Mercurius is correct in that he sees the importance of comparing what we do in Australia with what happens elsewhere. In the particular issue considered in his article -the teaching of Japanese - he highlights a radical diffence in methods of obtaining people who can teach the subject in schools. There may be problems if we employed people with little English - the most obvious being that such a teacher would probably only be able to teach the one subject, a fact that could make the person of dubious use to a given school. That might be of especial significance if it were a primary school. Nevertheless Mercurius is right in that we must examine what happens elsewhere even if the idea turns out to have only limited application.

However I urge Mercurius to extend his consideration of overseas ideas/outcomes to maths and science. I know that he will point to the PISA results (taken only by OECD countries) and claim that all is well. He needs to extend his vision to the wider and much longer standing TIMSS testing. A few quotations of a summary of the performance of our children on both tests by ACER are of interest:
'The data for both studies tell a disconcrting story'

'While 73% of YEar 4 students in Singapore reach the high international benchmark, only 26% of Australian students reach this benchmark. Also relative to other contries, Australian Year 4 students now perform less well in school mathematics and science than they did almost a decade ago.'

'If Australia is to lift its performance in TIMSS over the next decade, then greater attention will need to be given to the teaching of basic factual and procedural knowledge...'

So, well done Mercurius, you have come up with an interesting idea that you obtained by looking abroad. Good.

But it is only a start. Now look at maths and science. There we could and should learn from abroad. Fix up the syllabi, fix up the assessments.

An excellent post by eyejaw. Couldn't agree more.

I opened this article because I felt that it might be arguing for importing teachers to teach English. That way we might get teachers with some knowledge of the basics of English that are being neglected by many English Teachers.

Overall it is a great idea that could well have been extended to Maths and Science and perhaps other subjects.

If, of course we had a decent set of core Syllabus documents for each subject area that would be a good start.

Mercurius needs to be careful. A fluent speaker isn't necessarily a good teacher. Especially the Japanes approach to language teaching is far removed from ours. Chalk and talk, rather than speak and hear.

My daughter was taught Italian by a native Italian speaker, with appalling results because of that approach.

My wife has been a particularly successful teacher of French, so we watched in dismay as the language lessons at our daughter's school fell apart.

Our schools have a context that is far removed from many other overseas countries, so care has to be taken in recruiting language teachers.

So, all in the garden is not lovely - beware of sloganeering in education. it's much more complex than that.

Mercurius, lucid and convincing as always. Anything which weakens the parochialism of our people and institutions is to be welcomed.

However, I wonder to what use those hundreds of thousands of new Japanese-language speakers have/will put their skills? Kevin Rudd first pushed the idea of all students learning Chinese and/or Japanese at a Special Premiers’ Conference (CoAG’s predecessor in 1990-91), when he was head of Queensland’s Cabinet Office and I was his colleague. I raised a number of issues at the time, which are still relevant.

First, Kevin’s main argument was that Australia’s trade and trading opportunities with Japan and China were increasing; that Australian businessmen needed to be fluent in the languages to do business effectively; and therefore every child should learn those languages. My arguments included that –

1. English is the global language for business, academia, research, entertainment etc. Few businessmen would benefit from fluency in Japanese and Chinese.

2. Even if they would, neither language is easy to learn. The extensive time taken to become fluent in either language would greatly reduce time for acquiring relevant business skills.

(In practice, we have had enormous growth in our dominant exports of minerals and metals to those countries; I doubt if increased language skills made any difference to that growth.)

