[lg policy] [Edling] Australia: Asian Languages Losing their Allure

[Harold Schiffman]

Forwarded From: edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu


The Australian



Asian Languages Losing their Allure



Spare a thought for Kevin Rudd. An Asianist among Asianists, he
recently had to launch reports showing how weak Asia literacy is in
our schools.



But Rudd is a politician, too, and he projected confidence when he
addressed the Asialink Asia Society forum in Canberra last month: "My
vision is for Australia to be the most Asia-literate nation in the
collective West," he said.



Yet what he saw in reports on the state of Chinese, Indonesian,
Japanese and Korean was "an alarming 22 per cent drop between 2000 and
2008 in the number of Australian students studying one of these four
Asian languages from kindergarten to Year 12". This was "far worse
than feared", according to the Asia Education Foundation, midwife to
the reports.



Full story:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/asian-languages-losing-their-allure/story-e6frgcjx-1225877157372

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