tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/asia-literacy-6686/articlesAsia literacy – The Conversation2017-02-07T19:12:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/718792017-02-07T19:12:13Z2017-02-07T19:12:13ZWhat students learn about Asia is outdated and needs to change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154182/original/image-20170125-23834-1douiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Asia literacy became official government policy in 2008.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julian Smith/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/educating-australia-35445">this series</a> we’ll explore how to improve schools in Australia. Some of the most prominent experts in the sector tackle key questions, including why we are not seeing much progress; whether we are assessing children in the most effective way; why parents need to listen to what the evidence tells us, and much more.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The idea that all Australian students should develop a deeper understanding of Asian languages and cultures is not new. Some <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Anxious_Nation.html?id=spS6AAAAIAAJ">elements of this thinking</a> go back to the 19th century.</p>
<p>Australia has consistently faced the dilemma of reconciling its colonial history with its geographical location within the Asian region.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, this dilemma led many policy advisors and educators to remind Australians of the importance of learning about Asia. </p>
<p>In the late <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/17491110">1980s</a> and early <a href="http://apo.org.au/node/34111">1990s</a>, the reports by professor Ross Garnaut and the then the secretary of Queensland’s premier’s department, Kevin Rudd, used the idea of “Asia literacy” to highlight the economic importance of Asia to Australia’s national interests.</p>
<p>They once again challenged educational institutions to ensure that all Australians had a better understanding of Asian languages and cultures.</p>
<p>It was not until 2008 that the idea of Asia literacy became official government policy through the <a href="http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/National_Declaration_on_the_Educational_Goals_for_Young_Australians.pdf">Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians</a>. This in turn inspired the Australian curriculum to identify ‘“Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia” as one of its three cross-curricular priorities.</p>
<h2>Importance of learning about Asia cannot be denied</h2>
<p>So embedded has the idea of Asia literacy now become that it is no longer the question of whether Australian students should learn about Asia and Australia-Asia relations, but how. </p>
<p>Our current approach to Asia literacy is exhausted and outdated, partly because it has been overtaken by events.</p>
<p>The profound economic, political and cultural changes that are now taking place in Asia, and in Australia, demand new ways of thinking about relations between the two.</p>
<p>Over the past two decades, most educational authorities have worked tirelessly to produce curriculum material, engage in advocacy, conduct study tours of Asia and develop professional development programs for teachers and educational leaders. Governments have invested heavily in the teaching of Asian languages.</p>
<p>While this activism has no doubt transformed the ways in which many young Australians think about Asia, the main problem with the current approach is that it remains trapped within an instrumentalist logic that interprets and justifies the need to learn about Asia largely in terms of its economic returns. </p>
<p>“Asia-relevant capabilities” are viewed as important for expanding trade links, developing new markets, and more generally, working in Asia.</p>
<p>This line of thinking is clearly evident in the <a href="https://www.corrs.com.au/assets/thinking/downloads/Australia-in-Asian-Century-Issues-Paper.pdf">Henry report</a> on the Asian Century, launched with much fanfare in late 2011. </p>
<h2>Current approach is narrowly-framed</h2>
<p>While this report recognised the dynamic nature of Asian societies and stressed the need to forge people-to-people links, its business orientation effectively eschewed equally significant aspects of a changing Asia. </p>
<p>It paid little attention, for example, to the marginalised communities within Asia, and to the growing social inequalities across Asia resulting from globalisation.</p>
<p>It repeatedly romanticised the growing middle class in Asia for the enormous commercial opportunities it had created for Australia. </p>
<p>It suggested that for Australia to take advantage of these opportunities it needed to develop appropriate economic policy settings, with respect not only to trade and taxation but also education, skills development and migration. </p>
<p>In this way, education was embedded within a broader framework of economic instrumentalism.</p>
<p>There is of course nothing wrong with highlighting the importance of economic and strategic outcomes. </p>
