Grupo Tarraco Formacion or oh no, not another Master Propio stuff

Also, Americans can't fall asleep on train and wake up in a country where they speak a different language. Even in Ontario, I was a 4 hour drive from a nominally bilingual French/English environment, and 6 hours from Quebec. Here in the midwest, I'm looking at 12-18 hours of driving to get to a French or Spanish speaking community, so immersion opportunities are much more limited.

 

That's true but here in Europe we learn English starting very young (kindergarten) and French.
Just the idea of why anyone would put in no effort to learn another language sounds like cultural poverty to me.
I think that to understand other cultures well enough you must at least master a few world languages.

 

Yes, it's a mandatory part of the curriculum in Flanders to learn French.
In Wallonia Dutch is an elective course.
We have a small part of Belgium that is German-speaking.
German in Flanders is also a language that is taught in high school. From the 3rd year of high school up until the 6th and last.
Spanish is an elective taught in 5th and 6th years of high school.
I had German, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Latin and Ancient-Greek in my lesson program.
4 hours of mathematics until the 4rd year of high school , per week , is the minimum here. In 5 and 6 you can lower to 3 hours, but it's impossible to choose a lesson program without at least X hours of mathematics here.
You also need X hours of languages in your lesson package in high school no matter what your study direction is.
Chemistry is also a mandatory course of at least 2 hours a week, geography is mandatory at a minimum of 1 hour a week, Physics is also 2 hours a week but can be reduced to 1 hour a week in 5th and 6th years of high school.
Physical education is a mandatory course at a minimum of 2 hours a week.
Biology is mandatory at a minimum of at least 1 hour a week.
Philosophy is an elective of 1 hour a week.
Religion or ethics are electives but you need to choose one or the other. It's a course of 2 hours a week.

We have a very diverse curriculum in our high schools.
Flanders is amazing for high school education.

Higher education is not that great because everything is butt in seat. You don't have distance learning programs here in general in the world of higher education.

If you want to study an additional study you need to be present in evening classes. That's how professionals who already work are supposed to get a degree here.
That's why so many of us look at other countries for alternatives.

And in general Flanders is much more advanced in everything than Wallonia. Wallonia has a lower per capita income than Flanders.
Walloons also dislike Flemish people in general.
They refuse to talk Flemish. They see it as the language of the oppressor.
Which is ridiculous because a lot of our yearly contributions in Flanders are shared with Wallonia, to help sustain their economy.

 

Yeah in Canada, I was required to take French from Grades 4-9 (in some districts it's from K-9 where French teachers are available) but the quality of the instruction was poor. The same issue exists in Quebec with poor English teachers, though not as bad. I turned down a summer of French immersion to get a head start on my Bachelor's degree...that was a dumb decision because it turns out I hated that school and ended up transferring. It cost me $7,000, which I could have used on French courses. Ah well.

 

New Brunswick is the only province that is officially bilingual (Quebec being monolingual French and the rest not addressing it), so I wouldn't be surprised to find they've taken that to heart in their language education.

 

Yet, in spite of this, there are plenty of people in Europe who cannot speak English. They speak English about as well as I speak Spanish - they might be able to say a few things but actually existing in the language is something else. A good number of these people are extremely monolingual. Not only do they not know English, but they also don't know any of the other major languages either. My own foreign language skills are pretty sparse but English is definitely not universal. Nor would I expect it to be.

FYI, up until relatively recently, it was apparently "common knowledge" among educators that speaking 2 or more languages "caused brain damage". I used to have a book for teachers that explained that, actually, we've found that isn't completely true and it's okay to speak multiple languages. I suspect the "brain damage" thing is a large part of why Americans only speak one language.

