Tapping the reservoir: languages at school

Since most non-English speaking countries choose English as their priority “foreign” language, Australia has the luxury, as an English speaking multicultural country with vast language resources, to enrich our schools with a range of language choices.

Will our academic standards decline if we spend a lot of time teaching languages? The country which performs best in the PISA international comparative assessments of learning is Finland. In Finland, but also in other high performing education systems, students take three languages throughout their schooling and many take four. In the United States a recent study on university performance found a close link between those students who complete university degrees in the minimum time and those who at school studied in a “rigorous” curriculum. A rigorous curriculum always included continuous high-level language study.

So, what should be our plan of action and our priorities?

• First, we should support children’s home languages whenever we can;
• second, we must plan continuous, articulated and compulsory second language education for all;
• third, we must insist on high academic standards at all times; and
• fourth, we should offer a rich variety of second language choices; Asian, European and other “world” languages.

Most discussion of language study today tries to determine whether enough students are taking Asian languages. Of course it is crucial that we support a sophisticated teaching and research system focused on our immediate region.

But recall that at year 12 only 13 per cent of students take any language at all. It is not as though thousands of students are taking “bad” or “wrong” languages from the point of view of our national interest. Supporting the maintenance of community languages gives an immense boost to national language planning, mostly free of charge.

In the US this is well understood now and there is public funding in a major “heritage languages” movement encouraging community organisations and families to keep language traditions alive while they acquire English.

It is only because we have done so badly in the past that bilingualism seems to some to be inefficient or confusing. In fact, most people in the world, and millions of Australians, are comfortably and “efficiently” multilingual. They are a massive resource currently neglected in policy debates.

We will never achieve our ambitious language education goals if we don’t build on this vast language reservoir. We just need to construct pipes between the deep reservoir of community language skills and our public education institutions to remove the blockages that stop communication from flowing.