<p>What is problematic, however, is the failure in the contemporary discourse of Asia literacy to also consider the cultural and social dimension of relations. </p>
<h2>Risks of reinforcing binaries</h2>
<p>To forge our relations with Asia largely in instrumental terms is to view Asians as a means to our economic and strategic ends. </p>
<p>It is effectively to assume Asia to be Australia’s Other - culturally and social distant.</p>
<p>It is to presuppose the theoretical assumptions surrounding an East-West binary, in which Asia is still seen as the East while Australia is assumed to be a proxy for the West.</p>
<p>This binary represents a colonial legacy that is no longer very helpful in interpreting Australia-Asia relations for a wide variety of reasons.</p>
<h2>Australia’s changing demography</h2>
<p>To begin with, it fails to take into account Australia’s changing demography: <a href="https://www.dca.org.au/dca-research/leading-in-the-asian-century.html">almost 17%</a> of the Australian population is now of various Asian backgrounds.</p>
<p>Many Asian-Australians now have dual or multiple citizenships. They are therefore able to relate to both Australia and their countries of origin in ways that are significantly different from what they might have been in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Asia and Asians are also now part of Australia - not apart from it.</p>
<p>The discourse of Asia literacy based on the East-West binary makes it difficult for Asian-Australians to understand how such a discourse positions them in Australia, and how they should relate to the calls for them to learn about Asia. </p>
<p>For them, the impact of the new media and communication technologies is highly significant. This has enabled them to enjoy on-going connections with their “home” countries, while also re-casting the distinction between “here” and “there”, as their sense of identity and belonging are subjected to major shifts.</p>
<h2>Expanding ties with Asia</h2>
<p>At the same time, the level of mobility for work, education, business and tourism of all Australians has never been greater. </p>
<p>More than 200,000 Australians now live and work in Asia, and many more visit Asian countries on a regular basis. This has transformed the nature of Australia-Asia relations, both spatially and culturally. </p>
<p>The economic rise of Asia has also engendered a new sense of post-colonial confidence in many Asian countries that has redefined the ways in which Asians view Australia, and its attempts to develop closer relationships with them. </p>
<p>Global flows of ideas, capital and people have created conditions in which cultural fluidity and hybridity have become ubiquitous.</p>
<p>What these observations suggest is that while we readily recognise the new Asia to be culturally dynamic, and changing rapidly, we have yet to develop a more sophisticated understanding of Asia-Australia relations - and indeed also of the discourse of Asia literacy.</p>
<p>Asia literacy should not simply be about learning cultures and languages but should be about teaching the skills of interpreting and negotiating the possibilities of intercultural relations within Australia and beyond its borders.</p>
<hr>
<p>• <em>Fazal Rizvi explores this theme further in a new book called <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/165663">Educating Australia: Challenges for the Decade Ahead</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71879/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fazal Rizvi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>17% of the Australian population is now of various Asian backgrounds. School curriculum around Asia-Australia relations needs updating to reflect demograpic changes.Fazal Rizvi, Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/283012014-06-25T04:23:01Z2014-06-25T04:23:01ZNew Colombo Plan can change how we see Asia – if done right<p>The government has high hopes that the <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/new-colombo-plan/">New Colombo Plan</a> will lead to a more Asia-literate society and people-to-people links will improve our relations with Asian nations in the program. But for this to be successful, there’s a few things it still needs to think about, such as the calibre of the students as diplomats, and whether they’re in Asia long enough to really immerse themselves.</p>
<p>In announcing Australia’s “new aid paradigm” at the National Press Club recently, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop topped and tailed <a href="http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2014/jb_sp_140618.aspx">her speech</a> with the Colombo Plan. </p>
<p>Bishop began by recalling the thousands of Asian students who were sponsored to study in Australia under the Colombo Plan for aid to south and southeast Asia, commencing in 1951. She concluded with reference to a new “signature policy in foreign affairs” that is the government’s New Colombo Plan, which provides support for Australian students to study and undertake internships in a partner Asian country.</p>
<h2>The ‘long view’ of Australian engagement</h2>
