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Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government came a step closer to formalising its plans to make Asian language study compulsory for schools this week. It has released a draft curriculum for public consultation which reveals plans to include Indonesian, Korean and french language in the curriculum. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard publicly stated in September 2012 that in response to the "staggering growth" in the region, the government would be instigating 25 key measures to strengthen and exploit links with Asia. The plan includes the requirement that one third of civil servants and company directors have a "deep knowledge," thousands of scholarships for Asian students, and the opportunity for every schoolchild to learn one of four "priority" languages- Chinese, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian."
The Australian government came a step closer to formalising its plans to make Asian language study compulsory for schools this week.
This week? You can't learn a new language in one week!
French is an asian language now?
(And why no capital for the poor old frogs?)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Sure, French used to be an official language in colonial Indochina, but it hardly seems to make sense to consider on par with the other languages listed.
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Australia should be making English a priority, since it is an English speaking country. The modern world conducts business in English anyway. What really is the point of learning Indonesian or Hindi?? Even India demands English speakers of its own people. Australia should be doing the same, especially since more and more immigrants are coming here.
Learning is surely great in all forms. But I am confused why Hindi is a 'priority language'. Every corporate senior person I've met from India - Director type level - not only speaks several Indian languages, but also has flawless English in terms of grammar and vocabulary mixed with a somewhat local accent depending on where they're from in India, unless, as an in-joke among Indian colleagues goes, they're walked past the US Embassy and are suddenly embroiled with a thick US accent.
Chinese, for dealing with anyone outside the BPO / ITO / major trade companies: government, state owned and specialists yes.
Japanese, things in Japan tend to happen in Japanese despite the speaker's English ability, whatever the industry, so yes.
Indonesian, honestly have no experience.
But Hindi. Seems odd to be a priority.
I currently live in South East Asia (born European), and the economic dynamism is remarkable. It is a good idea to prepare young people to "the century of Asia". I wish that I had started learning Mandarin and Japanese earlier in life.
This is going to break the hearts of all the American talk radio listeners who have threatened to pull up and move to Austrailia to get away from "big government".
I can tell you they don't want to learn friggin' Chinese! (not "Chinese", "friggin Chinese").
...strikes again!
Language learning is hard. I have enthusiastically studied quite many languages for many years but managed to reach a fluency only in one or two foreign languages. For example, I studied Swedish in school almost daily for 6 1/2 years and can't follow a TV program that is in Swedish.
If you make language learning a priority, understand that you will need 10 years of active study to reach a usable level even when you have the inclination.
(Yes, English is one of those foreign languages.)
Chinese (Mandarin to be precise) is the current language fad. I remember when about a decade ago everyone was into Japanese and before that there was Russian. There are many good reasons to learn foreign languages from an early age but frankly the whole "economic relationships" argument is BS. The truth is that the current world lingua franca for business is English and it's going to stay that way for a while.
Kinda like how we good european citizens were busy learning German in 1943 as a result of the 'staggering growth' in the region, right?
The government is trying to eradicate everything English and have everyone just talk French. The optimist in me says Quebec should learn from this, but the realist in me knows they won't. Pretty bad when children can't use any language but French during recess and during their lunch breaks, we have language cops going around offices making sure microwave buttons are in French and that Italian pasta names are in French, can't have people ordering RIGATONI now can we....
Of the 4 priority languages Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian only 3 are actual languages.
"Chinese" does not exist as a language. Many languages are spoken within China*, the big two being Mandarin and Cantonese, with a host of smaller languages appearing in different areas. Now I assume they mean mandarin as that is the most common language within china, especially the richer areas, but saying "Chinese" is a priority makes no more sense than saying we should teach our kids "European".
*While there are many spoken languages interestingly the majority share the same written language. It's not uncommon for people from different area's to be able to pass notes to each other but not talk.
Interestingly, throughout Asia English is taught in schools. In Taiwan it's become a mandatory part of the curriculum, and that may also be the case elsewhere. When it's not, many parents go out of their ways to get their kids to learn the language.
In the US, however, a second language seems to be selected based on whatever the prevailing language spoken by the dominant ethnic group in the area. And that's assuming they offer a second language at all. More often than not the language ends up being Spanish, which all too frequently becomes more of a service to ESL students than value to anyone else.
I find that to be a persistent problem with the American educational system, there's no goal and thinking is often too insular. The difference between systems is that overseas they're trying to make people competitive internationally but still expecting their citizens speak the official language. Meanwhile, Americans, instead of stressing the importance of English for success keep making accommodations for non-speakers.
I suppose someday the US might become a Spanish speaking nation, and that's totally fine. But we're far from that reality and currently Asian nations are economically dominant and on the rise. Of course, it's not feasible to keep switching languages every time some new nation rises in influence, which is why we've got English as the standard and why everyone continues to learn that.
