Given that there has been so much talk recently about the rise of the 'Asian century' and of a need for young Australians to gain-through their formal education-a 'global passport' to travel and work anywhere in the world, it is truly alarming to learn that language education is shrinking within our schools and universities. There has been a decline in the diversity of languages being taught, less requirement for students to learn non-English languages, and a surprising shift back from Asian to European languages in many schools and universities. Furthermore, university academics working in the fields of languages and culture education often decry the fact that there tends to be an instrumental interest in learning another language because this obscures the fact that languages reflect different cultures and ways of seeing the world.
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