The teaching of Asian languages in Australia is declining, a report reveals.
Australia's close proximity to Asia, and its vital trade links, led Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to announce a multimillion-dollar plan in 2009 to revitalise Asian languages in the country's schools.
But the reality, according to a government-commissioned report by the University of Melbourne's Asia Education Foundation, is that the number of young people learning Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indonesian is reducing rapidly.
Rudd's plan was to have 12 percent of Year 12 students speaking an Asian language fluently by 2020, but at the moment, only six percent of students have reached that goal. Half of these are from Asian backgrounds.
Ninety percent of non-Asian students were dropping out of Asian language courses before reaching Year 12, the report found.
"This is a trend we must reverse," said the Prime Minister, addressing a forum organized by Asialink in Canberra. "Our job is in fact to be the smartest kids on the block."
Australia's opposition leader, Tony Abbott, told the conference, "Confident that English is the world's second language, we have become linguistically lazy."
Australians are divided over the necessity of learning Asian languages, however. In an editorial in Melbourne's Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt echoed the concerns of many when he said Australian children from non-Asian backgrounds were unable to compete with those from Asian families.
"No wonder 94 percent of students learning Chinese give it up as soon as they can," he wrote, citing the fact that the highest achievers in Chinese were students from a Chinese background.
"Koreans made to study it at primary school will be lucky to gain a handful of words," he said. "What a waste of their time. What a lesson in futility."
30 May 2010
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