When I was at school, the choices were Japanese or Indonesia.
I knew a few aussies who learnt Indonesian as a second language during high school back in the 90s. It was probably offered because they're a large neighbouring country that we have a good relationship with. That was all the reasons I could think of. Perhaps the government thought there might be future economic prospect, so best to give some students a head start. But I suspect it pales in comparison to Australia's dealings with the wealthier asian countries eg. China/Japan/Korea/Thailand.
We get a fair bit of students from Indonesia studying abroad. From observation they're not as large as a community as say the Chinese/Indians students, and even then quite a lot of them are actually Chinese-Indonesian.
This is the Victoria's state government brochure on why we should learn Indonesian:
http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/teachlearn/student/whylearnindonesian.pdf
Indonesian language skills can open doors to a
wide range of employment opportunities in areas
of government, education, business, tourism, travel,
translating and interpreting, the military, medicine,
law, engineering and journalism.
South-east Asia has undergone enormous change
over the past thirty years and as Australia’s nearest
Asian neighbour Indonesia is a fascinating and
affordable country in which to travel, study or work.
It is interesting to know that Indonesian and
Malaysian are a little easier for English speakers to
learn than some other Asian languages. They use
the Latin script and are non-tonal languages so
English speakers can pick them up quickly.
On top of these advantages
Australia has a growing
Indonesian community,
including more than 35,000
Indonesian and Malaysian students
attending Australian schools and universities.
So students of Indonesian will never have any
difficulty finding someone to practise with.
Pretty generic reasons. They mention Malaysian because they share similiar language.
Will everyone also be required to suck Asian dick, too?
It's exactly why Spanish is now a major component of US schools and many of our signs and government docs are available in it. While we are getting tons of immigrants from Mexico, they are getting lots by boat from countries that speak those languages.
In the US, however, a second language seems to be selected based on whatever the prevailing language spoken by the dominant ethnic group in the area. And that's assuming they offer a second language at all. More often than not the language ends up being Spanish, which all too frequently becomes more of a service to ESL students than value to anyone else.
I've noticed the exact opposite during my education. I live in Georgia, and we have a lot of Spanish speakers in my general area. Of course my middle school offered only French and Spanish (I chose French). My high school offered French, Spanish, Latin, and German (I did one year of French and 3 of Latin). I went to college in rural, middle of nowhere North Carolina, and my university offered French, Spanish, Biblical Greek (it was a baptist university) German (which I took for 2 years) and, my senior year, Arabic (which I also took). Did graduate school back in Atlanta where I took more Arabic, and as it was a large, state university they had all manner of languages one could take. I am of the opinion that most students learn Spanish because it is considered the easier of the languages. But, just like with any other subject, the opportunities to learn something new are out there, you just have to want to learn.
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While many of the Chinese business-people speak English, those in the internal labour market may not (at least not fluently). Eliminating the language barrier won't help too much though unless some of the walls against foreign ownership/participation in the Chinese market are dropped. Currently it's often still quite hard to interact without a middle-man.
Indonesian is apparently the biggest economy on SE-Asia, or at least according to wikipedia, so that may make sense as well. It's also fairly close to Australia.
Japanese. Well they're not the tech poster-child anymore but I wouldn't count them out yet.
Korean. Supplanting Japan in many of the tech areas, with companies such as LG, Samsung, etc.
Hindi seems to be the dominant language in India (again according to WP), so maybe it's a similar case to China where knowing the language may allow one to bypass the middle-man. I'd say in those cases that knowing the culture is probably just as important as the language, however.
So now they're teaching Urdu and Hindi.
I live here and have a bunch of friends who were either taught indonesian or Japanese at least for a couple of classes in school.
It makes sense, as most of our trade is within the Asian region.
I know this may come as a shock to those in the US, but learning a language other than English is pretty common in other English speaking countries, especially in the Eurozone.
Most of the people working in hospitality I dealt with during a 6 week tour of Europe (inc, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, etc.) spoke at least 2-3 languages. One of our swiss tour guides spoke at least 5.
Knowing the native language of those you work with or trade with is useful. You may be very surprised at what may be getting said between others right out in front of you if you don't understand, or the other guys think you don't understand.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
As a parent who desperately wants his children to become fluent in at least two languages I am stuck with horrible choices because I live in America. I have cobbled together language training for my two older sons while they were young enough to learn but it was extremely difficult. Now, to get an immersion Chinese program for him, I am using school of choice to send my youngest to an inner city school where they are so poor that they just fired all of the elementary school art, music, and PE teachers to close a budget gap. When will we make education a priority in this country?
