In June 2007, the Group of Eight Deans of Arts (Go8) at major Australian universities held a summit to discuss the current crisis in Languages Other Than English (LOTE) Education.
Their report “Languages in Crisis: A Rescue Plan for Australia” expressed urgent concern for:
- the poor reputation of LOTE education in Australia,
- the low rate of student participation in LOTE education at all levels,
- the impact of this on both individuals and the prosperity of the nation,
- the shortage of teachers to remedy the situation,
- the wasted opportunity for an early start in languages,
- difficulties for the tertiary sector in providing good LOTE programs for a sparse participant base,
- reasons why English is not enough,
- risks of monolingualism to security and Australia’s economy.
The Go8 saw a need for a “nationally consistent approach” which ensures that “students have continuity in learning a particular language” and staged introduction of compulsory LOTE programs from primary to year 10. Incentives, increased funding and publicity were recommended and yet the Go8 still called for “creative solutions” with the aim of “a significant majority of Australians having a second language by 2020.”
The Primary Esperanto Strategy is such a solution.
LOTE is not yet compulsory for all students in all states, partly due to staffingshortfalls which would make contravention inevitable, but “Ministers of Education are committed to the vision of quality languages education for all students, in all schools, in all parts of the country.”
Our National Statement and Plan on Languages (2005) recognized room for improvement in many aspects of LOTE education, including:
- participation rate,
- language choice,
- need for appropriately trained and qualified teachers,
- continuity in language education,
- time allocation,
- timetabling practices,
- resourcing,
- whole school commitment,
- public perception, and
- inclusiveness.
Dissatisfaction with LOTE provision is not new, as the Australian Language and Literacy Council noted in 1996:
“The key finding of the council’s investigation is that our education systems are consistently failing to deliver any worthwhile proficiency in languages.”
Nor is it uniquely Australian, as reflected in the Final Report of the Nuffield Project in the U.K.:
“[...] by any reliable measure, we are doing badly. We talk about communication but don’t always communicate. There is enthusiasm for languages but it is patchy. Educational provision is fragmented, achievement poorly measured, continuity not very evident.”
Although Australia spends up to $50 million a year on LOTE education, the Executive Summary of the LOTE Report, 2002, commissioned by the Federal Department of Education, Science and Training stated that:
“Given the questions and concerns that have been raised in relation to LOTE, it is appropriate to ask whether the current model of provision can ever produce better results in terms of language learning, regardless of the amount of funding injected into it.”
That it is indeed the question and the answer seems to be ,‘No’. More of the same is not going to produce better results.
The English, like us, have been trying but failing to produce bilingual children through their normal school programmes for a very long time. The Nuffield Report blames “a lack of joined up thinking”. The challenge for Australia is to “join up” our own thinking, both well and soon.
Our National Statement seems on the right track when it declares, “We believe there is a need in the longer term for a new policy to provide a broader framework which encompasses both language and cultural studies, and that has intercultural awareness and engagement as the underpinning rationale.”
We can do this by recognizing that most of the existing problems with LOTE are logistical and derive from the irregular way LOTE education is managed in our schools. The remaining problems are to do with political pressure to offer programmes too ambitious for the available resources.
General languages education, through Esperanto taught by generalist teachers in our primary schools, will equip Australian students to understand their whole world better and learn other languages when the need becomes apparent.
