Since the time of my fieldwork, the debate seems to continue unchanged. In California fearing that the melting pot effect would be undermined, Bilingual education has all but disappeared. Nowadays, charter schools with dual immersion programs are under attack. The underlying assumption motivating these changes is that somehow by educating students in two languages, by communicating knowledge in more than one language a common national framework is fractured. The research at hand addresses these concerns by looking at the experience of bilingual education and the construction of a national identity in the Basque Country.

This chapter looks into the schools experience and asks: Are schools politicized? The previous chapter looked at public opinion and revealed that this topic was anything but trivial. Even when answering in the negative, the answer came with the additional political commentary that schooling has either improved dramatically compared to the time of Franco or that ikastolas are now “schools like any other in Europe” fit to be the Basque public school open to all. Over the period of a year I visited six schools in Oarsoaldea. In this chapter I will address the school going experience . The observations are based on fieldwork notes from the entire year.

Where are the schools situated? What do the diverse school settings communicate? As a prospective parent or student or visitor off the street what are the first impressions about the school? I will temper first impressions with comments from the entire year of fieldwork. This general look at each school is complemented in subsequent chapters dedicated to in depth views into classroom dynamics, teacher’s and school administration perspectives. How does activism, politics, political dialogue or endorsements, the discussion of national agendas or national constructs enter into the overarching school experience.

(Missing here is a review of literature relevant to this particular chapter.)