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So, I'm semi-fluent in Spanish and I wrote to my federal politician about incentives for learning Portuguese - no response.
Who will teach the people of Timor Leste their own official language? Certainly not interested volunteers from Australia.
I suppose someday the US might become a Spanish speaking nation, and that's totally fine. But we're far from that reality and currently Asian nations are economically dominant and on the rise. Of course, it's not feasible to keep switching languages every time some new nation rises in influence, which is why we've got English as the standard and why everyone continues to learn that.
Much of the U.S. is already bilingual. But learning Spanish isn't just a good idea for use at home, it's useful rather far afield -- more people in the Western Hemisphere speak Spanish than English. Asian languages might be trendier, but if you can't find good international business opportunities somewhere between the Rio Grande and Drake Passage, then the problem isn't with the language you studied.
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Those hours are a chunk of time stolen from the life of a child. He can never get them back.
If a decade or two is devoted to the problem, then there will be a small benefit. It's extremely unlikely to make up for the investment. He could get a tiny bit of extra pay in the military or he could get a job with the CIA. This is nothing to get excited about.
"Chinese" is a perfect acceptable English name of the national language of China. It has several other meansing too. In China they call it the Peking Dialect, the Northern Dialect, The National Languge, The Common Speech, and The Middle language among other names, beiyu, guoyu, putonhua, zhongweng, hanyu.
Ignorance does not seem like a good start in enhancing economic and cultural ties with Asian nations.
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Not A Single Sense was Made.
Oh, I get it intermediately, while there's still a myriad of languages out there, increasing the number of spoken languages seems like a good thing. You'll be more able to communicate. However, from a rational thermodynamic perspective, you're placing more cognitive load on individuals needlessly. Anyone who anticipates needing the linguistic skill should adopt it, anyone who doesn't anticipate the need can learn the language as needed. The way to get everyone on the same wavelength isn't to have everyone learn everyone's language, its to use translators (a "VM" in machine-speak), or teach everyone only one language the world over. It should be one that's compressible and has few glyphs, like (new) Japanese or English. Hell, the Japanese change their glyph direction at will to flow more with the right to left top to bottom styling of the French, English, German, Russian, etc. "western" languages.
Culture blah blah blah. Don't care. Whatever best translates to machine speak is what I'm going with. That's English, or Japanese, and there's lots more folks speaking English than Japanese, thus it's the future. Deal with it. From their disregard of per unit energy consumption I take it these are the same folks who use AV products instead of running hardware supported virtualized OSs? Figures. Someone needs to cull these legislators from the herd fast, they're hindering progress.
back, way back, like late 70's early 80's back, I remember my father and other teachers talking trying to introduce at least a single year of manditory asian language studies for high schools. At the time only 2 government schools in the entire state were teaching Japanese and maybe 1 or 2 teaching Chinese (Mandarin) and 1 teaching Indonesian. These were only offered in high schools, apart from what would now be called ESL classes for migrant kids there were _no_ language programs in any government primary schools (talk about a pedagogical disaster... yes lets wait for them to hit 13 before we teach them a second language.... effin' brilliant).
.... even though it taught standardised Greek and Italian, not the parochial regional dialects that the usual migrant families spoke at home .... so the reasons for those limits on intake that were?....
Those few state schools that taught asian languages where "gifted" schools, seated in high income areas competing against Anglican Church run elite grammar schools and, unless you got in on a language or music scholarship had very limited intake outside their defined intake suburbs, so... good luck getting in if you were outside their watershed, I was only 4 klm away from the one teaching Japanese and still couldn't get entry. So if you were a state school student you were left with French, but usually due to class size limits the school only only offered it to you if you got straight As and one of the top 20 English students.
Or maybe, if you were in an area with high migrant kids, you could study Greek and Italian... but only if you were of Greek or Italian decent
French? Multiculturalism is hella whack.
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Maybe things have changed, but when I was in primary school in Australia (Prep -> Grade 6 [ages 5->12]) we did Indonesian as part of the standard teaching (grade 6 students also became mentors for the younger students in the language), I'm pretty sure other schools in the state learned it too.
In grade 7, we got taught 4 languages (10 weeks? each), French, German, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin I think). After grade 7 you could choose to continue a language. I continued on with German until grade 10, since at the time, that area of Europe was where lots of the scientific discoveries were being made, and I could already speak English.
Holidaying in Indonesia is inane, after the Bali bombings in 2002. In fact, Indonesia is a hotbed of al Qaeda/ Jemiah Islamiah activity, and is a real threat to Australia. Similarly, Malaysia is an Islamic apartheid state. Yeah, the peeps of Oz could learn languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese & Japanese, but learning Malay or Bahasa Indonesia is a waste
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