To dream is to soar but it must be done with two feet firmly planted on the ground lest one plummet earthward. Ms Gillard has not said how her dream will be financed. With a litany of financial disasters on file, why would this plan be any different to the NBN, pink bats, BER, live cattle export, etc, etc?
Anna Patty in the SMH writes about Ms Gillard's ambitious dream to infuse Asian languages into our daily lives. Being multi-lingual is a practical pursuit. While Ms Patty highlights the shortage of teachers and other obstacles, completly omitted is COST!
SMH: JUST under 10 per cent of NSW public school students are learning Asian languages - far short of the Prime Minister's ''Asian Century'' target to give every child the opportunity.
Figures from the NSW Department of Education show that of 726,870 public school students in kindergarten to year 12, just 71,343 were learning an Asian language last year.
Julia Gillard says she wants every child to have the opportunity to learn either Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian by 2025 and every school must be linked with a school in Asia.
Only 17 students studied Hindi for the Higher School Certificate exams this year and none were taught at school.
It is fair to say that Asia will have a large role to play in the world, some may say it does already, and the education system does need to take this into account.
I'm wondering why some schools make it mandatory to learn a European language like Italian which is spoken far less in the world than others.
I can understand Spanish since it is spoken by a sizable proportion, but not Italian.
Posted by: Greg | October 30, 2012 at 11:45 AM
How many languages does shifty Julia speak? Lawyerspeak only.
On one point alone I am afraid I have to agree with her. Our education system has failed us badly, teaching politically correct subjects instead of useful stuff like maths, real science, English and other languages of commerce.
Her last batch of socialist plans for Australia were fanciful. This latest lot are just spaghetti knitting by a "leader" who can see the writing on the wall. She is setting out to make it as hard as possible for her successor to implement her plans.
If she is not hit by lightning first and pulls off a miracle by surviving to the next election, on her past track record she will continue to prevaricate andwalk away.
Posted by: Grumpyoldman2 | October 30, 2012 at 12:02 PM
Not meaning to sounds like I support Julia, but what are these politically correct subjects that are being taught?
And when did Australian high schools stop teaching Maths, 'real' Science, English and even Commerce (yes, it is a HSC subject)?
Does this mean that we can trim all of the 'useless' subjects like Visual Arts, Music, Studies of Religion, Ancient History and Agriculture?
What would you suggest that we teach in our schools?
Posted by: Greg | October 30, 2012 at 12:08 PM
To important to ignore:
http://annesummers.com.au/speeches/her-rights-at-work-vanilla/
Posted by: Scott | October 30, 2012 at 12:26 PM
Greg,
When the Oz ed system gets the essentials taught properly first then it may be time to put in the "adult" stuff.
The Oz system under-utilises the resources we provide. Even our neighbours in Indonesia have two classroom "shifts" a day for little kids who can all learn at least two languages plus arithmetic before going up to their senior schools.. Same teachers for both shifts, they work a bit harder but are held in great respect in their communities as a result.
Posted by: Grumpyoldman2 | October 30, 2012 at 02:09 PM
The cost of education has nearly doubled in the last 10 years and the PM has not finished - just how many people will she be educating for non-existant jobs in the next 10 years. Every admin job has a degree these days -- WOW! what a revolution.
Meanwhile its impossible to get a tradesman /tradeswoman.
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