Production of teaching materials
Elhuyar Fundazioa
As in other areas of the Basque industry, in the production of didactic material it seems that it has made its way to Elhuyar. One of Elhuyar's fights has been to obtain suitable materials so that children, and especially young people who have prepared and completed the OHO in Basque, continue to learn Basque. For many years he has worked on this task; around 1976-77 are Elhuyar's first textbooks: mathematicians, chemists and physicists. Previously some notes were also prepared. Videos and software began to be produced in the mid-1980s and finally CD-ROMs since 1993.
The first texts were addressed to ikastola and primary education. However, in the early 1980s, Elhuyar made a strategic decision: to set aside primary education and strengthen the preparation of materials for secondary education. It was considered especially important the creation and publication of materials for Professional Training, since there was a significant risk that the atomization of specialties outside the process of euskaldunization of Professional Training. The future has shown that we had a lot to do with the challenge of vocational training in Basque.
The first books prepared for the university, which took place in collaboration with the EU, also belong to the same period.
Elhuyar pioneered the production of texts. Its advantages, such as social recognition, and disadvantages, such as the reduced market, have been suffered. Now the situation is different: we have gone from being almost unique to being surrounded by competitors with more resources than us. This has led to an uncomfortable situation both by the influence of these competitors and our weaknesses and shortcomings. It must be recognized that the production of textbooks does not have its great weight within Elhuyar and that, little by little, it will be smaller in the future.
On the other hand, the situation of the authors of Basque texts is not simple. When a market has been made in teaching in Basque, the publishers that have come from outside (directly or through their Basque subsidiaries) have done us a great deal of damage, due to the lower production costs and the materials amortized in Spanish. In addition, like us, they have had the support of the institutions.
Basque publishers should know how to adapt to this situation, being more effective, among other things, but this will not be enough, especially if we focus on the atomization of secondary education. If you want to create didactic material for Euskal Herria from Euskal Herria, if you want students to observe the world from a Basque perspective, it is absolutely necessary to put in place means to strengthen and strengthen Basque publishing houses. Institutions have a lot to say when it comes to preventing Basque students from falling into cultural colonialism. Broader and more specific aid is needed than current ones.
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