3. There were no sensible grounds for having all children exposed to these languages, as my three were. In practice, their exposure to Chinese/Japanese was trivial, of no benefit. Their teachers admitted this, but said it was important to have exposure to those cultures. Again, the exposure was trivial and useless, given that my wife and I have travelled extensively, including long spells in Asia, have a Burmese Indian spiritual teacher and that the kids each independently had friends from, e.g., China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, India etc. They and their peers would have gained more benefit from greater focus on basics such as English. (more follows)

A further point is that the very young mind has a great capacity to absorb languages, but this falls away rapidly (early grasp of language is an important survival/getting on skill, once infancy has passed and at least one language been acquired, the brain redirects resources to acquiring more useful skills). Learning Japanese or Chinese at later stages – when children can consciously decide that they would like to pursue them - requires great effort and determination. Given the apparently poor standard of English of many high school graduates, I wonder how good the Japanese and Chinese skills are? (More later)

sniggid, eyejaw - your suggestion to look overseas for approaches to science and maths teaching, while potentially valuable, is also subject to the same problem as my own proposal re: language teaching. The trouble with any comparative approach is we can't be confident that transplanting a successful approach from country A will work in country B. Exotic transplants, like hothouse flowers, are so fickle.

In the case of language teaching, we can plausibly submit that Australians would have very little tolerance for a teacher with low-level English-speaking ability. In Japan this has been less of an obstacle, for many Japanese schools take the view that they are not "paying" their English teachers to speak Japanese, and are quite miffed if we do.

Regardless, unless the foreign-background teacher has attained native-like proficiency in the students’ language, special classroom arrangements are called for. In both Australia and Japan, there is support for an expensive but effective solution, known as team teaching, whereby native and non-native speakers teach together. A two-year Australian study found that team teaching to be much more effective than teaching in isolation. Likewise in Japan, team teaching is one of the most common and most effective strategies employed when the foreign teacher has little Japanese. An obvious limitation is that staff requirements are literally double, and it’s a staff shortage we’re trying to solve here.

Who knows what overseas maths and sciences methods may prove effective? It's outside my training, but it would be good to hear from others who specialise in this area.

An example of a likely transplant failure would be the French approach, where they like to boast that at any given time of day, or time of the year, one can know that the same content is being taught in every classroom in the nation. The UK is also going this way. Maybe it works there, maybe it doesn't. But in a nation as diverse as Australia, how well would one size fit all? It's stretching the bounds of credulity to suggest that what works in Malvern would work in Mackay...

Thanks Jill & Alan True; I agree – down with sloganeering! ;-)

Thanks also Faustino for your behind-the-scenes peek at the long-ago COAG conference. Personally, as a language-teacher to be, I hope for the day that Kevin Rudd is a foreign minister, since it’d be a nice fillip to the status of language teaching in this country; but that’s just self-interest speaking.

Your arguments are good ones, and I would respond to them thusly:

1. You are right - English is now the world’s lingua franca. By the end of the 21st century, it is quite conceivable that every single educated person in the world will be able to speak their mother tongue, plus English. In such a world, those who speak English, and only English, will be at a distinct disadvantage.

2. You are right – learning a language takes a lot of commitment. Most studies of adult language learners converge on a time period of 5-7 years of *in-country* living and daily usage to acquire native-like language proficiency, in any tongue. But then, it takes years to become good at anything. Does this mean we shouldn’t engage in any skill-building at all, because of the opportunity cost of all the other things we could be doing? I hope no engineers, boat-builders or chefs ever follow your prescription…

And your comment that language is of little benefit in trade deals puzzles me. In economic terms, the need for translation is a transaction cost, as hefty and as inefficient as any tariff. Lower the transaction cost, and your country picks up a nice comparative advantage. (If there’s a translator’s mafia, I’m a dead man…)

3. Your last two posts are somewhat contradictory– saying at one point it’s fairly useless to expose children to elementary language levels (I happen to agree) – but then saying that once they’ve outgrown the ‘language acquisition age’, it’s all too late. So when is a good time? How about right now?

