I am a firm believer in children
learning more than one language.
And I agree, competent teachers
are necessary to make the subject
interesting, and the students
wanting to learn. As with any subject.

Because Australia is so isolated from
the rest of the world geographically,
I can understand
the mentality of some people - who can't
understand why languages are necessary.

Travel, opens up the eyes and hopefully
the mind, and suddenly (as my sons did),
you begin to see certain advantages
in knowing more than one language.

But as I said earlier, good teachers
make all the difference.

What a load of racist Bull $#1^. Of course kids need to learn a second language & it should be an Asian language not a European language.

Foxy the sweetness on OLO

You are perfectly right in what you say in that context of your enlightened home environment.
The hard reality is that relatively few children benefit from extra languages.
Overseas travel is a luxury not enjoyed by a sizeable portion of our society.
As stated before in many cases languages are yet another subject that isn’t relative to their reality and often just another subject to fail. This can be demoralizing to the child. I moved state when my children were young they originally learned German and were succeeding but the schools where we moved to taught Polish and Mandarin. (Why Polish? There was a vocal and large minority of parents who being Polish extraction insisted on it.)
Trying to pick up the new subjects against the background of more advanced resident students had with one child a pronounced negative effect.
The issue here was further complicated in that the high school they went too had different languages again (different feeder schools).

Clearly the problem is that languages taught aren’t consistent amongst schools/states etc. The excuse given was both availability of teacher (good or otherwise) and parental lobbying i.e. Polish

Additionally simply maintaining children’s interests in core subjects in some areas is a tall ask.

Add to that we are as a nation falling behind international standards teaching keeping up with practical life skills. One wonders if extra language skills are all that important to most children.

I would substitute languages with cultural understanding subjects. We do need less blind ignorance (bigotry) to cultural differences in a multicultural nation

Dear examinator,

I can only speak from my own life experience,
of course.

My father firmly believed in teaching us
other languages (beginning with Latin).
Other cultures were always a part of the world
I grew up in, so of-course I passed this on
to my children. It took time for them to
appreciate any of it, (until they travelled
overseas). Then things seemed to come full-circle.

I understand that not every child (and their
circumstance), is going to work the same way.
However, I always believed - give children something
'higher' to aim for, teach them to 'reach for
the stars,' and even if they fall, the worst that
can happen is they'll land in the clouds. And,
isn't that better than grovelling in the mud?
(my apologies for this cliched imagery, but
you know what I mean...)

Still, this is only my opinion ...

As examinator and others have suggested the problem with continuity is a real problem for some children. The vast majority of children complete their primary education in the one school and then proceed on to a clearly defined set of feeder schools.
The teaching of languages tends to be unique in that it is the only subject where schools are subjected to parental lobbying regarding which languages ought to be taught. Part of this is driven by a misplaced notion of utility. There are a number of reasons for teaching a second language - the ability to use the language in conversational situations is perhaps the least important.
The most important reason for learning an other language is for cognitive development. A second language gives you a deeper appreciation of the logic of both your own language and that of the second language. This is not a trivial benefit. When taught properly students improve their understanding of their own language as well as develop their ability to reason.
A second or third language gives access to other cultures in a way that cultural studies are simply incapable of doing. In essence it teaches students that there are as many ways of looking at the world as there are languages.
The third benefit is that learning a second language when young makes it much easier to learn a third, fourth or fifth language.
Coming in fourth place is the opportunity to use the language in transactional situations.
Therefore given that the vast majority of students complete their education in one setting it follows that the priority of education systems is to provide local continuity. This will mean educating parents so they understand the benefits that students get from learning a second language.