JERZY J. SMOLICZ and MARGARET J.

SECOMBE

ASSIMILATION OR PLURALISM? CHANGING POLICIES FOR

MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

(Received 5 September 2002; accepted in revised form 27 November 2002)

ABSTRACT. In spite of ‘globalisation’ and the homogenising trends which accom-

pany it, the vitality of ethnic identity, anchored in linguistic and cultural core values,
has become a world phenomenon, with minority languages encountering varying degrees
of support or suppression. This paper examines the changing legislation and education
policies towards minority languages in Australia. The country’s emergence from an assim-
ilationist past to embrace a more multicultural approach is analysed with special reference
to young Cambodian-Australians’ educational achievements that show the vital importance
of school support for minority language literacy and students’ subsequent professional
advancement. The paper concludes by re-affirming the need for a supportive community
milieu to be supplemented by school literacy programs in minority languages, in that
either of these two factors on its own may be insufficient to ensure successful language
maintenance and development.

KEY WORDS: core values, language policies, minority languages, multiculturalism

ABBREVIATIONS: ESL – English as a second language; LOTE – languages other than

English

G LOBALISATION AND L INGUISTIC P LURALISM

The paradox of ethnic upsurge in a globalising culture and economy has

perplexed opinion leaders who have confidently expected that the whole
world would tend to become more and more culturally homogeneous until
a convergence of cultures eventuated. Instead, the reduction of the nation-
state’s authority has generated forces that counteract at least some of the
homogenising effects of globalisation (Ben-Rafael & Sternberg, 2001),
with the corresponding phenomena of ‘massification’ and ‘diversification’
already noted by Fishman in 1972 (p. 285). The tenacity of national iden-
tity and attachment to the language of one’s group is evident in most parts
of the world, with rising voices of self-assertion originating from a great
variety of regional, indigenous and immigrant minorities around the world.
Through demands for language rights and the teaching of home
languages in the school, a number of minority groups have succeeded in
gaining varying degrees of acceptance in the educational systems of their

Language Policy 2: 3–25, 2003.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
4 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

countries, as in the case of Australia or Canada. Others have been less

successful, while continuing to strive for recognition, as in the case of
the national language movement of Belarus (Engelink, 2001; Smolicz &
Radzik, 2003). There are still other groups, however, which have remained
strangely silent in stating their linguistic claims, being overwhelmed by
centuries of negative evaluation and subordination to the languages and
cultures of the dominant colonial or domestic elites, as in the case of the
regional languages of the Philippines other than the dominant Tagalog,
which has been ‘intellectualised’ and renamed Filipino (Smolicz & Nical,
1997; Nical, Smolicz & Secombe, 2003). It is the authors’ view that minor-
ities can best succeed in the fulfilment of their linguistic aspirations if
indigenous, regional and immigrant groups coordinate their efforts and
if all such strivings are firmly based upon a common platform of adher-
ence to a full range of human rights, including not only civil, but also
economic, linguistic and cultural (Skutnabb-Kangas & Philipson, 1994;
Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000).
The fate of minorities’ aspirations to have their linguistic and cultural
rights respected and valued differs widely, depending to a large extent on
the historically enshrined ethos and current legal and political practices
adopted by dominant groups in their countries. Indeed, the response of
different countries to this ‘ethnic challenge’ varies widely (Safran, 1995:
2). While most countries of the world are multi-ethnic and multi-lingual,
not every state recognises that its political boundaries encompass cultural
divisions within its own territory (Connor, 1993; Dogan, 2000; Huntington,
1996; Conversi, 2002). Some have tried to deny their existence (as was
the case of Kurds in Turkey until recent legislation permitting the use of
their native tongue). Some have considered their plurality to be temporary
(as was the case of guest-workers and refugees in Germany until recent
constitutional changes opened a more accessible route to the naturalisation
of German-born and long-time residents and recognised Germany as an
‘immigration country’). In still other cases every effort has been made to
assimilate the minorities out of existence (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson,
1996, 1998). The policy of assimilation may be applied to historic regional
language groups, as well as to new immigrant minorities. France is by no
means the only country which upholds the ‘republican ideal’ that equality
can best be achieved in a linguistically homogenous society in which there
is no ‘space’ for any cultural or linguistic alternatives. Greece, for example,
continues to be at odds with most of the European Union legislation on
ethnic minority languages, with the Macedonian issue being a case in point
(Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000: 163, 535–536).
From the pluralist perspective adopted in this paper, the maintenance
and development of a group’s ethnic identity presupposes support for its
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 5

language and culture. Particularly vital is the survival of what we have

previously referred to as the central elements or ‘core values’ because of
their essential role in each culture’s integrity and creative force (Smolicz &
Secombe, 1989). Many ethnic groups are very strongly language-centred,
so that their existence as distinct cultural and social entities depends on
the maintenance and development of their ethno-specific tongues. In the
case of some other groups, there may be debate about which particular
aspect of their culture is of prime core value significance. Indeed, a number
of cultural factors, such as a specific religion, family structure, or the
group’s ‘visibility’ markers may assume comparable significance to that
of language (Smolicz, Secombe & Hudson, 2001).
There may be grounds for disputing whether the ‘soul’ of every nation
invariably resides in its particular ethno-specific tongue, a view eloquently
expounded by an Ukrainian writer, when he argued that

Language is not only a method of communicating. It’s a system of philosophical imagery,

it’s metaphorical, illustrative thinking. Where a language disappears, there you have the
disappearance also of the national structure and the national spirit. The death of a language
is the death of its people. In trying to save the Ukrainian language we are saying that we
are trying to save a nation’s memory and a nation’s future (Pavlov Pavlychko, quoted in
Andrew Taylor, 1989: 6).