As an experienced Languages teacher in Australia and one with extensive experience supporting, developing and mentoring Languages teachers in all sectors, I cannot agree with the writer. Wide-ranging dealings with teachers in their teaching settings have shown that one of the greatest issues we have in Languages Education today is that of native speaker teachers of the language in question who are
1) not trained as teachers at all and/or
2) do not have considerable teaching experience - Uni teaching practicums AS AN ABSOLUTE MINIMUM - in Australian schools.
Such people almost inevitably are totally out of their depth trying to function effectively in Australian classrooms, where the learners and classroom atmosphere are vastly different from those in their home counties, especially in Asia.
There is a strong consensus amongst experienced Languages practitioners in Australia that pedagogy (teaching know-how) and understanding of the local culture is far more important than linguistic skill in creating and managing a productive classroom environment without behaviour management problems. Linguistic capacity is a constantly evolving matter for Languages teachers, and there are opportunities for in-country study (Endeavour Foundation Fellowship through the AEF is one), but to place that capacity ahead of contextualised teaching skill has diminished the chances of success for Languages programmes in Australia. Far better to attract bright graduates who are familiar with our context and skill them,in methodology and language - but, where? Where in Australia are the quality Languages teacher training courses nowadays? Of those remaining, those which have both quality methodology and quality language components are alarmingly diminished.

Although the author has tried to be fair, I don't think he's entirely right in his portayal of the situation.

First, in your average Japanese high school nearly all of the English teachers will be native Japanese. It's true that the JET programme brings in some native English speakers from overseas as language assistants. However, these assistants are on short-term contracts (maximum three years when I participated in the scheme).

Japanese students would only get occasional access to lessons by JET assistants; their formal education in English will be overwhelmingly at the hands of native Japanese teachers.

How does this compare to Australia? An Australian student is far more likely to be taught by an overseas teacher. It varies from school to school, though. At my current school we are all non-native speakers, but at my last school I was the only one who was not a native speaker of the target language.

Also, there is a scheme to place native speaker language assistants in Victorian high schools. It's not as well funded as the JET scheme, but it is nonetheless popular with young people from overseas. Many students will get occasional lessons with these language assistants.

Finally, there is the question of whether teaching positions could be filled from overseas. I have two brief comments to make here. First, we should always give priority to local graduates - not just in teaching, but in all professions. If there's a long-term shortage, this should be advertised to high school students contemplating a career.

Second, it's very difficult for overseas teachers to adapt to the challenging conditions in government schools in Australia. I remember one young woman from Japan who burst into tears after her first lesson. Why? A student had dropped some paper on the floor. You can imagine the trauma she went through when the going really got tough.

Similarly, one school I taught at was greatly relieved when I got to the end of first term. Why? The three previous teachers they'd hired from overseas had all left within the first six weeks.

Mercurius, I taught many student language teachers over a period of 29 years. I'm afraid I have to agree with your critics.

In NSW schools, as you'd be aware, most teachers are required to be able to teach two subjects. Unless there is a massive increase in funding, that will continue to be the case.

Many of the second language teachers choose to teach English as a second language for their second subject. Unless their English is excellent, that is a disaster.

Teaching school students a second language requires a decent knowledge of the students' first langauge. You have to be able to translate correctly into and from the first language--even though people do not teach by the translation method any more.

You can't deal with an Australian class unless you know what the students are saying, and know what to say back. You have to be able to give clear instructions, to deal with tired or disruptive students, and to engage with a class, stimulating and encouraging them. Teaching is a highly skilled and sophisiticated business. These thing require good langange knowledge.

In spite of the standard of English required for university entrance, many of those foreign NESB teachers I taught had poor grammar and limited vocabulary. They could not understand moderately complex arguments in English. They had massive problems with the practicum. Not all, but many.

Teachers have other roles, too. They have to deal with parents, and preferably, to encourage and invovle them. They should be involved in their communities--in country schools, that's a sine qua non. They participate in planning and cooperative activities with other teachers. And they have to teach values--and engage with other teachers in discussion of these. In Australia all of this requires a good knoweldge of English.

On whether it is worth teaching students a LOTE.

