[noemon]

Federal Member for Calwell Maria Vamvakinou and Federal Member for Hindmarsh Steve Georganas today welcomed the inclusion of Modern Greek in the National School Curriculum.

Ms Vamvakinou said the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) decision was a significant milestone for philhellenes and Australians of Greek background.

“The Labor Government’s historic decision to include Modern Greek and other languages is a testimony and endorsement of the success of Australia’s unique brand of multiculturalism,” Ms Vamvakinou said.

“Today the Government has shown its support for language learning in the curriculum and acknowledged its immense potential.”

“As a former language teacher I am particularly proud of the communities nationwide campaign to have Modern Greek included in the curriculum as a language of economic, social and cultural importance.”

Ms Vamvakinou and Mr Georganas congratulated all the schools, universities, community group, individuals and the Greek media for their campaign efforts.

“No-one will forget the nationwide campaign to lodge a petition of 25,000 signatures calling for the inclusion of Modern Greek in the curriculum in June 2010,”Ms Vamvakinou said.

“The petition was made more significant by the fact that It was only the second bilingual petition ever to be presented to the Federal Parliament.”

Steve Georganas said that the efforts of the Greek community to lobby for the inclusion of the language was testament to the continuing important of Greek culture and heritage to Greek Australians and the wider community.

“Modern Greek is not only important for trade and investment, but many Australians also have significant personal, professional, historical, social and cultural ties to Greece, which have fostered a strong relationship between the two countries. It is the language of great minds such as Plato, Aristotle, Homer and Hippocrates.” said Steve Georganas.

“We also know that language education benefits trade, employment and education, and so I am delighted that in years to come, Modern Greek will be offered as one of the key languages to school students right around Australia.”

The ACARA decision formalises decades of teaching of language by schools, churches and community groups across Australia, many of which have developed significant language programs, infrastructure and specialist teaching capacity for Modern Greek.

Modern Greek is one of the top five languages other than English spoken in Australia, with more than 250,000 Australians stating in the 2006 Census that they spoke Greek at home. More than 356,000 Australians identified Greek heritage in the same Census.

http://www.greekcity.com.au/content.cfm?id=7068

[colliric]

Not much to discuss really. Except perhaps why it took so long?

[AVT]

No doubt this is important for people of Greek descent but the language itself is of little economic value to Australians, more important to learn Mandarin or Japanese.

[Igor Antunov]

It came late, and is insignificant in a practical sense. Couple English with Mandarin and you're set, the propensity for future business endeavours is vast with these two languages behind you. Greece is down the shitter as an economy and a country.

[colliric]

It came late, and is insignificant in a practical sense. Couple English with Mandarin and you're set, the propensity for future business endeavours is vast with these two languages behind you. Greece is down the shitter as an economy and a country.

For Melbourne it's clearly culturally significant and quite practical, as I believe we still have the biggest population of Greeks outside of Greece. Mandarin on the otherhand is still practically non-existant on a local level. Most Chinese in Melbourne still speak Cantonese and still bring a highly Hong Kong cultural feel to our "Chinese suburbs". That doesn't look like changing anytime soon given all the older generation settling right in. Most came during Victoria's second major influx of Chinese immigrants in the 70s, which was massivly scewed towards Cantonese immigrants from HK(came to Melbourne by the boatloads, most fleeing the then threat of communist invasion according to my Grandad, or Gong-Gong as everyone called him) my Mother's family included.... Almost the exact opposite of the Mandarin immigration of the Gold Rush era.

[Igor Antunov]

Cantonese speak mandarin as well.

[colliric]

Cantonese speak mandarin as well.

lol, Not Mum(or her 6 sisters and brother!)! Never spoke a word of Mandarin until about 3 years ago, and still doesn't actually ever speak it(I understood and watched Mandarin films more than she did!)! English was always her second language(Paw-Paw taught it for a living back in the old city)!

That's "modern cantonese" you're talking about Igor... Back in the 70s English was the primary second language(you should already know that, actually very surprised you don't) and Mandarin was third.

[Igor Antunov]

I meant cantonese chinese can understand mandarin speakers for the most part. You say you can.

Why teach a language understood by just 60 million (Actually there are numerous unintelligble cantonese variants right?) when you can teach one understood by 1.3 billion + those 60 million.

[colliric]

I meant cantonese chinese can understand mandarin speakers for the most part. You say you can.

Why teach a language understood by just 60 million (Actually there are numerous unintelligble cantonese variants right?) when you can teach one understood by 1.3 billion + those 60 million.

I'm not arguing over that...

I'm just pointing out that in Melbourne the majority of Chinese are first, second or third generation Cantonese. Last I saw a survey of "places of birth", the overwhelming majority of Chinese in this City were either born here or from Canton province, specifically Hong Kong obviously(about 50% from Canton and the remainder born here), only about 15% were from mainland china or Taiwan. I'll look up more specifics on the breakdown.