There is no doubt, however, that it is the linguistic core which animates

not only the Québécois of Canada, but also the Poles, the Greeks, the
newly independent Baltic peoples, as well as many other national and
ethnic groups. The French Nobel Prize winner, Maurice Allais (1989), for
example, expressed his absolute conviction that the French language was
the core of his culture, in view of its role in sustaining that nation’s identity
and vital powers of creativity, as well as its economic well-being.

Australia’s Linguistic Heritage

This present paper examines the educational standing of languages in
Australia, where English became the dominant colonial language from
the time of European settlement in 1788, when it was implanted upon an
Aboriginal society which was itself multilingual. It has been estimated that
before European settlement there existed some 250 Australian indigenous
languages, as well as some 600 dialects. By 1900, about 100,000 indi-
genous people still spoke their own languages, but by 1996, there remained
no more than 44,000 people (14% of the total Aboriginal population)
who spoke one of the remaining 48 census-listed indigenous languages
or an Australian Creole (a language derived from pidgin English) (Trewin,
2001). In the 2001 census, the number of indigenous language categories
6 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

(either individual languages or language groupings) was increased to 64

(Clyne & Kipp, 2002).
The downward slide in the use of these ‘Languages of Australia’ (a
term currently preferred by indigenous Australians) has continued (Fesl,
1988; Bourke, Bourke & Edwards, 1994; Jupp, 2001), reflecting the world-
wide shrinking of linguistic diversity at a rate that relatively is even faster
than the disappearance of biological diversity (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phil-
lipson, 1998). In consequence, even one of the most widely spoken of
the Australian indigenous languages, Arrente, had no more than 3,500
speakers in 1996. Nevertheless, in some Australian states, an encouraging
trend has emerged over the past few years to revitalise even some of the
smallest languages, reclaim others (Amery, 2000) and teach them at school
and university levels – a topic discussed later in this paper as part of
‘Australia’s Reconciliation with its Indigenous Inhabitants’.
For the first half century or more of European settlement, immigrants
came predominantly from the British Isles, with the subordinated Celtic
minorities – the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh – being well represented,
and regular church services in Irish Gaelic and Welsh. The discovery of
gold in the mid-nineteenth century brought a flood of immigrants from
many parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas. There was also an influx
of political immigrants, such as the refugees from the 1848 revolutions
in Italy and Germans opposed to the merger of the Reform and Lutheran
churches. The next decades saw a great flowering of linguistic and cultural
diversity, evidenced by a flourishing press in languages other than English
and the extensive use of those languages for community life and activity
(Clyne, 1982; Hughes, 1994).

The Era of Assimilation

By 1901, when the states came together to form the Federation of
Australia, a climate favouring cultural and linguistic monism had emerged,
epitomised by the Immigration Restriction Act which became the means of
enforcing the White Australia Policy and excluding those whose cultural
differences made them undesirable. At the same time, indigenous inhab-
itants were herded into special reserves and subjected to a variety of
‘remedial’ treatments, including missionary activities and the removal of
children of non-indigenous fathers to foster homes and public institutions,
mostly against the wishes of the children’s mothers and other members of
their families. Such rupturing of Aboriginal families invariably resulted in
the children’s loss of their ancestral tongue.
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 7

Hostility to ‘foreign’ languages became particularly pronounced during

World War I, when German and, by implication, all languages other than
English came to be viewed with suspicion and their use regarded as an act
of disloyalty, or at least, un-Australian (Selleck, 1980). It was during that
epoch that legislation was passed forbidding the use of other languages as
the medium of instruction in private schools, with the result that, in South
Australia alone, some 80 German Lutheran schools were forced to close.
This law remained on the statute books of that State until the mid-1970s
(Selleck, 1980; Clyne, 1985).
Into this culturally monistic climate came the waves of European
immigrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds who arrived fol-
lowing World War II. They were met with the expectation that before long
they would become almost completely assimilated. Although Australia
prided itself on being a democracy, the policy adopted in relation to
linguistic rights can only be described as minimalist. Minority group
members were permitted to make use of their tongues merely in a
domestic situation and in the restricted area of ethnic clubs and part-time,
after-hours community-organised language schools (usually labelled as
‘ethnic schools’). Such schools received no state support, while students
were discouraged from studying there by their regular school teachers.
Those who dared to speak languages other than English in public often
received reprimands for behaving in an ‘un-Australian’ way (Clyne,
1991a; Smolicz, 1995). The whole approach was based upon the assump-
tion that linguistic transmission would be short-lived and that a language
restricted in usage to the home would become extinct in subsequent
generations, without disturbing the monolingual texture of society as a
whole.
Many immigrants refused to obliterate their home languages, demon-
strating a simultaneous desire to acquire English and to become fully
Australian, without giving up their own distinctive cultural identity. Their
stance put paid to objections about the continued existence of languages
other than English on the ground that they would supplant English. The
unfounded perception that other languages would somehow detract from
students’ competence in English still lingers even up to the present day.
In fact, research evidence from the 1996 census points to the fact that
English has been accepted unquestioningly as the shared language for
all Australians, with over 80% of LOTE (languages other than English)
speakers claiming to know English “well” or “very well” (Trewin, 2001:
165).
8 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

