indonesian_open FW: [Wa-indon] ASILE report - They're not talking our language

[Wittman, Leonie]

Teman-teman yang baik
The following article from David Hill will be of interest to all
teachers of Indonesian.
 
Leonie Wittman
Senior Curriculum Adviser
Languages Special Projects
 
Languages Unit
Curriculum K-12 Directorate
NSW Department of Education & Training
3a Smalls Rd
Ryde NSW 2112
 
Tel: 61 2 9886 7681
Fax: 61 2 9886 7160
Email: leonie.wittman at det.nsw.edu.au

-----Original Message-----
From: wa-indon-bounces at central.murdoch.edu.au
[mailto:wa-indon-bounces at central.murdoch.edu.au] On Behalf Of David Hill
Sent: Wednesday, 20 July 2005 10:34 PM
To: wa-indon at central.murdoch.edu.au
Subject: [Wa-indon] ASILE report - They're not talking our language

Wa-Indon members who attended the recent ASILE conference might be
interested in
the article below.

regards,
David Hill
..............
THE AUSTRALIAN - HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT

They're not talking our language

David T. Hill

July 20, 2005

THIS month's biennial conference of the Australian Society of Indonesian
Language Educators in Perth concluded with a strongly worded call to the
governments of Australia and Indonesia to do more to support the
teaching of the
Indonesian language.

The gathering of more than 100 teachers, across primary, secondary and
tertiary
sectors, expressed grave concern at the decline of the Indonesian
language in
Australia and the lack of government support, at state and national
level. 

ASILE also endorsed key recommendations of the May 2004 Commonwealth
Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee report into relations with
Indonesia. The report recommended "that Indonesian studies be designated
a
strategic national priority and that the Australia Research Council and
the
Department of Education, Science and Training be requested to recognise
this in
prioritising funding for both research and teaching." 

It also urged that the highly praised National Asian Languages and
Studies in
Australian Schools program, jettisoned by the Coalition in 2002, be
restored,
"or a program with similar aims and an equivalent level of funding be
established". 

Yet 14 months after the report was presented to parliament, the
Government has
yet to respond, with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's office fobbing
off
inquiries with assurances a response is imminent. 

Meanwhile, though the situation for Indonesian varies around the country
and at
the different educational levels, the national decline is stark. 

West Australian government school enrolments in Indonesian continue to
grow, to
almost 40,000 in 2003, with significant uptake in the middle years of
schooling
(with more than 5000 studying Indonesian in each of years three to
seven). Yet
students shed Languages Other Than English in senior years. Only a
paltry one
per cent of TEE candidates, or 107 students, sat the Indonesian (second
language) paper in the 2004 Tertiary Entrance Examination, a 24 per cent
decline
on the previous year. 

NSW Higher School Certificate numbers have also plummeted. In 1994, 328
students
sat HSC Indonesian (at various unit levels). During the following
decade,
enrolments declined by more than 16 per cent with only 275 doing the
2004 HSC
(including 106 "background speakers"). In ACT government schools,
Indonesian
numbers dropped 9 per cent between 2000 and 2002. 

What has led to such a national decline? David Reeve, of the University
of NSW,
argued at the ASILE conference that periodic crises in Indonesia and the
battering given to Indonesia by the Australian media have eroded public
confidence and sympathy for the country. This was exacerbated by
government
travel advisories and a disproportionate focus on terrorism and, more
recently,
drug arrests. 

The 1997 Asian financial crash was followed by the fall of Suharto,
InterFET in
East Timor, bombings in Bali and Jakarta, and now the Corby and Bali
Nine
arrests, representing a cascade of negatives exploited by a
sensationalist media. 

Even committed Indonesian teachers face resistance within their schools,
from
parent groups and students influenced by such public opinion. Positive
information about Indonesia - its enormous strides towards democracy,
and the
predominant peace and tranquillity across the vast archipelago - has
become rare. 

Indonesia has not helped by banning two Australian academics or by
making
research visas hard to obtain. ASILE urged Indonesia instead to provide
scholarships for staff and students to visit and assist Indonesian
cultural
groups to tour Australia. School visits to Indonesia, teacher exchanges,
and
in-country professional development programs in Indonesia have all
suffered from
education departments' rigid interpretation of the DFAT travel
advisories
against non-essential travel to Indonesia. 

Even some tertiary staff have been forbidden from travelling to
Indonesia by
their universities, based on ill-informed and inflexible interpretations
of the
advisories (often incorrectly referred to as bans). For Indonesia
experts, who
study the country professionally and feel eminently qualified to make
their own
security judgments, decisions by over-zealous university bureaucrats to
block
their travel are an affront. 

Such blanket prohibitions isolate Australian academe and disadvantage
teachers
and students. The ASILE declaration and the 2004 parliamentary report
both
called for more nuanced travel advisories. 

As Indonesia's rapid social and political transformation makes it more
fascinating than ever, fewer university students are studying the
language. The
University of Western Sydney closed Indonesian last year. It was only a
campaign
of public support that dissuaded the University of Sydney, the first
university
to introduce Indonesian in the early 1950s, from shutting its program
with the
retirement of its senior lecturer this year. At UNSW and the University
of
Technology, Sydney, numbers are dangerously small. Determinedly,
universities
across Sydney are seeking DEST funding for a cross-town collaboration to
revive
and reinvigorate Indonesian. 

Reports from Queensland are equally dire, with the University of
Queensland,
Queensland University of Technology and Griffith maintaining the
language only
through strong staff determination. 

WA university numbers appear to have bottomed out and are slowly rising.
Murdoch, with the largest first-year Indonesian enrolment, completed
first
semester this year with more than 50 students, well down from 90 a
decade ago,
but slightly up on previous years. 

There are other encouraging signs. Employment demand for Indonesian
graduates is
stronger. Ironically, responding to heightened strategic concerns, the
Department of Defence and several security agencies in Canberra are
having
difficulty recruiting sufficient graduates in Indonesian. 

Curtin's Neville Saunders told ASILE that Indonesian was historically
the victim
of a political see-saw: when the Coalition was up, Indonesian went down.
Interest had crested every two decades since the '50s, most recently in
the
'90s, only to ebb away until another generation - and incoming Labor
government
- embraced it. 

David T. Hill is professor of Southeast Asian studies and a fellow of
the Asia
Research Centre at Murdoch University. 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15983840%2
55E12332,00.html

...........................
David T. Hill
Professor of Southeast Asian Studies
Murdoch University 
Western Australia 6160

I am currently in Indonesia and can be contacted via:
Indonesian mobile phone number: [+62] [0] 815 2383 1815
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