Our entire view of the world remains insular. How can Australia change?

Apr 24, 2024
Rear view of a puzzled businessman in front of a huge chalkboard written with the word hallo in different languages and colours. Opportunity for learning many languages for students.

Unlike virtually every non-Anglophone country on the planet, Australia still has no mandatory teaching of foreign languages in its schools. Why do we assume, as a matter of colonial entitlement, that people from non-Anglophone countries will understand us, but it is not even a matter of decency to make the same effort to understand them?

On 18th April, Jocelyn Chey published an article decrying the ignorance of the Chinese language in Australia and some of the consequences of that ignorance, which are not limited to politicians, diplomats, and other foreign policy analysts, but also extend to the general population. There have in recent times been multiple articles on multiple platforms expressing this concern, as well as the continuing tendency of our universities to close foreign language departments, not only or necessarily Chinese but also for other languages as well. To date, there appears to have been no political response, and language learning has not been of any visible concern in the current government’s various education reviews. Another AHA report is also unlikely to change anything. There are, arguably, some larger national attitudinal issues at play here.

Unlike, one assumes, virtually every non-Anglophone country on the planet, in many cases now over decades, Australia still has no mandatory teaching of foreign languages in its schools. How this occurs in different countries varies considerably, as does its effectiveness, but the basic question is why as a society, we still do not consider it either courteous, or useful, or necessary, to understand anything about another person’s language and everything that is expressed and accessible through their language? Why do we assume, almost as a matter of colonial entitlement, that they will understand us, not just literally but in all of the complex nuance that only native speakers comprehend, but it is not even a matter of decency to make the same effort towards others?

Our professional classes no longer consider it de rigueur to speak French, and past flirtations with Indonesian and Japanese were obviously ephemeral. These topics have obvious significance for Australia’s place within the Asia-Pacific region for primarily political and economic purposes, but they are, ultimately, a question of collective attitudes that extend far beyond such immediate practical application.

Australia has one of the most extensive multicultural societies in the world. Multicultural communities are, typically, multi-lingual, but Australia is not in that sense. It would be entirely reasonable, considering how every one of their languages, their histories, their religions and cultures, has become part of Australia’s own through its immigrants, that at least some of our 43 universities should teach and research all of those languages, literatures, histories, and cultures, not as something foreign but as something Australian, and on a permanent basis. Why don’t we? Partly, at least, because we can’t attach a predictable profit dollar value to doing so that would outweigh the considerable cost, and we do not think in any other value metrics.

Non-Anglophone western countries mandate the learning of foreign languages in every public high school. This usually includes Classical as well as modern languages, it means that students often learn more than one, and that their governments ensure the training of all of the teachers required in their universities, and properly employ them. Australia could not do this under present conditions, but it is arguably precisely what we should be considering. It is assumed that every undergraduate is at least bi- if not multilingual, and for some programmes, other languages remain pre-requisites.

Learning a language is not merely acquiring a skill: it is gaining access to an otherwise inaccessible and unknown sphere of knowledge and human experience, learning to think differently, as well as being necessary in order to better understand the world we all exist in. It was an admission requirement for Cambridge that I should have demonstrated a sufficient mastery of the two ancient languages and at least two modern languages for my doctoral research – the ancient languages to be able to read and understand my source texts in their original, not in translation, and the modern languages to be able to engage with published research in those languages. This level of academic ability, which commences in high school, is self-evident and normalised in European and some other societies and their education systems in ways that are evidently incomprehensible to most Australians. That unfortunately means, however, that most Australian students and scholars, not required to achieve that level of training, cannot engage with and are unfamiliar with, any knowledge not available to them in English. That in turn means that none of our social or government or business research – anything that depends upon facility in multiple other languages – is as well-informed as it ought to be. Our entire view of the world remains insular. It isn’t simply a question of STEM research now mostly being published in English, or what is available in English on the internet, or using google translator: it is a question of what only first-hand engagement in and with other languages can provide.

It has long been argued that improving all Australians’ knowledge and understanding of other cultures would reduce our racism problems, but opportunities to acquire such knowledge, aside from personal contact, remain poor, with SBS not fulfilling as well as it might its original commission, and with difficulty accessing foreign language books and films in Australia because of poor to non-existent distribution.

Australia’s continued refusal to address these questions also illustrates our indifference towards the use of knowledge. Once, it would have been customary for any English teacher to have been able to read Anglo-Saxon, Middle and Elizabethan English as well as modern English, to have been taught that in our universities, to be familiar with some of the literature in them, and for some universities to have also taught, and researched, the associated medieval Latinate and Germanic languages as well. But today, we don’t attach any value to this, not even in learning our mother or principal tongue. Given the intimate inter-relationship between language and thought, one wonders what a linguistic deficit is doing for our cognitive and intellectual capacity – there is, certainly, some research suggesting the value of languages for other abilities.

Yet we do not attach any societal or human value to any knowledge, or to the dearly departed critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which also require such knowledge and skills, or to those among us in whose heads the nation’s knowledge assets reside, which we lose as we continue to dispense with them. Australia has lost more than 40,000 scholars since 2020, and thousands more before them, with immeasurable and irreplaceable loss of all of the knowledge, experience, and potential that they represented, in STEM and HASS disciplines alike, and with similar permanent damage to our entire education system and the quality of all of its graduates and all of us who depend upon their being as well educated as possible, and yet, none of that apparently matters, either. As a country, we are exceptionally profligate with knowledge. Failure to preserve and build upon knowledge has caused historical dark ages. Ignorance has triumphed over knowledge, for centuries, in the past, which included a decline in languages. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that Australia is already in, or heading inexorably towards, its own dark age.

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