Australian Multiculturalism and Language Policies

The successful adaptation of immigrants eventually helped to persuade
Australian governments to change course by officially abandoning the
notion of a monolingual and mono-ethnic nation-state and adopting multi-
culturalism (Smolicz, 1998). In ideal terms, multicultural policy sought
to uphold and develop an overarching framework of Australian values
in which the right of individuals from minority ethnic backgrounds to
maintain their ethnic identity was assured. The balance of sharing and
diversity in Australian multiculturalism can be seen to rest on the degree of
consensus which has developed on a number of cultural and political issues
in areas such as democratic forms of government, the economy and the
law. Moreover, since the belated incorporation of Aboriginal-Australians
as citizens with full civil rights and the abolition of the White Australia
policy, sealed by the acceptance of Indo-Chinese refugees as settlers over
the 1970s, the overarching framework has excluded any requirement for
uniformity in relation to race, descent or religion (Fraser, 1981; Smolicz,
1997, 1998).
Unfortunately, at the initial stage of this development, no rapproach-
ment developed between the multicultural drive to maintain and develop
languages of the immigrants and the indigenous movement’s concern to
save their own linguistic heritage. Indigenous inhabitants perceived it as
inappropriate to be placed in the same category with the new arrivals since,
as the original owners of the land, their case was unique, as were their
endangered languages. An early acknowledgment of the complementarity
of the linguistic goals of all minority groups in Australia was voiced by
Eve Fesl (at the time a Director of the Koori Research Centre of Monash
University) when she acknowledged that the arrival of post World War
II non-English-speaking European immigrants had made the indigenous
inhabitants realise that there were other people confident in using their
own non-English languages and that indigenous languages were therefore
not some kind of ‘barbaric irrelevance’, as some of them were assured, but
valuable parts of their heritage that needed protection and encouragement.
There remained, however, a fear on the Aboriginal part that, as had been
their experience in previous policy changes, any linkage with the multicul-
tural movement would put them once again ‘at the end of the queue’. It
was therefore considered necessary to strive for linguistic rights on their
own. The realization of common ground for all minority languages was to
came later, but even today it does not enjoy complete acceptance.
The special feature of the Australian multicultural policy has been
the development of an over-arching framework which includes English
as a shared language for all people, without excluding from education
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 9

and community use the languages other than English that are spoken
in the country. After the official government adoption of a multicultural
orientation in the mid-1970s and the acceptance of the Galbally Report
(Committee of Review of Migrant Services and Programs, 1978), advances
were made in the articulation of language policies during the 1980s.
Initially, this resulted in per capita federal and state grants to ‘community
language’ schools. Australia’s National Policy on Languages (Common-
wealth Department of Education, 1987), and the language policies of states
such as South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland,
promised to make up for at least some of the glaring omissions of the
past through the gradual introduction into the school curricula of those
languages other than English (LOTE) that were more widely spoken in the
Australian community (Australian Advisory Council on Languages and
Multicultural Education, 1990; Clyne, 1991a).
While there still appears insufficient acceptance of the need to make
the study of languages (let alone any of those regarded as ‘community
languages’) as a compulsory school subject, some States did formulate
specific plans to teach at least one LOTE to all primary school students,
as recommended for South Australia by the report of the Task Force to
Investigate Multiculturalism and Education (1984). By 1995, this goal was
largely accomplished in South Australia, although lack of continuity from
primary to secondary schools, the limited lesson-time devoted to LOTE
and the insufficient status accorded to it by the school remain contentious
issues. At the same time, Victoria had developed a policy which expected
all children to take a LOTE through the compulsory years of education,
but without all rural schools being able to comply with this requirement.
South Australia’s on-going commitment to promoting cultural and
linguistic diversity for all students currently includes a plan to expand the
existing LOTE instruction into the secondary school system, by making
languages education compulsory for all students up to grade 10 by the
year 2007. Students will be able to chose one or more languages from
among the following language courses available in a State system of
education: French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese,
Indonesian and Aboriginal languages (Department of Education, Training
and Employment, 2000). Through this provision, it was hoped to rectify the
slower progress of languages education at secondary level, where no more
than 35% of government school students were studying LOTE and enrol-
ments were eroding from 86% at the end of primary school to less than
one tenth by the final 12th grade. The implementation of the plan has been
delayed by a variety of obstacles, including opposition from some school
principals who would like to ‘streamline’ the States’ language offerings to
10 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

