keith

No, I challenge all your unsubstantiated statements; “sweeping generalizations” would be too generous a description. I also perceive there an imperious tone and tendency towards barely sublimated racism: I am sick of seeing the injustice, misery, waste, fear, hatred and further ignorance such views spawn. Your language throughout also conveyed to my mind conspicuous snobbery and condescension. Together, these appear to be personality traits you seem to enjoy expressing in order to reassure yourself with a sense of superiority; provoking outraged opposition like mine would be compatible with such psychopathological self-reassurance and assertion of identity.

I challenge, and reply to your questions, out of respect for the audience, not for your peculiar psyche, because your contributions show little beyond high self regard and implicit disrespect for those you apparently consider your racio-cultural and social inferiors:

“(1)Why do we need to strategically seismically [sic] change the culture of this country?”
Survival: inherited western supremacism weakens too many Australian-born people with attitudes of contempt, paranoia and indifference about our regional neighbors.

“(2)Why do you think that particular change is critical to this country's future?”
Such inward, inhibited attitudes have very dangerous potential to cause ignorance, weakness, isolation, and enmity at worst, or at best the stigma of cynically motivated commercial opportunism (like your revealingly flippant: “Yes sure learn Asian languages for commercial benefit”).

“(3)Are you against learning about and developing ourselves in all areas, including our own histories?”
Of course not. Indeed, learning about one's true geographical, historical and cultural place in our region – and in our actual ability to engage via regional languages – should be fundamental parts of healthy development and mature self-knowledge.

In misrepresenting my “adversarialism” comment, you ignore its context of separate debate with Communicat.

Once again you've shown an inability to rise above hate and conflict.

Right from the outset you've shown an inability to accept ideas and facts that are alien to your world view. In fact all you've ever really done is heap personal criticism constantly. You've never presented any evidence or logical argument that my views are not valid. You simply try to ridicule the messenger.

You and your short-sighted manner are not worth any sort of dialogue. Thank goodness your attitudes are sure to alienate those you wish to convert.

'Survival: inherited western supremacism weakens too many Australian-born people with attitudes of contempt, paranoia and indifference about our regional neighbors'

Sadly laughable assertion.
Of course no other culture thinks itself supreme either ... to you that is.

'Such inward, inhibited attitudes have very dangerous potential to cause ignorance, weakness, isolation, and enmity at worst, or at best the stigma of cynically motivated commercial opportunism (like your revealingly flippant: “Yes sure learn Asian languages for commercial benefit”).'

Sadly laughable assertions.
The negativity of your world view seems Eurocentic it doesn't seem to extend to other languages and cultures.

'Of course not. Indeed, learning about one's true geographical, historical and cultural place in our region – and in our actual ability to engage via regional languages – should be fundamental parts of healthy development and mature self-knowledge.'

Ignorant and limiting tunnel vision at best. You seem to wish to deny the learning of our much longer western lineages.

With such a display of attitudes one can only conclude you sir are a racist. And blatantly so. Yet you stupidly tried to assign such a dispicable trait to me.

Grovel about in your own disgrace ... for as you admit, you are merely barbarian ... intellectually and culturally.

I wanted to make your comment earlier, Communicat: some of the curriculum IS of little benefit.

But I think you underestimate the potential community demand for such curricular strategies. Community opposition to cause stalling or other negative effect, I have seen certainly. That is why I applaud Lo Bianco's strategic vision about making the most of our migrant population, where there is demonstrable community demand.

One Rudd-ish (sorry Communicat!) approach would be to inventorize constituencies' for their particular LOTE assets (like with homeless shelters), then channel the variously willing and able educators and other leaders into streamlined teaching and accreditation programs for expansion in the school system. Several obvious challenges arise there, but they are not insurmountable, and should also be seen as great opportunities:

Ghettoization: where ethnic and religious identities cluster together from our natural tendency to avoid alienation, and seek protection, in numbers. My children attend a primary school with a large proportion of ethnic Chinese, but Chinese families schooling their kids in Mandarin do so outside via private classes and individual tuition. Our smaller minorities of Greek and Arab families do likewise. This situation is clearly inefficient, giving rise to some uncertainty in teaching, and wasting good human resources: an appalling cost to individual families, communities and the nation.

Isolation: Indigenous, Jewish and smaller minority languages face extra challenges for incorporation and support in such a nation-building scheme.

- The remoteness of several surviving indigenous languages would make it harder to incorporate with settler communities, so there would be a need to build on previous efforts there, while expanding to include non-indigenous students where possible.

- Jewish communities present a longer-term phenomenon of ghettoization, if only to the point of “isolation” in this linguistic sense. But I think my Goy niece in E. St Kilda should get to study Modern Hebrew with her neighbors. Our separately established Jewish schools would compel more institutional cross-fertilization.

- “Smaller” languages e.g., Gaelic, Estonian, Tetun, Cymry, Hmong can be incorporated similarly, but for a more specialized avenue of choice at higher levels (maybe no sooner than Year 11/12).

Bonjour à tous !

On 7th of May Romany mentionned that "the french have no word for wife"... what has happened to "épouse" ? (époux is the masculin)

Baygon, thank you for giving me a few chuckles.

Pelican, i get a strong feeling that you would appreciate Esperanto if only you looked, even briefly, at it (not to replace national languages and dialects, but to protect them and as a first step inintercommunication).

Communicat, Saturday 10th, you wrote :

"Unfortunately those four languages are not enough even if we never did business outside 'the Asian region'.
It's a waste of resources unless we do the job properly and, given the other demands on the curriculum and the language rights of others, we are going to go on wasting resources. We need a new an entirely new approach to language learning and teaching."

YES, YES, YES ! Such as exploring the advantages of using a simple, quickly learned, AUXILIARY language as a "weightless global universal dictionary" to facilitate first encounters which can then lead to understanding and study of chosen languages.

55:53 PM A bientôt j'espère. Henriette.