If current adult decision-makers - policy makers, public servants, school principals, media - are so uncaring themselves about the benefits and dire necessity for languages skills, or politically motivated to (in effect) keep the masses predisposed for war, for Mr and Ms Normal there are, besides, more immediate concerns like teen violence, drinking and suicide, child abuse, obesity, mortgage stress, the road toll, the economy, etc

The role that study of other languages and cultures might play in lifting people out of their parochialism, self absorption, materialism and soap operas, make them reflect on values, their own and those of others in the remote and recent past, and elsewhere now, to consider how lucky we are, and what we can admire about other cultures, how we should care about all people, this boring moral argument doesn't impress. Even the blatantly obvious economic benefits of languages don’t get them aroused.

A language teacher colleague invited the principals of both his primary schools to attend an online session he is leading at 7.30 in the evening. They don't even have to leave their own homes to log on. Both, allegedly, replied: "That's State of Origin (rugby) night. Sorry, I'll try to find time to watch the archive of your seminar." Their free time, fair enough. What can you say?

What I say is that sustained learning of other languages is the opposite of racism. It is a reaching out to others, their representation of the world and life, heritage and dreams. It is the sincerest form of respect. Australians are not into that in a big way. Are we afraid that it also effects changes in the learner, in outlook and values, not just word power or mental agility? Are we afraid that people may come to see that euphemisms like “protecting our national interests” are code for taking over other people’s lands, oil, rights and lives for our commercial gain? That we may be tempted to fraternize like the WW1 soldiers that 1916 Christmas? Harder to shoot people when you’ve just shared baby photos and communicated about simple, shared, human things.

mil-observer wrote:

I'm concerned that only one of your three criteria for foreign language study can apply to your own mastery of Latin. But those 3 criteria are precisely those dynamic opportunities to be offered in any serious approach to language education, so maybe your earlier post was too pessimistic?

Dear mil-observer;

Ostler's article encouraged language teaching in the school system. That may not be the best place as language may be taught in isolation. The author also did not seem to mention providing motivation.

My son is a polyglot but learned no languages in primary or secondary education. He is fluent in Portuguese on a number of levels. He lectured in the Federal Union University in Brazil, advised poor Brazilian farmers and written government grants in Portuguese bureaucratese. He is married to a Brazilian woman. However, she comes from an educated family so her speech has little in common with that of the not-too-well educated Brazilian farmer. He learned Brazilian Portuguese partially by getting American movies edited with subtitles meant for the average Brazilian. He learned to read Dostoyevskii and Tolstoy in the original and then talked with native Russians. He is an anthropologist and lived with a Brazilian tribe. The Summer Institute is a Christian Fundamentalist institution which translates the Bible into various indigenous languages. Although my son is an atheist he learned Kayapo at the Summer Institute as they were the best place to learn it. He continued to learn Kayapo after he went to live with the tribe. His other languages were the consequence of various motivations.

Language teaching in the schools should provide motivation, direction for its use and a possible exchange program so the student can practice the language with native speakers. A two year high school program in a foreign language in isolation from other use of the language is what I am afraid could result. The student's time might be better spent.

I agree with Ostler's recommendation that students with a family background in some foreign language be encouraged to continue study in that language.

I fully agree with the views re motivation of students themselves.

While parents may be fully aware of the advantages accruing, students themselves, not at an age where they are renowned for their capacity to look at the bigger picture, may themselves need convincing. A foreign exchange programme not only provides motivation but lands them completely into a different culture. Which is the most efficacious way of learning.

At the university that I work at in China some students, who have been taught English all through their school years, can barely articulate more than a greeting. Many are offered opportunities for exchange programmes to countries all over the world on a one year basis.

This serves as a great motivation and every year students, who were originally apathetic about learning English, go in large numbers to places as diverse as Sweden, Mexico, New Zealand or Canada, while large numbers of students from those countries come to study Chinese here. Many end up returning to their host country after their year is over and/or traveling to other countries and learning other languages.

While those who don't expect ever to travel from their home country nor work in a field where another language is needed, might not see much point to second language acquisition,the chance actually to spend a year in another country sometimes changes their minds - if not their lives.

To Phillip Mahnken, david f & Romany,

Apt that Phillip refers to some important European history, lest we forget how imperialism generated such deep racism against non-Europeans, and even hysteria against other, more closely related Europeans in the WW1 case. The Churchill factor evokes that historical evidence of imperialist narcissism and brutality, which keeps nagging for a conclusion that we were actually on the wrong side leading up to the Dardanelles debacle and then worse...(sorry to digress again!)