Although from memory that survey was in relation to visitors to Melbourne's Chinatown... Which I admit has always been dominated by Canton businesses and restaurants, and is where certain anti-communist groups also setup shop(the Kumintang still owns buildings on the North side, and built that Dr Sun Yat-Sen Memorial). Still a significant figure though.

[Bounce]

I meant cantonese chinese can understand mandarin speakers for the most part. You say you can.

Why teach a language understood by just 60 million (Actually there are numerous unintelligble cantonese variants right?) when you can teach one understood by 1.3 billion + those 60 million.

I don't understand why the State should sponsor divisive educational facilities.

Education is meant to have a point, and teaching Greek isn't going achieve it. If they choose to speak it at home (then they'll be taught at home) if they have no other context in which to learn it, their skills will languish. I see it both being economically pointless and socially factual.

[Igor Antunov]

I'm not arguing over that...

Yeah understood, but I'm thinking further afield, in the context of Australia and it's regional economic partnerships. Mandarin is really difficult, I envy you being able to understand it. I'm just learning.

I don't understand why the State should sponsor divisive educational facilities.

I agree in this particular context. But bilingualism is a very good thing for society as a whole. It benefits young minds in numerous ways.

[Bounce]

But bilingualism is a very good thing for society as a whole. It benefits young minds in numerous ways.

I agree, but given we have no 'secondary' national identity (Quebec) the second language should benefit the country economically or culturally. Neither of which Modern Greek will facilitate.

I don't remember Labour prior to 2000, but I can't imagine they limited themselves this much to populist politics.

[colliric]

I agree, but given we have no 'secondary' national identity (Quebec) the second language should benefit the country economically or culturally. Neither of which Modern Greek will facilitate.

I don't remember Labour prior to 2000, but I can't imagine they limited themselves this much to populist politics.

It will to Melbourne, it will clearly benefit our local culture to have Greek formally available. Perhaps this should have been, or indeed is actually for, the benefit of Victoria's significant Greek population(biggest city population outside of Greece).

Oh and Labor(Party uses American spelling for a political reason) were always the party of populist politics. Since Whitlam got in anyway.

[foxdemon]

No doubt this is important for people of Greek descent but the language itself is of little economic value to Australians, more important to learn Mandarin or Japanese.

I suppose there are more reasons to include a language in the national cirriculum. Given there are many speakers of the language in Australia, students should have a good chance to practice Greek. Learning a language requires immersion in a group speaking that language. I wonder if Greek Australians would mind if lots of kids decend on them looking for Greek practice? By this reasoning, perhaps Italian could be taught also?

Perhaps Spanish might be a good choice to add the the list. Spanish is widely spoken in the world today and teaching it would help Australians who might travel in Spain or the new world. Indonesian is another sensible choice, as this is a neighbouring country with a large growing economy and English is not that widely spoken.

I think we need to be careful of focusing on languages for profit. At present Australians seem memorised by China. It is only one of many nations in the world today that we need to deal with.

[AVT]

I suppose there are more reasons to include a language in the national cirriculum. Given there are many speakers of the language in Australia, students should have a good chance to practice Greek. Learning a language requires immersion in a group speaking that language. I wonder if Greek Australians would mind if lots of kids decend on them looking for Greek practice? By this reasoning, perhaps Italian could be taught also?

Perhaps Spanish might be a good choice to add the the list. Spanish is widely spoken in the world today and teaching it would help Australians who might travel in Spain or the new world. Indonesian is another sensible choice, as this is a neighbouring country with a large growing economy and English is not that widely spoken.

I think we need to be careful of focusing on languages for profit. At present Australians seem memorised by China. It is only one of many nations in the world today that we need to deal with.

I am fairly certain French, Japanese, Bahasa and Italian are already offered in schools, or at least they were in my high school. The problem I have with offering languages that have minimal economic importance is that they will siphon off potential learners from the important languages (most students can only pick 1).

Another point is that although the number of Greek speakers is large, we are not recieving large amounts of immigration from Greece any more so the number is set to decline as second and third generations become more assimilated, it appears this measure would have been good 50 years ago where there were plenty of Greek immigrants that could not speak english. Our language policy should pro-active rather than reactive, European languages are nice but not very useful, we should be focussing on Mandarin, Bahasa and Arabic.

[colliric]

Meh... I learnt Latin in school....

Not even the Church speaks that language anymore. Yet it's still a useful language to know, partly because one can actually get a better understanding of English by knowing it, and therefore the original meaning of many Latin words that are part of the English language. Like Canine or Oral, for instance.

French, Chinese(both Mandarin and Cantonese), Japanese, "English as a Second Language" and Latin(which was compulsory till year 10) were the main languages offered in my school.

Not in that order of preference actually... Chinese was actually the least "popular" partly because those who found it most useful were doing ESL instead. This was back in '01.

French was the language I did as part of my 1/2 VCE... Then I opted to do English AND English Lit... Dropped French, which was a mistake in the end.