Bilinguism ready?

Thanks to an article from two teachers from Universidad de Nariño most specifically from the very title of this text I started to wonder and try to reflect on a very sensitive issue (at least it is for me and some of my colleagues). The title of this publication is:  Is Colombia Ready for “Bilingualism”?

Is it? Is this country ready to adapt a framework and standards which work on different parts of the globe, and I quote the author “similarities between that context and the Colombian one are basically non-existent, and that the Common European Framework (CEF) was created under different circumstances and with different purposes” (Sánchez, Obando 2009)

That context the author mentions is Europe and our society and theirs are completely opposite poles.  Starting by the socio-economic situation a student can have, these two sides of a coin differ on many different aspects.   An underprivileged student in Colombia who does not have access to all the technology and resources (by technology I mean at least a TV set and by resources I mean at least a book on which he or she can work); how can this subject learn the language?

“Because Colombian standards for foreign language teaching are barely structured, attention has been given to foreign models. In general, standards have been obtained by importing the ones that were developed in other places, under different circumstances and contexts. Although those standards are valid and reliable for foreign academic communities, it does not mean that they would fit the particularities of our institutions, language learners and so on”. Ayala & Álvarez (2005, p.12)

Another issue and I think it is of the most important ones is the time students are exposed to the language. According to the CEF the students must take a total of 720 hours divided into 8 years of study taking from 5 to 9 hours per week.  In Colombia only 270 hours are devoted to English. Why is that occurring if the standards adapted say something different and the only exposure to the language is that given at school (in the cases where no resources are available for the student) and being Colombia a monolingual country? Is not this contradictory?

The only idea that comes to my mind is mediocrity, adaptations made randomly and without any thorough consideration.

Based on this little piece of information (the author also considers and discusses aspects such as methodology, approach and assessment but that will need a very deep analysis) I dare to say that the standards imposed by the government to achieve goals to compete to Nations whose societies are ahead from ours need to be changed taking into account that WE ARE COLOMBIANS we are not an easy society to deal with and our way of living and thinking cannot be measured by standards created by others but from ourselves.