Healthwatcher, as someone who has learnt two foreign languages in adulthood, I can assure you that it is possible for a non-native speaker to fully participate in foreign-language social settings. In fact, until you actually make the effort to learn a foreign language, the cultural riches which it reveals are simply unimaginable.

Still, I’m not sure that injecting languages into school curriculum is going to open up these riches for younger Australians. Mercurius, I’d be really interested to see the basis for your claim that “just 5 years of decent language support in secondary school is enough to equip the next generation with the essential extra-linguistic capacity they will need.” I suspect that we simply don’t have a culture that values languages, and expending huge efforts on secondary-school language won’t get it for us.

The need simply isn’t there. Compared to Europeans or South-east Asians, few Australians depend on language skills for their livelihood. In this country, a foreign language is something you speak with your mother, or that you learn out of interest, rather than need. Maintaining a foreign language is also very difficult in Australia, unless you have family members or very close friends who (a) speak it, and (b) have the patience to use it with a non-native speaker.

My life is greatly enriched by my language skills, and I know that my multilingual friends feel the same way. However this is no basis for arguing that everyone should learn two or three foreign languages.

I could just as easily have chosen to enrich my life by learning to play the cello.

I agree with jpw2040, you can’t compare the linguistic needs of Australians with Europeans. It’s a different ball game.

Also, is the author confusing multilingualism and multiculturalism? At least the former is a little easier to define.

Though I speak three languages, I cannot muster enthusiasm to support multiculturalism. I don’t even know what that would mean. When it comes to strictly or scientifically defining a race or culture, there is only one race, the human race.

And, try as hard as you like, you cannot socially engineer people to speak a language they don’t want to, or don’t feel a need to speak. It doesn’t work like that.

Let’s be grateful we already speak one of the world’s most upwardly mobile languages. Learning another language can have great value, but mainly for those who wish to travel outside of the Australian context.

On another point, did you see where the author refers to a statistic of 0.0044% ? (Alert the statistics Gestapo!)

While his point is valid, that the number is ridiculously small, why couldn’t he just say 11 students out of 250,000? For that is what 0.0044 % actually is, but in a form a lot simpler to understand.

This is perhaps an example of what happens when letting loose arty types among the sciences

Australian students are missing out on an essential component of education. The learning of language.

Amongst the world's peoples, only English speakers are mainly monolingual. Most other peoples are bi or multi lingual.

Learning another language, regardless whether it is used later in life, improves skills in the use of your main language. Both in spelling and in grammar.

Even if you only ever engage in science, language will remain an essential method of exchanging information.

And anybody who thinks that computers will eliminate the necessity of the knowledge of languages has absolutely no understanding of information technology, how a computer 'speaks' and 'understands' commands.

English monolinguists have little idea of the wealth of information, literary, scientifically or philosophically that is out there. You will always have to wait for a translator and then be limited to that translator's particular choices of what to translate and how.

The use of language is essentially what makes humans humans. How is it possible that anybody can think that as our world is shrinking it is becoming less important to learn another language.

And as for Peak oil and overpopulation. Let's spread the word in as many languages as possible! You might be surprised by what a non English speaking person has to offer in the way of solutions.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks several languages?
A: Mulitingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
A: Aussie

I'm glad to be able to report that I speak and read 4 languages, and have been enriched beyond measure by that. Going to Malaysia or Indonesia and understanding...but also being able to engage people 'like a local' is really liberating.

Language is a gateway.. an open door... and a freeway into others ways and lives.

Everyone who comes here should know and speak English if not sooner, then later.. but those of us who only know English, would benefit greatly be learning another.