just two or three languages – a reductionist approach incompatible with

the wishes of ethnic communities and so far successfully resisted by the
State government.
Such policy developments illustrate the crucial role of the Australian
States in the formulation of school language curricula, which stems from
their constitutional prerogatives and funding responsibilities in relation
to school education. Ever since the time of federation in 1901, the dual
responsibilities of the States and Commonwealth in education have fluc-
tuated, as Federal authorities gradually encroached upon former State
responsibilities, especially in tertiary education, generating a dialectic
which still reverberates up to the present.
The protagonists of Australia’s policy on languages received official
support from the Commonwealth Department of Education (1987) in the
form of the report, which became popularly known from the name of its
chair as the Lo Bianco Report. The Report stressed the need for two-
way bridge-building, perceived as a dual focus approach in relation to
LOTE. One focus of the report was on the creation of conditions which
would permit those Australians, who already speak a language other than
English as their first language, to consolidate and develop it further through
literacy, with the chance to learn a third language, in addition to English,
if they so desired. The other was for people from English-speaking back-
grounds to have every opportunity and incentive to build a linguistic bridge
towards their fellow citizens in Australia, to Australia’s neighbours in the
region, or to people of interest elsewhere – with the possibility that one
and the same language may fulfil all these functions – community, inter-
national, trade, geopolitical (Lo Bianco, 1990). For example, German has
fulfilled the role of both community and international/trade language for
over 150 years in Australia (Clyne, 1991a: 4–8). The National Policy on
Languages attempted to ensure that the teaching of languages, such as
Germany and Chinese, reflected both these roles, by offering a balanced
and coordinated approach, which combined the elements of social justice,
the economic and international needs of the nation and access to a variety
of cultural and linguistic perspectives for all Australians. For the first
time the national significance of Aboriginal languages, called more appro-
priately ‘Languages of Australia’, was recognised and support for their
teaching advocated.

The Multicultural Focus in Languages Curriculum

The formulation of the National Languages Policy represented the culmin-
ation of Australia’s belated ‘discovery’ of the ethnic, linguistic and cultural
complexities within its own shores – some of them already of second,
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 11

third or even fourth generation vintage. In practical terms, this marked the
eventual acceptance of a curriculum focus upon Australia’s own plurality
of languages and cultures.
This approach did not conflict with the already established teaching of
classical and geo-political languages since they could be, and usually were,
co-existing, although there arose a competition for resources between
those who favoured the rapid development of languages that fostered rela-
tionships with other societies and those who primarily favoured bridging
the linguistic gap within Australian society (and hence advocated the
teaching of ‘community languages’). With the advent of many Vietnamese
and Cambodian refugees of Chinese background, Chinese acquired the
status of both geopolitical/trade and community language.
To take South Australia, as an example, the first community language
introduced in that state was Italian, which became a Year 12 subject
counting toward university entrance in 1967. Italian was followed by
Dutch in 1969, Hebrew in 1973, Ukrainian and Lithuanian in 1975,
Modern Greek in 1976, Latvian and Polish in 1977, Hungarian in 1978
and, later still, Vietnamese in 1984. Khmer was introduced in 1986, Croa-
tian in 1988 and Persian in 1991, in response to requests from these
language communities, some of whose members were recent arrivals in
Australia. Three states, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales
have also successfully introduced Schools of Languages, run by the
respective State Departments of Education, which offer a wide range of
community languages outside school hours.
Moreover, there have been moves to rationalise final school year
syllabus and examinations in thirty community languages so that one state
examining authority becomes responsible for assessing students in that
language throughout Australia. Under these arrangements Arabic, Czech,
Macedonian, Maltese, Serbian, Slovenian and Swedish have become avail-
able to all students in most Australian states for examination purposes,
with South Australia, for example, taking responsibility for national
syllabus development and examining in Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and
Khmer. This national approach was also adopted for the development of
the first curriculum framework for the teaching of Aboriginal languages at
Year 11 and 12 levels.
The positive aspects of the ‘multicultural focus’ policies have resulted
in making Australian society aware that children of non-English-speaking
backgrounds do not come empty handed, but bearing cultural gifts, chief
among them being their linguistic resources. There is a growing realisation
that it makes sense to build upon the languages concerned and to utilise
the great potential locked in over two million Australian bilinguals, rather
12 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

than see those linguistic treasures squandered, only to try to painfully re-
construct them later from scratch through foreign language instruction.
The efforts to maintain Australia’s languages other than English have
been complemented by a policy of making English language courses avail-
able to all migrants arriving from non-English-speaking backgrounds and
their children. The introduction of English as a Second Language (ESL)
courses in schools began in 1971, with ESL becoming a fully fledged Year
12 subject in 1983. This reform made amends for the past neglect when
children of post World War II refugees were left to their devices in schools,
which tested them in English for intellectual ability, often disregarding
the fact that they spoke another language at home and had no or only
rudimentary knowledge of English.

Cambodian Refugees as an Exemplar of Australian Multicultural Policy

The introduction of languages other than English (LOTE) into Australian
schools represented a major achievement of Australian multiculturalism
which has benefited those immigrant groups which settled in Australia over
1980s and 1990s, as can be illustrated by reference to the immigrants from
the war torn Cambodia (Smolicz, Yiv & Secombe, 2003).
The arrival of Cambodian refugees in Australia during the 1980s could
be regarded as providential in its timing, since it came shortly after
the official rejection of the earlier policy assumption that Australia, as
a nation-state, was to be identified almost exclusively with the Anglo-
Celtic Australian dominant group (Smolicz, 1997). The respondents in
our Cambodian study were among the first immigrant children to exper-
ience Australia’s newly introduced multicultural policies, which were in
the early stages of implementation in the education system. After years
of civil war, the oppression of the Pol Pot regime, foreign invasion
and stagnation in refugee camps, Cambodian refugees represented prob-
ably the most deprived group of immigrants to reach Australian shores.
On arrival they had been provided with the facilities for the intensive
learning of English, alongside the opportunity to acquire literacy in Khmer
(Clyne, 1991a). Compared to the conditions prevailing in Australia during
the immediate post-war period of cultural assimilation, the Cambodian
refugees enjoyed distinct advantages over the post World War II Central
and Eastern European refugees and the Greek and Italian children who
arrived in Australia as economic migrants in the 1950s and 1960s, who
had found none of the facilities and opportunities that were available to the
Cambodian group two or three decades later (Martin, 1978, 1981).
To examine the effects of Australian multicultural policies in education,
a study was conducted using Cambodian-born young people who were
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 13

