In the general population regardless of ethnicity or mother tongue when the issue of schools imparting a specific political agenda is raised the question “Are schools politicized?” has an automatic translation: "Do ikastolas, or euskaltegis, promote Basque nationalist politics in their students?" Most people hesitate to answer this openly in the street to a stranger, but most everybody has their definite opinion. It is a debate that rages on behind closed doors, underscoring the importance of separating publicly expressed opinions and private individual opinion.

The issue made headlines in the media finally in March 1996 when policemen required to take Basque language courses did so at an euskaltegi and exposed to the public exercises oral and written that were explicitly empathetic to victims of police brutality during Basque nationalist manifestations. Out of the woodwork came several other testimonies of individuals who had felt harassed because of their political ideas at Euskaltegis. The implicit accusations of political bias and harassment was felt by Ikastolas who made several public announcements in this regard. This media event presented only one side of political ideology being expressed through education. As many ardent Euskalduns would argue, when Spanish politics are part of the curriculum in other schools, it is not an issue worth media attention.
If accusations fly in the face of Spanish and Basque immersion schools, how about public schools that teach a mixed language curriculum? Schools teaching Mod. B, possessing a mixed language curriculum, more readily escape fast opinions regarding the presence of a political agenda or a political leaning among the school community. I have heard more than one person argue that this mixed language model, unlike the immersion models in Mod. A or Mod. D, is the most recent to surface, thus explaining the yet to be defined critique. This explanation however reveals the association that any immersion model has regardless of the overall changes in curriculum. In this sense, schools with Spanish or Basque dominant curriculum are more easily victims to preconceived notions.
Ikastolas are especially vulnerable to assumptions of politically driven education because of their particular history. Over the past 30 years, ikastolas have evolved with the consent and support of parents and teachers without changing its main goal, to create bilingual individuals capable of functioning in all aspects of their life in both Basque and Spanish. The collaboration and impetus of working among like-minded parties has the unintended consequence of making those with a difference of opinion feel alienated or even threatened. The common criticism of ikastolas is that they merge education with Basque nationalist politics and promote intolerance. The counter argument is that any school that does not include Basque language education as a priority in its curriculum is also promoting intolerance and the specific national politics of the Spanish nationalism.
I asked survey participants, without specifying one school system or the other, whether they felt schools imparted certain political ideologies unto their students. Though the single most frequent response was "yes, of course", when we look at the gradient of possible answers1-5, 3 being neutral, the majority (42%) of the survey participants stated that this was not the case. Though according to the survey the majority of the population does not consider schools to impart any particular political ideology, the results are so close that it is not clear that had another random selection of people been gathered the results would have been different. As is, it seems that the most influential factors are ethnicity and political ideology, which themselves are not unrelated.
The most noteworthy influence among respondents was the primary ethnic association with Spanish identity. Whether people identified themselves as Spanish or Spanish-Basque seemed to more often to correlate with a affirmation that schools were politicized. Breaking the expected pattern, however, that among those who were born in Spain the opinions on this matter were evenly split. This unexpected result leads me to consider that among those who identified themselves as Spanish perhaps it was the second generation Spanish that most acutely feels the pressure to conform. It is the generation of Spanish born in the Basque Country who have lived through the changes in language policy and the infra-valorization of Spanish language and culture.
When we consider the geo-ethnic imaginary boundaries, we find that even in these areas where culture, worldview and ethnicity seem to converge there is no striking majority of opinion only simple majority of votes. Still, in each geo-ethnic imaginary town, the majority of the opinion agreed with the ethnic tendency. Whereby the majority of those who live in Renteria, agreed that schools were politicized, and the majority of those who live in Errenteria or Orereta schools were not politicized. The statement that schools are not politicized reflects one of two positions. The most common implied statement is "no, ikastolas are not politicized". The second is a desire to state that Basque society as a whole is beyond politically biased education. An affirmation that discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or politics does not occur anymore. As every where else in Europe, education just is, it is neutral.