several researches, essays, articles that have been written to show the disadvantages and problems of this program. Here I am going to focus on the inequalities that the education has in general which have an effect in the implementation of the PNB.

Education in Colombia is unequal. Public schools are free but they have a bad reputation in terms of education quality. Otherwise, private schools (not all of them) have a good reputation and people think the students learn more and have more opportunities. This inequality is a problem at the moment of starting a bilingual society. So, we cannot build up a bilingual society from school until we look for a way of balancing the possibilities students have during their school years without regarding the kind of school they can afford. In order to show the effects inequality have in the program I will present the problems it has had because our country is not prepared for being bilingual, then I will talk about the big differences between public and private schools and finally I will deal with the socio-economic problems our country has.

First and foremost it is important to say that bilingualism is more a social phenomenon than an academic one. A bilingual society exists because there are two or more languages in contact, because it is a top-down imposition so everything in the country has to be in both languages (television, newspapers, official procedures, etc.), or there is our case in which it is built up from school. Indeed, the last one is the most difficult to implement because it requires of investment and deep studies about the educational conditions.

Talking about our specific situation our country is not prepared for a bilingual society made in school. The Ministry of Education is well-intentioned but there are still too many aspects to work on to achieve the PNB goals. Clearly our country has not situations in which people can really use the language in their daily lives, hence school has to do everything to provide enough time and spaces to practice the language. However, this is not happening. Puerres (2006) in her thesis talks about the hours of study we give to English in public schools, just three hours per week. 

These are my references: 

CARDENAS, M. (2006). “Bilingual Colombia: Are we ready for it? What is needed? In: 19^th  Annual EA Education Conference.

DÁVILA, Diana Marcela (2012). Capital lingüístico en inglés y desigualdad de oportunidades educativas: exploración en dos colegios oficiales de Bogotá. Bogotá, 82h. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Facultad de ciencias humanas. Maestría en sociología.

SÁNCHEZ, A. (2012). “El bilingüismo en los bachilleres colombianos” In: Documentos de trabajo sobre economía regional. Nº 159