currently participating in higher education, or who had recently completed

university studies in South Australia. Data on their family background,
schooling and refugee experiences revealed the extent of deprivation at
the time of arrival. Most of them had arrived in Australia after spending
two or more years in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, with over half
having fathers dead or missing, and half the mothers either dead or retired.
While approximately half of the parents had some secondary education, the
majority of respondents themselves had received no education at all and
were illiterate in their home language, with the remainder having no more
than two years of schooling in Cambodia. In terms of ethnic background,
the majority of our Cambodian respondents were of Chinese ancestry and
spoke one of the Chinese regional languages as well as Khmer. A small
number identified themselves solely as Khmer.
In Australia, all of the respondents spent at least six months in an
intensive English program, before going to mainstream schools. The study
revealed that the students’ subsequent success in reaching the university
entrance standard depended on high grades obtained in two out of the
requisite five subjects, namely Khmer and English as a Second Language
and, for some of them, Mandarin as well – subjects which only became
available as a result of Australia’s multicultural policies. The respondents
had been accepted into courses at one South Australian university and
over half of them had already graduated mostly in Science, Mathemathics,
Computing or Engineering, while the remainder were still pursuing their
university studies. Among graduates, all but one had found employment
related to their field of study.
Another outcome of their years of participation in Australian educa-
tional institutions was that the respondents had became proficient in
English, in both its oral and written forms. A number of them did comment
on difficulties they had experienced with English during their univer-
sity studies. Yet English had became the language of their academic
achievement, professional work and general social interaction.
What is noteworthy is that Cambodian respondents’ acquisition of
English did not come at the expense of their home languages, as had
been the experience of many earlier immigrant children (Committee on the
Teaching of Migrant Languages in Schools, 1976; Smolicz & Secombe,
1986: 52). In most cases, indeed, the competency of these respondents in
Khmer (and Chinese for some) had not simply been maintained, but further
developed here in Australia, with many of them gaining their Khmer
literacy skills in Australia rather then in Cambodia.
The opportunity to consolidate and develop their home languages had
generally not come directly through the mainstream Australian schools,
14 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

but through the initiative of the Cambodian community, which had been
quick to follow the pattern developed by earlier immigrant communities
and establish an ‘ethnic’ school. Advice and help was also forthcoming
from the established network of other ethnic schools, which had been
formally established in South Australia under the auspices of the govern-
ment appointed Ethnic Schools Board and through the community based
Ethnic Schools Association. Subsequently, Year 11 and 12 classes in
Khmer were provided by the government School of Languages, which had
been set up specifically to teach the smaller community languages.
Although the introduction of Australian community languages as
university entrance subjects following completion of final Year 12
schooling greatly enhanced educational opportunities for speakers of these
languages, the Cambodian students’ comments showed that the study of
Khmer had not generally been undertaken for instrumental purposes alone.
For many of the respondents Khmer represented an autotelic and identi-
ficational value that was studied because it was their mother-tongue. The
high degree of attachment which so many of the respondents accorded to
Khmer demonstrated its core value significance (Smolicz et al., 2001) for
the Cambodian group as a whole, including all those of Cambodian ethnic
origin, as well as most of those of Chinese background who cultivated the
knowledge of Khmer as well as Chinese (Smolicz et al., 2003).
The Australian schooling and university system of the 1980s made it
comparatively easy for any student who had reached the required academic
standard to participate in higher education. These Cambodian-born refugee
respondents, who had experienced the loss of many years of schooling,
eagerly took up the educational opportunities for university study provided
in Australia, as most important step in the process of starting a new life
for themselves and their families. It could be argued that the multicul-
tural policies then being implemented in education helped them to achieve
their goal in two ways. The intensive English language programme given
to them following their arrival, together with the opportunity to consol-
idate and extend their learning in Khmer, enabled them to complete their
secondary education in minimum time and with scores high enough to gain
university entrance. Furthermore, the dual opportunity for simultaneous
development of their English and Khmer languages (and in some case
Mandarin Chinese as well) meant that their success in the English speaking
world of the Australian university was not at the cost of their Cambodian
languages and culture. Their achievements in completing their univer-
sity studies and gaining subsequent employment substantially increased
the number of university graduates and professional workers within the
Cambodian community in South Australia.
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 15

