By
8 July 2011 14:58
A week late, but via Greg Sheridan comes this amazing and disheartening statistic:
...there are fewer Australian Year 12 students taking Indonesian now than there were in the 1970s. The same trend of decline is evident in universities.
Earlier this year I signed up for a TAFE night course in Canberra to learn introductory Indonesian. I was looking forward to the class, but just before it was due to start I received a phone call: the class had been cancelled because there wasn't enough interest. In our nation's capital they couldn't find a dozen adults interested in learning the language of our largest and most important neighbour.
Seventy-seven percent of Australians say they want a closer relationship with Indonesia; they just don't want to be involved.