Thanks to Karen Woodman for this thoughtful article -- although I refuse to accept that 'impact' (as in the fourth paragraph) is a transitive verb in English.

Thanks also to the editors for running so consistently with this thread of articles. If it wasn't for OLO, this really critical issue would be too easily forgotten. I trust you will keep it up!

Since Australians had multiculturalism foisted on them without consultation, we have been hearing people describing themselves as ‘something- Australian’. We don’t need the example of Canada, nor will we necessarily agree with the author that this trend does not detract from Australian or Canadian identity. You are either Australian, Canadian, or you are a hybrid. People qualifying their nationality in a country where they were born, or where they immigrated to and became citizens, must have their loyalty questioned.

Apart from the author mistakenly thinking that the hyphenated nationality nonsense has not already occurred here, thanks to a divisive multicultural policy, she has added nothing to the discussion on language teaching in schools.

I found her comment that: “…. If a population believes that learning an additional language is normal, expected, useful, and attainable, then the goal is often attained”. So, that’s what all this hammering on about languages is all about, is it?

No Australian government has shown much, if any, interest in anything other than the elective languages taught in schools now. I mean, educators are always crying out for more funds for basic education. The Rudd Government has really put its foot in it with the pre-election ‘promise’ of a computer for every student. Most people will know how this has fallen into a heap.

The pressure for compulsory language teaching is coming from self-interested pressure groups, and governments will undoubtedly ignore them.

Learning a language other than your native language is good for all sorts of reasons; but let’s not force people to do it. Those needing languages for careers they have chosen already have the tertiary facilities needed. Most Australians of an age where they can deal with a new language can barely handle English.

Like so many minority hobby horses, this language hang-up is totally impractical, and there is no demand for it from a population believing that an additional language is normal.

On the trivial side, I don’t think Rudd’s Mandarin is going to have much effect on the inscrutable Chinese

Mr Right says "Most Australians of an age where they can deal with a new language can barely handle English."

But unfortunately the age when we can best deal with learning language is early childhood. My primary school age children have one hour a week of LOTE - hardly worth the bother.

They (whoever that might be) "can barely handle English" - yes, they can only speak it and understand it!

Far be it for me to argue with 'Mr. Right', but the fact is that as an immigrant country, Australia is, and has always been, multicultural (and do remember, being of Anglo- or Celtic-descent is actually an ethnicity - albeit the assumed default in this country). The issue is whether members of all of the cultures that make up this country feel equally able to show pride in their heritage(s).

Linguist,

If you have children of primary school age, you are of a generation that also cannot handle English - apart from speaking it, after a fashion.

Some posters keep asserting that a second-language school program distracts students from learning English properly. These posters continue to ignore the vital fact pointed out by writers of articles in this feature: that learning a second language tends to give you a better grasp of your first one. If children in their first school-years learn a second language they are, on average, ready for English literacy earlier. They also then make better progress in English literacy. If the LOTE program continues through subsequent years the benefits to other learning also continue.

If, as Mr Right and some others seem to believe, many Australians have a problem in handling English then part of the solution is to advocate that they learn a second language in a good program. This induces people to reflect on the English language and to use it more correctly and effectively. Research and international experience show this to be true.

A multi-cultural reality has existed since the First Fleet so its recognition since Al Grassby's tenure has simply been a turning away from unethical and shameful racism to recognition of our reality as a hybrid people, just like the Poms. Go look at the history books, Mr Right. All those snobs who ued to talk about 'breeding' are actually nice mongrel mixtures - as is the English language - of Briton, Anglo-Saxon, Pict, Jute, Norse, Norman-French contributions plus influences in language and gene pool from every place on Earth the British Empire went marauding.

I have a great interest in my German and Irish roots, I love British and Australian history, I teach and learn the Indonesian language because that quarter of a billion people one hour's flying time from Darwin are undeniably important to the future of this nation, and downright interesting in their own right.

There is no such thing as a national identiuty fixed for all time, as you seem to think. That's a just a social construct and tool of propaganda used by people with nasty, often warlike or just plain commercial motives. You are no doubt quite different to your grandparents. Cultures and languages change and influence each other. It's normal. It also empowers us to be alert to what shapes us and what goes into our minds and comes out of our mouths (and keyboards), don't you think?

Quoting Right:

"You are either Australian, Canadian, or you are a hybrid...People qualifying their nationality...must have their loyalty questioned."

Further to comments by KeriC and Phillip Mahnken, I add that these above comments are falsehoods. To assert Australians' hybridity is a truism of biology if we trace back far enough. Notions of ethnic purity are repulsive, leading to ignorance too dangerous for us all. European preoccupations with such fantasies are especially absurd if we examine the ongoing ethnic flux brought by whirlpools of invasions, migrations and mass evacuations.

If someone inquires about my ethnic identity, I describe for them my own particular hybrid background. I accept that some indigenous ethnicities in central Australia may be harder to trace for their much earlier mixing, but there we can deduce such processes from language similarities between neighboring peoples too.

As an Australian who uses 2nd and 3rd LOTE conversationally I have had my loyalty questioned many times, Right. Each time, such "questioning" was by an "Australian" who did not acknowledge any hybrid identity. However, such people typically had more ethnically mixed background than myself!

As a related aside for general warning, we should lament the modern racism of some extremist Israeli Jews who denigrate "Arab" ethnicity and even Sabra identity: "anti-Semitism" by definition, but apparently spawned from fanatical cults of European supremacy since the 18th century.