Maybe the community has higher expectations for language teaching than for other subjects. I cannot recall anyone expressing as much dismissive regret about wasted resources all because most adults forget trigonometric formulae, Shakespearean soliloquies or the periodic table. Yet how many Australians unfairly decry their shaky recall of just smatterings of greeting phrases from secondary language classes?

I agree with david f's concern for the actual teaching process and its results. I just think it is a more profoundly ideological challenge that should apply to many other subjects too. As it stands, the resources and real opportunities for more effective language study appear around citizens too often unfit for the task. For every Rudd there is not only an offspring of an apparatchik's family like Downer, but now several more whose main "gift" would seem to be little more than a keen desire to imitate such commissars of liberalism and Lockean property worship.

Although far better than previous eras' wholesale waste, programs for preserving family-inherited language skill appear more like a band aid, hardly a language strategy. I believe the best response would be streaming into dynamic tuition for a wave of functionally competent student elites. Our current elitism is bogus social engineering of that hackneyed, neo-Darwinian style I depict above.

That is where I support Romany's emphasis so wholeheartedly about motivating students and sponsoring exchanges, etc. However, I have seen many cases of waste from in-country study where political, commercial or privilege motives, even blatant class discrimination, override actual merit in student selection.

“Here's little story” (thx for the intro kief, though I'll try to go easy on the Überschmaltz). My daughters were both graded as “gifted” (top 5%) in their first year of schooling but, like many of their so-graded peers, could not pursue the special tuition because the fees were beyond working class mum and dad. More “aspirational” parents, on the other hand, lobbied successfully to get their kids into such classes where their gradings just scraped into the top 10%, 15% or some discreetly profitable proximity. I understand that such commercial imperatives can apply even more severely through to under- and postgraduate levels too. Yet my daughters' experience is in the very small minority of primaries that even bother assessing for gifted students. I think that tiny, exceptional (and relatively positive) microcosm in formative education indicates the scale and nature of the problem.

And david f, if we look more deeply into the experience of polyglot and gifted students, we may indeed find that they are “exceptions proving the rule” i.e., they are often deemed to have broken or evaded a rule of mediocrity, thereby exposing the mediocrity of those others supposed to match or at least approach the talented linguists' levels of ability. Another part of such “rule breaking” I detected from you was the marriage to a non-English-speaking (or non-native ES) national, which I know too as a similar source of friction with the monolingual English speakers when chatting easily in the spouse's tongue (many other such marriages I see compel English as another conformist and hegemonic “rule”).

If we really want any education revolution to work - in languages or other fields – we cannot perpetuate the established systemic obstructions to children's natural yearning for competition, incentive and achievement. To do so would be to entertain so much hypocrisy of economic brahmins who claim to have created the most “efficient” system; it would also support traditions of a dysfunctional liberalist social engineering that dare not speak its name.

mil-observer wrote:

"Maybe the community has higher expectations for language teaching than for other subjects. I cannot recall anyone expressing as much dismissive regret about wasted resources all because most adults forget trigonometric formulae, Shakespearean soliloquies or the periodic table. Yet how many Australians unfairly decry their shaky recall of just smatterings of greeting phrases from secondary language classes?"

There is a TV program called "The Einstein Factor". People who have a great array of facts in a particular area exhibit the contents of that memory. That was not what Einstein was about. I don't know whether he had a particularly good memory or not, but the man could think. He could ask questions and see relationships that other people could not see. It is more fun to try to do a little thinking than to marshal great arrays of fact.

Whether or not people forget trigonometric formulae, Shakespearean soliloquies or the periodic table is not important. Whether they still have an interest in mathematics, Shakespeare or chemistry is. It takes special talents to develop mathematical ideas, write plays or make chemical discoveries. However, a good education in those areas can give almost anyone the background to enjoy mathematics, Shakespeare and chemistry. They all are subjects one can enjoy as one enjoys going to concerts and athletic contests.

Number theory can be the source of great fun. "Recreations in the Theory of Numbers - The Queen of Mathematics Entertains" contains many enjoyable problems in that area. All you need is as much mathematics as the average high school student gets.

One can read Shakespeare with spouse and kiddies and have fun acting out the plays.

My wife enjoys chemistry. She has a spinning wheel and makes yarn. She gathers material and experiments with making dyes to colour her yarn with. She produces many beautiful colours and designs garments.

Whether it is language, mathematics, Shakespeare or chemistry a good education will make these areas part of your life and a pleasure all of that life.