The standard replies hold that there is more to langauge learning than learning to speak one .

Students who learn for 5 or so years at school are not going to emerge as fluent speakers. They will have enough to travel--but few do so. They will have some sensitivity to cultural differences, so that they are less likely to offend--provided that is part of the teaching that they get. They will be able to help tourists and immigrants a bit. They will not be fluent.

Perhaps it is more important that students learn to read the language. Then they might explore its literature. But even the best year 12 students cannot understand moderately difficult novels, far less philosophy, history or politics, well.

Language teaching is suppose to provide an introduction to the target culture. This requires a good deal of time. Otherwise it is superficial, and produces a patronising attitude. (What strange people the French are. They don't have a proper breakfast.) If the time is taken, say, to learn about class differences, students' ability to speak and write the language will not be as great.

Learning a second language is supposed to make one sensitive to the limitations of one's own. It leads also to reflection on the nature of language and its relation to thought. (Does a language where all nouns have a gender make people more likely to be sexist? Are the differences between Spanish 'liberta', French 'liberte' and English 'freedom' reflective of their different histories? What differences do they make to the political beliefs people are likely to have?) Again, these things don't just happen; they take time. They're achievable--and more important than students becoming fluent.

But you haven't a hope of getting very far with these aims if you can't speak the students' first language. You are left teaching for the tiny minority of your students who will build on the foundation you have given them and study more after they leave school. The rest will forget. That is not the basis for a happy career.

Some wild-eyed over reactions:

Why would 'eyejaw' turn from the pressing issue of neglect of foreign languages teaching to Maths and Science? Is that an ingrained prejudice: some pigs are more equal than others. Maths and Science since they lead to material gain are innately more valuable than languages which lead to better human beings and citizens.

Mercurio, interesting mix: 12 years in marketing, advertising and PR, potshots at the Labor party and teacher unions (all socialists have horns, tails and forked tridents) but an interest in other languages. Well, Japanese. I ask – I do not take for granted - does Mercurio have a totally utilitarian view of the value of languages education? Is it all about advantage?

And, do these Science buffs and utilitarians think that a Core curriculum will – abracadabra – solve the problems of Australian education, including languages education? Back to good old rote learning and discipline, don’t you know? I agree that content knowledge is vital and neglected in Australian public education at present. (We were talking about public education as well, I hope.) Boring conservative solutions fall apart the second you walk into any Australian classroom these days (outside the elite schools we fund). Life, language and people are too complex for these simplistic answers. There are no recipes or solutions that fit all students in this society whose values are so badly messed up (by incessant junk TV, advertising, junk mail, trash magazines, lying leaders, the white noise of corruption, etc)

BUT the conservative solution is, of course, make all the kids fit the program. Conformity to uniformity (it’s cheaper). There is no way the current mob in Canberra can ever fix languages teaching. Their “values” are diametrically opposed to the heart and soul of languages teaching and learning: respect for different others, diversity, interest in words, ideas and yes, perpetual seminars on who we are. This government is predicated on talking up fear of others, on villifying anyone who doesn’t speak English or subscribe to “Australian values” (ya wha? She wears a head scarf. So did my granny! Grow up.) [Continued]

Part 2

Importing foreign language teachers from Japan whose record of teaching English is just better than South Korea’s: both countries spend inordinate amounts of money bringing in unqualified young English “teachers” to waste huge amounts of time with pathetic, disappointing results for the majority. Please deny this and enlighten me. Articles I have read and people I speak with do not tout Japan as as the paragon of superbly effective foreign language teaching.

I support the idea of tandem teaching done by local teachers who know the students and their backgrounds and needs (as far as that is possible) and native speaker guest teachers with really good training. Think you’re likely to get funding for such a scheme in Australia, though?

Sorry, Mercurius. Good luck with that but … this mob in Canberra are the problem (a narrow view of languages teaching which goes: learn the language in mechanistic fashion, get a job in international business, rip people off.) No solution can ever come from them. You are right: we have to wait for Rudd & co.