Languages Policy Outlook

Although the existence of the plurality of languages is now probably
more accepted than at any time in the history of the English language
dominance of Australia since the period of laissez-faire pluralism in the
mid-nineteenth century (Clyne, 1982, 1991a), toleration of languages is
less firmly entrenched in the Australian ethos than religious pluralism.
Minority languages still remain vulnerable and it is difficult to assess
the extent to which schools have contributed to stabilising the country’s
linguistic pluralism.
The support provided by school language education should not,
however, be underestimated, in view of recent research data, such as
provided, for example, on the teaching on Catalan in Spain. During 1980s,
Spain was reorganised into a democratic state consisting of autonomous
communities which upgraded their long forbidden languages to an offi-
cial category, ensuring their presence in the educational systems within
their respective territories (Lecours, 2001: 210). However, as regional
boundaries do not totally coincide with linguistic ones, those who found
themselves outside their ‘home’ region failed to benefit from the new
policies. Research on the linguistic outcomes of students who had a
Catalan home linguistic background, but were resident in Aragon (where
Catalan was not part of the regular school curriculum) revealed the signifi-
cance of the teaching of the mother tongue, even on a part-time and
voluntary basis, for maintaining students’ cultural identity and developing
their biliteracy in both Catalan and Spanish (Huguet & Llourda, 2001:
267). Further research is, therefore, required on the effect of the greater
emphasis on languages education in Australian schools, while acknow-
ledging that LOTE in Australia is generally taught as a subject, with only
very few experiments with bilingual education per se (Clyne, 1991b).
In 1996, about 2.5 million people (16% of the population five years
and over) spoke a language other than English at home, a figure which
remained unchanged at the 2001 census and represented an increase from
14% in 1986 (Trewin, 2001). In all, over 200 language categories were
listed in 2001 as languages regularly used in the home – a figure which
(Clyne, 1991a; Clyne & Kipp, 1997, 2002) has repeatedly regarded as
an underestimate, due to young people moving out of the parental home
and using English in their new domestic milieu, but continuing to speak
their ancestral tongue with parents, relatives and community contacts.
The 2001 census has confirmed the previous rank order of the leading
five languages, with over 100,000 speakers as Italian, Greek, Chinese,
Arabic and Vietnamese. The stability of the overall number of LOTE
speakers conceals “the constant state of flux, reflecting as it has always
16 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

done national and international policies and events” (Clyne, 2002: 29), as
illustrated by the falling numbers of German, Dutch, Italian, Maltese, and
to a lesser extent, Greek and Polish speakers, and the rapid growth shown
by speakers of Arabic, Mandarin and Vietnamese. While the increase in
the latter reflects migration from Asia and the Middle East, the decrease
in the post-World War II migration languages, coupled with ageing of the
remaining speakers, is taken by Clyne and Kipp (2002: 34) as indicating
that “the downturn in the use of certain community languages is likely to
continue”.
The weakness of Australian bilingualism lies in the fact that despite
the range of languages which is being offered as examination subjects
that can count for university entrance, some of these languages have quite
small enrolments and are taught in comparatively few mainstream schools,
which have often been rather grudging and vacillating in their support.
Languages other than English still remain an unpopular option at senior
secondary school level. This is particularly striking for students from the
majority English speaking background, many of whom see no obvious
benefits of investing the effort required to learn a new language, in view
of the availability of what they perceive as ‘easier options’, as well as
the global dominance of English. This often results in the perception of
‘community languages’ as related to migrants or refugees and of ‘multicul-
turalism’ as essentially a minority interest pursuit (Secombe, 1997). With
no formal language requirement for the final school leaving certificate or
university entrance, only 10–20% of students (depending on the State) take
LOTE as university entrance subjects. An inducement has been created by
some Australian universities (such as Monash and Adelaide) by offering
‘bonus points’ to those university applicants who have included the study
of LOTE among their required university entrance subjects.
The fact that in 1996 a quarter (26%) of the community language
speakers were second-generation Australians, i.e., born in Australia
(Trewin, 2001), provides some hope for the maintenance of some LOTE
across generations, a condition which Fishman (2001) regards as crucial
for reversing language shift. Linguistic erosion at community level (as
revealed in the older, established language communities since the 1976
census) confirms the persistence of the drift towards ‘English only’ among
second-generation Australians of minority ethnic background. Despite the
significant multicultural reforms in Australian schools, the multilingualism
of the country, from the perspective of minority community languages,
appears to be insufficiently deeply anchored in the family and local
community, especially in the case of second generation children born from
exogamous families (Clyne & Kipp, 1997).
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 17

Such fragility of Australia’s linguistic pluralism reflects the lack of a

regional or territorial base for immigrant languages, except English, and a
lack of domains where they can be activated. In this regard, countries with
strong, regionally based compact language groups, such as the Philippines,
provide a lesson on the importance of a well-integrated local community
support that ensures oral retention even in the absence of any school
literacy support (Smolicz & Nical, 1997; Nical, Smolicz & Secombe,
2002). In Australia, those young people of non-English-speaking back-
grounds who complete school and tertiary studies of their home language,
ultimately find their minority language domain largely restricted to their
families and a scattering of fellow group members in ethnic organisa-
tions, with very limited opportunities for using their linguistic skills in the
Anglo-dominated ‘mainstream’ society (Smolicz, 1995, 1997).
In more recent years, the globalisation of so many businesses has unex-
pectedly created new avenues for engineers and computer specialists in
companies with international clientele and branch networks. In order to
exploit such opportunities and encourage more young Australians to study
languages other than English, it would be necessary to provide more co-
ordinated policy directives, as was forehadowed in the National Policy
on Languages (Commonwealth Department of Education, 1987) which
recommended that all Australian students, including those of the majority
background, should be required to study LOTE. Subsequent policy devel-
opments which sought to provide incentives for public servants to maintain
or acquire another language in addition to English have been adopted
by some of the State governments. Similarly, a review of the univer-
sity sector’s multicultural and multilingual policies in South Australia
(Tertiary Multicultural Education Committee, 1995) recommended a series
of reforms to stregthen both languages education and the permeation of
multicultural materials into curricula of all subjects, but particularly those
in the social sciences.
Unfortunately, such important initiatives have not been followed
through with any great vigour. The heyday of multicultural leadership,
at both political and educational levels, which Australia enjoyed over the
late 1970s and 1980s, has not been sustained over recent years. It is also
impossible to deny the contrast between the positive reception which the
Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees received in Australia during 1970s
and 1980s and the negative treatment which is currently being meted out
to the so called ‘illegal immigrants’ from the Middle-East region.
Despite such setbacks, the momentum for multiculturalism and
linguistic pluralism has advanced too far to be easily arrested by the
hesitancy of indecisive leadership. As the former Governor-General of
18 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