<p>The bigger story according to Bishop is the “long view” of Australia’s engagement in its region: flows of people to and from Asia creating people-to-people linkages over time. </p>
<p>However, this raises important questions. The first thing to note is the awkwardness of linking scholarships with a policy speech about greater aid effectiveness. </p>
<p>It will always be problematic to measure the original Colombo Plan’s success in terms of aid. We can point to political, business, research and community leaders through Asia who were once Colombo Plan scholars such as Indonesian vice-president Boediono, and we trust that some of them have made a difference in the development of their respective countries. But keeping track of all of the returned alumni and measuring their effectiveness in terms of poverty alleviation or development is devilishly hard.</p>
<p>The story is different in terms of “soft power”. The Colombo Plans, old and new, generate wonderful human-interest material as students experience new lands and learning. And they are ready-made vehicles for the “humanising” of foreign policy objectives, such as cultivating friends and two-way understanding of Australia and our region – public diplomacy in modern parlance.</p>
<p>The original Colombo Plan, 63 years old next month, signalled the potential and also the limits of using sponsored student movements as public diplomacy. In training more than 20,000 students (some of whom rose to prominence upon returning home), Australian governments cultivated ties that would endure. They added “ballast” to relationships with key neighbours such as Indonesia and Malaysia. </p>
<p>Even more importantly, perhaps, the Colombo Plan educated Australians who knew too little about post-independence Asia, and broke down barriers to greater communication and understanding.</p>
<p>But there were limits to what could be achieved in the name of the Colombo Plan. Some of the publicity around Australian efforts stalled when it was not translated into local languages, and it was hard to maintain a profile in countries such as India, where the numbers spending time in Australia represented a miniscule fraction of the population. </p>
<p>As mentioned, it was also very hard to keep track of where Colombo Plan alumni ended up. Those who had positive experiences in Australia were invariably those who proved easiest to track down later, but their number didn’t account for anything like the full complement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/51979/original/4ysbnq7v-1403575402.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Governments hope cultural exchanges create people-to-people links between nations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/afsusa/8609804413">Flickr/AFS-USA intercultural</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What do these lessons suggest for the New Colombo Plan?</h2>
<p>The aim of fostering interest in the region and replacing the largely one-way flow of Asian students to Australia with a two-way flow is widely welcomed. The first tranche of funding under the New Colombo Plan started in February, and 24 Australian universities sent more than 300 students to Asia for study, language training and internships.</p>
<p>This year’s pilot program involves Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Next year, the New Colombo Plan will involve a broader range of partner countries in the Indo-Pacific, and we already know one of these is China. </p>
<p>In policy language, there is a sense of Australian students being generational pioneers for “our destiny” in Asia. This is almost an inversion of the older development paradigm through which Asians were encouraged to see education in Australia.</p>
<p>If it is to be successful and be seen – as Bishop intends – as “a rite of passage” for young Australians, then two crucial criteria must be met. First, we will need the Australian public as well as universities to embrace the plan. We look for stimulating stories about the institutions visited and educational or internship experiences enjoyed. </p>
<p>The New Colombo Plan has the potential to help shift us from seeing Asia primarily through the eyes of tourists and exporters. It might enable us to draw more on the experiences of the roughly half a million Australians who already live and work in the region. </p>
<p>We also need our new New Colombo Plan scholars to be great listeners and learners – qualities not necessarily instilled if, as has sometimes been the case this year, their overseas ventures are very short-term. Good listening is an essential quality of public diplomacy initiatives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lowe receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australian Aid (Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).</span></em></p>The government has high hopes that the New Colombo Plan will lead to a more Asia-literate society and people-to-people links will improve our relations with Asian nations in the program. But for this to…David Lowe, Director of the Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.