(POSTSCRIPT Sample of values confusion in public media / discourse: “Buy this, get fat, now go to the gym, this house could be yours, you want this car, you do, don’t you want to be just like her, I’ll never never never introduce a GST, we’ll decide who comes into this country, naughty North Korea, by the way we’re going nuclear ourselves, oh, er, yes, climate change seems to be real after all, um, vote for me, I’ll save you from terror,” etc.)

Now, these issues would make excellent discussion topics for real foreign language classes

Poor old Tillet, so ingrained with left wing ideology that he completely misses the reality of the real world.

Those who want subjects like maths and science to have a nationwide core syllabus don't want to control everything students in Australian schools are taught. But they do want the teaching based around the knowledge, skills and understandings of a prescribed CORE within the syllabus. That might make up 60% or so of the whole curriculum with the rest being decided locally. But we need that CORE to ensure that our young people are properly prepared for ongoing study. Neglecting formal development of maths and science in Australian schools means that these disciplines will be dominated by mathematicians and scientists from other countries like Singapore and Japan where these subjects are not dumbed down by the excesses of Outcomes Based Education. In other words we must ensure that we do not waste our homegrown talents.

I'd suggest that you inject a bit of common sense into your argument, rather than base it on your hate of the present Federal Government.

According to Tillet poor old Mercurius is some sort of looney toon right winger who is friendly with Genghis Khan and I spend my time ranking pigs. It must be nice for him to be so sure that he is so right and everbody else is part of a great conspiracy.

I have had my arguments with Mercurius, but in this article he puts forward the suggestion that we would do well to look abroad in case we found an answer, or even a part of the answer to a problem we have in education today. I agree with that suggestion even though I have doubts on the particular case he examined. I tried to build on that sensible idea by pointing out that trying to get ideas from abroad is a valid move for more than just Japanese teachers. In particular I referred to maths/science because that happens to be my area of expertise, such as it is.

It is surely astonishingly arrogant to imagine that we can learn nothing from anybody else.

Tillets behaviour and thinking surprised me and made me think of a description of the exiled Trotsky:

A skin of malice.

Sad.

All the comments so far seem to miss the point

WHY DON'T SCHOOLS TEACH ESPERANTO TO YOUNG STUDENTS?

It is a fun language, easy to learn, no problems with spelling or pronunciation - think of the words which contain "ough" - bow, coff, doe, ort, ruff, etc; one sound/one letter (think of CaKe and biCyCle); no peculiar verb changes: am/is/are/were/been; basic root words on to which prefixes and suffixes can be added; no problems with technology - i.e., 'muso' means 'mouse', either the wee beastie or the little guide for a commputer. And with one of the aforementioned suffixes, we have 'musumi' for which there is no single English language equivalent - it means 'use the mouse to .....'; pronunciation is always the same - stress on penultimate syllable.

Penfriendships can begin when (young) students have mastered the first few chapters and as their letters cross the world, their knowledge of the language increases, until the time comes when they feel confident enough to meet their correspondents.

Famous books have been translated - the Bible, the Noble Koran (useful means of understanding our immigrants), Shakespeare, Tolkein, Christie, etc. Also original writing, including some very clever plays on words. There is a limerick about a woman from the twin city Buda-Pest who is, so they said, "by day in Buda quite NUDA and by night in Pest'a SENVESTA" I don't think I need to translate the words in capital letters.

There are daily broadcasts from Beijing, Havana, the Vatican, and Melbourne radio

Charlie Chaplin used Esperanto in The Great Dictator; it was also used to denote an unnamed country in the Clark Gable film Fool's Paradise

Some of the best Esperanto speakers I have met came from Korea and Japan, where it is the lingua franca for a philosoply called Oomoto

For older students, Esperanto will be introduced into the Modern Languages section of the University of NSW at Kensington

Thanks to all the teachers who have commented and to Tillet & eyejaw for an amusing side-debate. It is gratifying (and rare) to encounter a fair-minded critic such as eyejaw who won't reflexively rubbish a person's entire argument just because they disagree on other matters.

