I'm too cranky with Rudd and McLelland's capitulation to the religious right to compose a mild-mannered post, so I'll leave it to John Hajek and Yvette Slaughter to say something intelligent and balanced about Rudd's language capacity while still sticking it to him about a narrow-focus on Asian languages. Woulda liked to have seen something in there about Indigenous languages too, but we're still a long way off from 'every Australian child should learn an Indigenous language at school'.
(Yes, I know that's a political minefield, even before you get remotely mainstream. One can but dream).
Monday, May 05, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
At our local high school there are no languages on offer. Zip, nada. And there never has been. Despite the relatively high proportion of indigenous students there is nowhere in town you can develop or learn skills in a local language even though we have our own Aboriginal Tafe and language centre. I believe this may have something to do with politics amongst local indigenous language speakers but it's no excuse. It shits me.
I'm not so outraged by Rudd's narrow focus on Asian languages. After all, prior to Asia-philia it was Europhilia-a-go-go which had arguably less justification. As long as students are studying languages - any languages - they will at the very least get some awareness of their importance and of the massive commitment it takes to learn how to communicate in them. We live in a country where a privately educated elected representative can do a 2-month mickey mouse course in a European language and declare himself fluent. He's not alone. How often have you come across Australians who believe themselves fluent in a language after memorising a few items of vocabulary and turns-of-phrase? In language-aware Africa, Europe and SE Asia this would be mocked.
PS. One reason I am opposed to a national curriculum is that it would homogenise what students learn. Wouldn't it be grand to have one school focused on Asian languages, another down the road on Euro languages, another on Australian languages etc etc?
Perez, thanks for your story about the local high school. And you're right. *Any* language learning would be a vast improvement - though we must be careful to impose the caveat on "*any* language learning is good", as long as it is done with commitment, appropriate methodologies and expectations, and serious respect within the school(s). I think more damage than good can be done through mediocre half-thought-through attempts to affect change. E.g. students may come out of school with a negative attitude to languages and learning them after poor teaching and learnign experiences - and surely this is worse than just plain ignorance?
I heard Jo lo Bianco on Radio National some years ago, making the point that lowly-held expectations of school language courses itself compounded the lack of esteem and respect for language learning in Aus.
And yes, local politics can really get in the way of making serious offerings in Indigenous languages represented in local communities. I wonder how NSW is doing it? It always seemed too big a hurdle in Katherine.
Post a Comment