 

This tracks with what I learned in the 90s. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5554523/ This paper goes into educators' knowledge of "neuromyths", they gave a survey with a variety of statements with correct answers of either True or False and noted educators performed better than the general public in knowing the correct answers. The two myths (both are False) most relevant to language learning were:

2. It is best for children to learn their native language before learning a second language
11. There are specific periods in childhood after which certain things cannot be learned

 

Yeah, I've always heard the opposite. That's why I was astonished to find this in a book from the late 80s or early 90s (I can't remember which). I wish I could remember the title of the book but I think it was possibly something about teaching ESL kids. It was definitely about teaching Elementary kids. The page in question was all about how, no, bilingual students aren't actually stupider than their monolingual peers so we shouldn't put them into those kinds of remedial classes just because English isn't their native language.

But, in elementary school, I do remember a significant portion of ESL students being sent to "Chapter One" (the remedial classes) no matter how fluent they were in English nor how good their grades were in the standard class. They liked it because it was easy and they got to sit there playing computer games for an hour or two every day. So, at least in some pockets of the US, I think this myth was very common among educators.

 

I've seen this forum mention California FCE. They said they validate Masters Propio by awarding a degree equivalency certificate that represents a regionally accredited Masters. I wonder would presenting this to a NACES evaluator convince one of them to give it a Master's degree that is regionally accredited evaluation. I believe if these evaluators stop evaluating these programs as single entities and just combine both the business and the school certifying the programs, it might be more convincing.

 

I can't see a NACES evaluator allowing an outside evaluator to influence their results. I personally have no faith at all in California FCE. Some of their affiliations are surprising, others are crap, and if they really want to instill faith they could list all the schools they work(ed) with that have accepted their evaluations, I bet the list would be short.

They're free to have a take on a foreign credential and charge money for it, but given that they aren't recognized as an evaluator in the same way, say, WES or ECE are by being NACES members, I have a hard time seeing CFCE's opinion being taken seriously by most schools. In the state of California, they are legitimately registered with the California Department of Education, but they're registered as both a Kindergarten and a High School despite billing themselves as a University, lol. I don't know what the heck is going on there, lol, but I wouldn't bother unless I was coming in from outside the country, had already scraped the very bottom of the barrel of every other avenue, and this was the only option left.

 

California FCE has low credibility. They have a high school license and based on these grant "equivalent degree" diplomas. They are not member of NACES nor any recognized credential evaluation association. I would save my money. ECE might grant credit equivalent to propio degrees. Propio degrees by definition are not official and not meant to be internationally recognized, they are what they are. In Spain, most universities would only recognize about 15% of credit transfer to an official degree.

There is also the local recognition issue, even if you get a foreign equivalency evaluation report, there are so many American schools with RA status that selling these degrees in the US market is not easy. 20 years ago, I was able to get adjunct work with foreign credentials but there are so many people with online degrees that I have given up the adjunct business as I have not been able to land work in the last 5 years and people with traditional American schools are now working in places like Capella and NCU.

Very easy experiment, send few CVs for adjunct work with ENEB degrees and see the response. There is no need for a foreign equivalency report to apply. If you see positive responses, maybe you can consider getting a foreign evaluation.

 

Their reports are very professionally written and come with nice diplomas. For general employment purposes, some employers don't understand NACES, etc so they might pass here and there. For example, a latin person with an ENEB MBA applies for a job in California for a sales job that does not require a degree or for an accounting clerk position, the California FCE report might pass. However, if you are applying for an adjunct job at a recognized university, this report most likely will not work. If you apply for a work permit abroad based on this report, the immigration officer most likely will not accept it either.

 

I'm curious. What has been your application coverage? RA? NA? Unaccredited?

All of the above?

 

But by that standard an evaluation you printed up yourself in Word would fit the bill. If it only succeeds due to ignorance it's not really a success at all.

 

I worked many years for Walden, Devry, etc. Jobs dried out due to the collapse of some the programs that I taught. I tried to get back into adjunct with no success. I have degrees from Australia, Canada and the UK. I am fine, I work full time in academics but the academic adjunct work just dried out. Even in Canada, many of the online programs went bankrupt or outsourced to china or india.