This is not the first time someone to the left of me (they do exist) has suggested I may be a right-wing loon. I've also been labled elsewhere as a left-wing multicultural traitor. Sometimes such labels have been applied to me in response to the same article. Tillet, if you read my other articles, you'll see first-hand the rhetorical demise of those who've tried to pigeonhole me in the past.

As I tried to make clear in the article, there is no way that a wholesale transplant of the Japanese model of foreign-language teaching would work here - the cultural and educational landscapes are too different. But short of large-scale domestic recruitment and retraining of teachers, what are we going to do? The unprecedented demand for language learning is a nice problem to have, but these staff shortages aren't going away just because it's more comfortable for us to protect our domestic language teaching jobs.

Meanwhile, Tillet, since you asked, my reason for supporting languages teaching is that if our children don't learn to speak to each other, their governments will do the talking for them. Australia, Japan and Germany were mortal enemies 60+ years ago; today they learn each other's languages in vast numbers. Perhaps we need a revival of Arabic & Persian?

And what's wrong with advocating and emphasising the multivarious range of benefits that result from language learning, be they cultural, economic or otherwise?

On our own time, with our own money, we may be fortunate enough to have the luxury of learning for its own sake. But if we're using public resources, we need to justify to the public the full range of benefits. You can call that utili-whatsit if you like. I call it the ethical use of public money.

AS one who has learnt and used several other languages and is in business importing from non English spaeking countries may I make a few points.

It is important that the teacher has a knowledge of teaching and a fluency in the language studied. The teacher should be able to speak the language so well that they would taken to be a native speaker. Otherwise they can badly mislead by incorrect pronunciation and use of words. A good knowledge of English is utterly unnecessary. I had an excellent Spanish teacher whose English was hard to understand but was from Seville. Now she is back in Spain, no doubt (I shudder at the thought) teaching Spanglish.

English is not the only language of business and probably never will be. At an artificial level many speak English, at the expensive hotel or restaurant but try to get an explanation of someting complex and that is another thing. I import from Spain and would be lost without some Spanish. The technical department just aren't good at languages. And to use their language is taken as a compliment.

In sales a knowledge of the local language is just politeness.

So far so good:
“A fluent speaker isn't necessarily a good teacher.”
By Jill and Alan True, Monday, 23 October 2006 3:00:03 PM

And what about testing verbal English as a mean for granting citizenship?
Or under-caste inhabitants need speaking Engilsh more than understanding one to obey and execute orders provided by local native speakers?

At this stage “In practice, we have had enormous growth in our dominant exports of minerals and metals to those [Asian] countries; I doubt if increased language skills made any difference to that growth.” (by Faustino, Monday, 23 October 2006 3:31:20 PM), but new deposits and new offers from competitors could make a very difference. Moreover, buying mineral resources countries improve their engineering and technology in general as a pastoral colony just enjoys its planetary disposition.

“In the case of language teaching, we can plausibly submit that Australians would have very little tolerance for a teacher with low-level English-speaking ability“.” (by Faustino, Monday, 23 October 2006 3:31:20 PM) – oh, yes, it is local English teachers for migrants reserve the most advance teaching techniques, which is speaking English with students only and explaining meanings with idioms in English, not translating words into different languages: non-native speakers should complain with local values.
And more: “You can't deal with an Australian class unless you know what the students are saying, and know what to say back”, by ozbib, Monday, 23 October 2006 11:27:30 PM.

It is obvious to non-English speakers how simplistic and primitive so-called “modern” English is which what is a very advantage for its becoming a world popular linguistic tool. Should English native speakers know any other tongue