Blog post 3: Deteriorating language culture in Education

Blog post 3: Deteriorating language culture in Education

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-stop-taking-asian-languages-in-senior-years-20131007-2v4cu.html

The article titled “Students stop taking Asian languages in senior years” by Amy McNeilage and Josephine Tovey indicates speaks of how senior school students have steered away from taking Asian languages in years 11 and 12. The article points to how between 2010 and 2012, the “number of high school students learning Chinese grew by 42 per cent to almost 10, 000”. However over the same period the number of HSC students who were studying languages had been minimized by 27%.

Also the statistics indicated that only 902 HSC students studied Chinese this year, dropping by 5% from last year. It has been indicated by Tom Alegounarias the president of the Board of Studies that students began to form the opinion that studying a language was not as significant anymore when it came to studying the HSC, once being renowned for giving students a “competitive advantage” among their peers.

This deter away from studying languages in high school is result of our growing globalization which could be perceived as a positive, however the negative would be that culture and language seems to be suffering as a result. Students feel that in this day and age you don’t need another language other than English and students seem to be aware of such.

The article also points out that “the proportion of students continuing to more advanced study in the senior years continues to slide, with Fairfax Media revealing last week that the rate of students studying a foreign language for the HSC is at a historic low of just 8 per cent”. When looking at this statement we need to take a couple of points into consideration. Firstly, as aforementioned, how the growth of globalization means that students feel they do not need to learn a language to benefit in society. Perhaps another factor and also mentioned in the article is that students are deterred to learn languages that are not innate to their own culture as they feel they will be competing against students who have the same language background and will be disadvantaged in the HSC as a result. Furthermore perhaps the fact that languages are not signified as important in a myriad of Sydney schools in comparison to extension subjects and higher scales subjects such as Physics and Chemistry.

This article relates to culture and education for a number of reasons, primarily that despite our growing multiculturalism and arguable move towards multicultural harmony the learning of language is deteriorating and therefore culture itself.

It is perhaps up to each educational system to ensure that languages are as valued as other subjects, with Dr Ellis even pointing out that there is “a lot of evidence that bilingualism can enhance cognitive abilities”. Essentially the importance of bilingualism and learning language in school should be enhanced and not deterred in Educational institutions, ensuring that this little bit of culture does not essentially diminish for good.