Australia affirmed, “Australian multiculturalism sustains the nation [in that

it] both protects and promotes respect and tolerance for the [linguistic
and cultural] backgrounds of all Australians – for people who came from
Britain as much as those from other parts of the world” (Deane, 1997:
3). Current tensions throughout the world and the effects of threat of
terrorism and ‘war on terrorism’ have already aroused negative sentiments
towards some minority groups on ostensibly religious grounds, although
there is a danger that they would also have unfavourable implications for
the teaching of languages and for multiculturalism as a whole.
The examples from Australia provides some useful lessons on how to
set policy directions on a pluralist wave-length. This involves the need
to integrate professional and economic management (or ‘economic legit-
imation’) with pluralist educational initiatives in culture and language.
Australian policies have recently come to emphasise multilingualism in the
community as a human resource that enhances Australia’s economic and
trade relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbours, as well as with the heritage
countries of Europe. This has already proved a useful strategy by pointing
to the way bilingual Australians of non-English-speaking backgrounds can
enjoy a triple advantage in trade negotiations because of their linguistic
facility, knowledge of the cultural context and the maintenance of social
and business contacts with prospective partners in their countries of origin
(Lo Bianco, 1990). The value of pluralist policies in calming politically
driven tensions has now become more apparent as greater acquaintance
with languages and cultures of minority groups is proving helpful in
mitigating conflicting emotions generated both by terrorist attacks in the
Asia-Pacific region and by the Australian policies that followed these
events.

Language Policy and Human Rights

The relative weakness of what Fishman (2001: 466) describes as
“the intergenerational and demographically concentrated home-family-
neighbourhood-community [as] . . . the basis of mother tongue transmis-
sion”, and the lack of sustained support for pluralist language policies
shown by the current Australian leadership have conspired against
successful long-term language maintenance and failed to reverse language
shift. Despite its recognition as a leader among the mainly English-
speaking countries in the world in establishing the basis for a National
Languages Policy, Australia’s achievements are therefore still incomplete
and appear at the moment to be suspended in a kind of ‘arrested anim-
ation’, as the Federal Government shows every sign of losing interest in
its further development without comprehending either its intrinsic merits
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 19

or economic significance of maintaining Australia’s linguistic resources.

The educational language policies that a country pursues can, therefore,
be seen to require close integration with social planning grounded in plur-
alist values, and vigorous support from both the government and business
sectors of the economy.
While the harmonious co-existence of diverse linguistic groups in a
pluralist country is greatly enhanced by such cross-sectoral co-operation,
it does not provide, on its own, sufficient basis for safeguarding cultural,
linguistic and economic rights for Australians. A judge in the High Court
of Australia, Michael Kirby (1998), has helped towards the resolution
of some of the country’s pluralist dilemmas, by insisting on the inter-
dependence of culture and language policies with the upholding of a
full range of human rights – political, economic, social, cultural and
linguistic. He has pointed out that Western perceptions of human rights
have changed over time, with the notion of political suffrage in Western
countries not extending to women or to some ethnic and racial minor-
ities until quite recently. Kirby (1998: 1) concluded that in the matter of
human rights, “ ‘the Voyage of Discovery’, which the United Nations’
Universal Declaration of Human Rights initiated half a century ago is far
from complete”.
At what point in that ‘Voyage of Discovery’ does Australia find itself
at present and how does it relate to its language policy? The fact that,
since 1967, all indigenous inhabitants could exercise full political and
legal rights as Australian citizens, did not on its own, make adequate
recompense for the past, nor initiate any policy to foster the Aboriginal
peoples’ unique cultural and linguistic heritage. Over recent years, a
climate of worldwide concern with indigenous rights has emerged among
international organisations, stimulated paradoxically by globalisation and
its effect in diminishing the hitherto omnipotent political and cultural
powers of the nation-state. As a direct result of this influence, Australia has
become actively involved in the process of ‘Reconciliation’ with Abori-
ginal Australians. There has been a rising consciousness of the need to
make amends for the past appropriation of the land and destruction of
so many aspects of indigenous culture, including the decimation of its
linguistic heritage.
For many Aboriginal people, an assimilation policy which assumed that
they would vanish into the ‘mainstream’ has never been a practical propo-
sition. Their lack of gratitude to the assimilation offer, which was extended
after years of separation and domination, astounded many Australians, as
many Aboriginal people persisted in their quest for Australianness in their
own particular Aboriginal way, demanding a policy that was based on the
20 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

premise of the activation of their languages and cultural heritage, directly

linked to their ancestral land.
The High Court rulings of 1996, which legally dismantled the notion of
‘terra nullius’, or the view of Australia as an ‘empty’ land that Europeans
could occupy and use at will, have opened the way to achieving the sought-
for Reconciliation. Central to this process has been the recognition that
human rights for Aboriginal Australians cannot be achieved without full
appreciation of indigenous cultural and linguistic heritage and tradition.

