Moreover, there is the slow burn of the crisis of language learning at both secondary level, where a pitiful 12 per cent of students who complete secondary schooling take languages in their final exams, and at the tertiary level, where the number of languages taught has fallen from 66 to less than 30 in the past decade.
This discourse is taking place against the backdrop of the financial crisis, which only heightens how important languages are in our rapidly and deeply globalised world, where the pension incomes of Australians are tied to the economic fortunes of North Americans, Asians and Europeans.
This is what globalisation ultimately means: international dependency of a depth that has never been experienced in human history.
When the economic and social fortunes of all countries are so directly and closely tied to those of other countries a debate about overcoming the all too real language education crisis in Australia is very much to be welcomed.
However, the way the national conversation about languages is framed is disappointing and ultimately futile. Australia has unique potential as an Anglophone but multilingual country with European institutions and traditions, at the edge of the fastest growing and most dynamic part of the world, with Asian friends and neighbours. Few would believe we have lived up to our national potential, which is only available through a rich understanding of a multitude of languages.
Despite recent intensified interest in language education we are concerned that today’s debates risk entrenching three fallacies.
The first is the ‘English will do’ fallacy. The second is that we have to choose between Asia and Europe. The third is that language education serves only a utilitarian purpose, a fallacy which argues that we need foreign language skills exclusively to serve the utilitarian purpose of promoting trade and international political relations.
Let us examine each of these misconceptions in turn. Too many advocates of languages fear that recognition of the unique and unparalleled importance of English in the world diminishes the case for other languages.
We feel the complete opposite is true. The reality of the global lingua franca role of English is undeniable. Recent estimates are that close to one-third of the population of the world either knows or is studying English.
Australia has a vast benefit derived in English medium education. To remove the native speaker advantage, countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas whose national languages are not English increasingly offer specialised business, technology and science programs in English to compete in this promising market. So why is this not bad news for other languages?
Because the millions of Chinese, Germans and Paraguayans who are learning and using English to communicate with Bulgarians and Americans alike are adding English to their Chinese, German and Spanish. As they become bilingual, it is only native speakers of English who remain monolingual. The disadvantage is reversed. While not knowing English is a disadvantage, knowing only English is a disadvantage too.
The second fallacy is the categorical choice we are often enjoined to make. Put aside Europe, we are part of Asia; or reject Asia and cleave to Europe. The dichotomy is absurdly false.
Is the French and Spanish spoken throughout the Pacific an Asian or European language; what about the Cantonese spoken in Canada?
More significant than the silliness of trying to apply Middle Aged typology to a 21st century mobile world, we need national language capability in both so-called Asian and European languages.
Each particular language has its distinctive needs. What Australia needs to do to ensure a national language capability in Vietnamese and Hindi, Spanish and German, is unique to each of those languages.
There is no Asian language category; even so-called character based languages are radically different from each other. We must teach in our schools and universities the key languages of Asia and the key languages of Europe. We must also support languages that do not fit neatly into secure geographic categorisations but which are important for Australian national interests (Arabic, Russian, and world languages such as Spanish).
Moreover, a humane and sophisticated languages policy sensitive to national need must find ways to support Aboriginal and community languages.
We should have a policy that aims to conserve the remarkable contribution that immigrant communities from all over the world make to the nation. Of course we agree that our schools cannot teach all languages, but students and communities provide these programs in vast numbers.
The final fallacy, and in some ways the deepest and most troubling, is the almost exclusively utilitarian approach to language learning that much of the recent discussion has taken. Of course, the trade and security reasons for studying languages are enormously important on a variety of levels, but ultimately the reason students should learn and study languages is a humanistic one.
First, we know that students may start a language for utilitarian purposes, but the research also teaches that it is what language brings beyond some potential future job that keeps students studying until their language proficiency is functionally useful.
Studying languages allows our students to encounter human differences in their most natural way and thereby to open themselves to an exploring and understanding of the self based on learning about the other.
There will always be a need for short term and specialised niche language teaching in particular languages, but the providers of this kind of training can do so best on the basis of a successful apprenticeship in bilingualism in schools.
Ultimately this is why we compel young Australians to be schooled. We want them to experience rich, humanistic education that asks questions about the civilisations of Europe and Asia, not to mention the Americas and Africa.
A language education policy that takes seriously the highest intellectual, cultural and civilisational ideals of the great experiences of humanity must be global, taking in both Asian and European and fusing these together to help forge a uniquely Australian world literacy.
