An interesting interview with Monica

Many were the topics we dealt with Monica, a psicotherapist from the UK who gently visited us in class to talk about her opinions and experiencies. Monica is a wordly woman who has worked as a kind of British emabassor for the Educative System and now is learning Spanish in our Language School of Alicante.

Apart from her points of view related to Education in the UK, which will mention next, I would like to highlight first her opinion about the press and the Media in England. Monica did not declare herself as a voracious or faithful press reader, but she thinks that the good English press, such as Independet is quite elitist and very difficult to read, while tabloids are too much superficial and little informative. Also related to this topic, although undirectly, we talked about the loss of interest in politics in British population, something very common in American and Spanish society as well. Finally, to end up with this subject, she emphasized the American influences in the English Media: On one hand because of their similar points of view, we must not forget that both countries support each other, on the other hand because of American linguistic influences in the British language.

What she critizised and considered very poor was the Education in England and the USA. She compared it with the Eastern Educative System of Japan where children are said to be as seeds and adults have to make their best of them while in American and English schools children are thought to be whiteboards wiht nothing in their brains. Monica explained that a deep change in Education is necessary if the huge amount of children that do not finísh their studies were reduced. Actually, she said that the British government is carrying out a mesure which consists of paying children to stay in Education.

To finish the interview, we talked about more relaxing and personal aspects of Monica and we asked her about the things she missed of England and the differences she found between life in Spain and life in her own country. Answering the first question she said that she missed “fish and chips”. For the second question she explained in detail curious things such as conversations in the bus, which she found fantastic because it shows how close, communicative and happy Spanish are. On the other hand she said that things like sleeping and dinner time are quite different for her comparing with the UK, she said: “We eat at ten o’clock in the evening once in a blue moon”.

We had a good time interviewing Monica, she made us think and laugh, definitely we learnt a lot.