Cultural Awareness

It would be good to start with languages in schools. New Zealand teaches its maori language and so we could start by giving children an awareness of appropriate aboriginal languages. Then we need to follow through on what the rest of the world has picked up. We almost note with pride we cannot speak any languages and that is a headset we need to change because it is ludicrous, especially now and especially in Australia. Europeans are now encouraged through eduation to be at least trilingual. The Americans are pushing their languages education and what are we doing? We think kids need computer forgetting that communication in a international environment means language acquisition! We have refused to address our linguistic needs. The Eastern states have bilingual kindergarten and schools. They are producing children with lingusitic competencies. Once you learn one language , it is far easier to learn another. We still persist in the stupidity we don't need to learn any languages and we need to just speak English. It is a headset which advertises our complete lack of understanding of what culture means and it shows. It is starting to really show . While others are making an effort to get good at differnt languages we are losing the benefits by staying monolingual. We don't have the thinking and cultural complexity of those who speak several languages because just learning languages gets your brain going and you can learn other things as well. It's a discipline. You get the cultural awareness through the language. You realise not everyone thinks like you. Each language can express a diffferent aspect of yourself. You are not an identical person in one language and once you understand that concept you do reach out to others and help them to connect. It is important to be a cultural interpreter and those who need that help are appreciative you can supply them quickly with the short cuts. I'm doing it on a daily basis and it's fantastic and then just as fantastic to hear another version of reality. Livening ourselves up and getting linguistic would be great.