Kent Anderson is professor of Asian studies and law at the Australian National University and director of the faculty of Asian studies. Joseph Lo Bianco is professor of language and literacy education at the University of Melbourne. This article originally appeared here in The Australian.
The Anderson, Lo Bianco article on Asian language teaching in Australia is most important. Missing are several key issues, however. It is quite basic: funding at Federal and State levels, but also refusal of many academics to learn and use Asian languages, which then impacts on students throughout the system.
We have a Prime Minister who is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, yet his policy on education is extremely backward. Even the name “Building the Education Revolution” is an oxymoron. Revolutions overturn old ways, they are not “built.” However, we are seeing extensive “building” through contracts for infrastructure often not needed. Funding is going into the wrong sources. It needs to be redirected to people, not just building contractors.
To get Asian language education moving again in Australia we need the very best teachers, particularly at the secondary level. This requires 1) better pay for language teachers; 2) high level proficiency and specialization in one or two related languages.
We all know that secondary level teachers are underpaid, and that they have extremely meager resources. Poor pay, sadly, means lesser qualified staff. This is hardly a mystery, yet our Prime Minister seems to not be aware of this economic reality, or perhaps he knows it but prefers funding others for whatever reason.
The reality is that much of the public education language teaching is done by teachers who have not specialized in Japanese or Chinese – but instead a European language. Most have never passed the highest level Japanese proficiency test. They are not required to do so. Even elite schools – like St. Peter’s (private) in Adelaide – offer Chinese but not Japanese. It is rare to have native Asian speakers employed as teachers. Some languages that are very important for our country’s relationship – and countries with currently high immigration into Australia – are not taught at all at the secondary level in South Australia (I can’t speak for other states). Korean is the most glaring example.
Why are teachers paid so poorly, standards so law, and some languages not taught at all at secondary level? Because the government refuses to properly fund these programs – in the schools – and at university level where these teachers should be trained.
Standards are generally pathetically low. Secondary graduating students in South Australia – level 12 – only need to know some 200 kanji to pass. This is 3rd grade level in Japan – we are talking about 8 and 9 year olds. Students at 3rd year level at university still cannot easily read newspapers published in Japan because of the reluctance of students at university to learn the required number of kanji for literacy – much less the compounds beyond basic kanji knowledge. However, students are strongly influenced by their educational environment – and by academics who hold key positions in departments such as politics and economics (the latter often called “business” these days to attract more student numbers).
The focus on language study in general has become far too narrow. Language study must be situated within a broader study of a nation’s history, culture, and society. The premier place for this in South Australia is Centre for Asian Studies at University of Adelaide. Yet the facilities for the Centre have been cut in half over the last few years, and staff reduced. Flinders University has “Asian Studies” but it is solely Indonesian-focused. You cannot study Japanese or Chinese there. I am the only faculty member at Flinders who researches in primary sources in an Asian language (Japanese – history), yet other faculty members at Flinders with no knowledge of an Asian language (beyond the Indonesian specialists) publish articles on China and other Asian countries. What message does this send to students? The message is that you can be an academic “expert” on an Asian country or region – yet be totally ignorant of Asian languages.
I should add that I am in the American Studies Department, and teach nothing related to Asia, except on Japanese corporations (a business class). There are people like myself – in the universities – whose abilities are ignored, so we work independently, usually with overseas colleagues, sometimes with the few in Australia we can reach.
One final symptom of the source of the problem – beyond funding – exists inside our universities and among some – but not all – of our colleagues in Asian Studies. Let me provide one recent example.
Over the weekend I met with a Japanese scholar in Adelaide who is from Tokyo. We met a decade ago at a research seminar where I made a presentation (Chuo University, City Campus). The seminar was well attended, and it included all the major labor historians of Japan that worked in the Tokyo region.
This scholar is now a visiting research professor at Monash University, connected to Japanese Studies there. The other week he gave a seminar presentation along with another professor from Tokyo, and this professor’s Korean research colleague. Their subject was industrial relations history. There were three presenters, but only three people showed up for the presentation. Three academics from Tokyo – and three Australians present to hear them.
I would suggest that “Asian Studies” academics in Australia need to look to their own practices, and the failed policies of their universities and government(s), to solve this problem of failure in teaching of Asian languages. Consider the key issues: proper funding (secondary and tertiary levels); higher standards; and involvement with teachers and scholars beyond your own doorstep.