Reconciliation and Indigenous Languages

While the ‘land’ issue has been to the forefront of Reconciliation concerns,
language policy matters have received variable attention in different States.
In some States language policy development has been stalled or even
temporarily been allowed to regress, as in the case of the bilingual
schools, established with such enthusiasm in Northern Territory some 20
years ago and placed under pressure by changing Territory administra-
tions to revert to monolingual English programs. The supposed intention
has been to enhance opportunities for Aboriginal youth in largely non-
existent positions, except within Aboriginal community organisations,
which would, in fact, benefit from knowledge and literacy in indigenous
languages.
The differences in States’ educational policies are shown in the
increased recognition accorded to Aboriginal languages by New South
Wales and South Australia through their efforts to preserve what remains
of their indigenous language heritage. The State government of NSW has
assigned one million dollars in 2002 for the recording and preservation
of the 70 indigenous languages known to have existed there. Indigenous
children have shown enthusiasm for these previously neglected aspects of
their heritage through learning and singing in the languages which have
been made available to them.
The impact of Internet communication on community languages, and
more especially Aboriginal languages, is also being recognised as likely to
assist in the revival of very small and threatened languages. According to
Robert Debski (personal communication), networked communication and
multimedia hold promise for helping such languages achieve relevance for
the younger generation; giving authority to the elders; connecting isolated
groups; and reinforcing identity formation.
In South Australia, the policy of reconciliation has been marked by
the University of Adelaide’s introduction of the teaching of Kaurna – the
indigenous language of Adelaide Plains. Although the last speaker is said
to have died in 1929, its grammar and vocabulary had been preserved
 MINORITY LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA 21

due to the diligence of the 19th-century Lutheran missionaries and in the

childhood memories of hearing the language by a few oldest inhabitants.
Amery (2000: 1) states that despite “seemingly insurmountable odds
there have been positive results” and quotes the ‘elder’ Cherie Watkins
as reflecting the indigenous view when she claimed that “although some
people have described Kaurna language as dead language, Kaurna people
don’t believe this. We believe that our language is a living language and
that it has been sleeping, and that it is the time to wake it up now and this is
what we are doing”. The reclamation and relearning of Kaurna have been
pioneered by the work of the local indigenous (Nunga) community and
supported by individual researchers at three South Australia universities,
as well as by the teachers and students at the Aboriginal school.
At primary and secondary levels a number of Aboriginal languages are
being taught in South Australian schools. In 2002, four major program
types were used in order to cater for the full diversity of language use
in the indigenous communities in the State (Department of Education and
Children’ Services, 2002). The program types were: first-language mainte-
nance (L1), second-language learning (L2), language awareness, and
language revival (with the latter type further differentiated into ‘revital-
isation’, ‘renewal’ and ‘reclamation’). In 2001, Pitjantjanjara (L1 and
L2) was being studied by 1465 students, making it the 9th most popular
LOTE in the State, with 87 students continuing their studies at secondary
level and three at the final Year 12. Kaurna (reclamation type) was being
studied by 252 students, while Narrindjeri (the language spoken by people
at the mouth of the River Murray) was studied by renewal method by
263 students, including 55 at the secondary level. Four other indigenous
languages still extant in the communities concerned are being taught – at
primary level – through a revitalisation approach, namely Adnayamath-
nanha (437 students), Antikirinya (91), Naranga (21), and Arabana (18).
Such reporting of the teaching of the Languages of Australia is worthy of
respect, in view of the fact that only few years ago, almost none was being
taught and their existence was largely ignored.
The progress in language policy development for indigenous people
propels Australia forward along its ‘Voyage of Discovery’ of Human
Rights. Such rights cannot, however, be assumed as static. On the occasion
of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Michael Kirby (1998) spoke of the need for its update, without diminishing
its universality. In this context, the acknowledgement by the Asia-Pacific
NGO for World Conference on Human Rights that “universal human rights
standards are rooted in many cultures” makes it possible to develop a
model of human rights for Australia that links Multicultural, Language and
22 JERZY J. SMOLICZ AND MARGARET J. SECOMBE

Reconciliation policies. Using the metaphor of a tree, we can argue that the
trunk represents the civil and political rights to be found within Australian
democracy. The branches of the tree illustrate the different cultural and
linguistic rights of all the diverse groups that make up Australian society,
including Aboriginal Australians (Smolicz, 2001).
The same type of framework could be adopted by other culturally plural
countries as they strive to harmonise their linguistic and cultural policies
with a stable and resilient nation-state that adheres to the principles of
universal human rights. Civil and political rights, which are regarded as
indispensable in a democratic state, are represented by the ‘trunk’ in the
tree metaphor. The linguistic and cultural rights, however, need policy
planning that does not assume a single pattern, since the ‘crown’ of the tree
can assume different configurations, depending on the cultural traditions
of the groups that make the nation and their members’ current aspirations.
The ultimate success of the Australian multicultural achievement lies in
the extent to which it has been able to reshape itself as an emerging multi-
cultural country, demonstrating that respect for diversity and developing
pluralist policies in education are better guarantees of stability than forced
assimilation to one dominant language and culture.

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Graduate School of Education

Adelaide University
Education Building
245 North Terrace
Adelaide, SA 5005
Australia
E-mail: jerzy.smolicz@adelaide.edu.au