The global language of influence

When asked in 1898 what was the most decisive event in modern history, German statesman Otto von Bismarck is reputed to have said: The fact that North Americans speak English.

Recently Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard effectively answered the same question for the global age. She has brought to fruition a strategy that her Mandarin-speaking predecessor, Kevin Rudd, advocated back in 1994.

This is to give all Australian students access to at least one ‘priority’ Asian language: Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese or Bahasa Indonesian, throughout their years of schooling. The aim is that a third of all Australian civil servants and directors of leading public companies should have a ‘deep knowledge’ of Asia by 2025.

The Gillard initiative has been downplayed in web comment as unrealistic. But as argued by Professor Irvin Studin of Toronto University, from whose recent article in the Financial Times I take the policy details, Australia is exceptional.

It is a government that is activating the civil assets of national power – education and intelligence, markets and diplomacy – behind its interests in the region.

By contrast, as Studin pointed out, the Barack Obama ‘pivot’ to Asia is a strategy that is overwhelmingly militaristic in emphasis. And it excludes the population at large.

As for Europe, Studin, who is also editor of Global Brief, sees the European Union (EU) approach in Asia as “reductively economic”, lacking in the ‘imaginaries’ of values and cultural references that hold people together.

As he puts it, if you want to reach understanding you need to mobilise more than guns and money. You need to change a culture.

I can believe that there are few bridges within the EU between trade deals and education. It is notable that the Bologna communiqués, full of references about mobility, have not mentioned foreign language proficiency. As far as I know, the 2012 Bologna strategy on mobility for better learning is the first to use the phrase.

But in fact the European population at large is overwhelmingly in favour of language competence and multilingualism. It is not just that many are exposed to another language in daily life through city living or education, through films, television or radio, or through social media.

Many already have language skills. More than half the population of the EU can hold a conversation in at least one foreign language, according to a recent Eurobarometer report. Almost half boast they can read a foreign language newspaper. A quarter speak at least two additional languages and 10% can converse in three or more.

Three-quarters of the population think that an ability to speak a foreign language is necessary for everyone, and 98% wish it for their children. There is also a trend to thinking globally. Increasing numbers see Chinese as important, decreasing numbers want Russian.

There is some policy response from EU education institutions to these trends. The voluntary EU policy launched in 2005 had the aspiration that those in education should speak their mother tongue plus two European languages.

This has recently been modified. The stated objective now is that they speak mother tongue plus one European language (no doubt English) and one other (code for Mandarin, Japanese, Arab, an African language or wherever cultural or geo-political interests lead).

But it is national policy that counts.

Take the example of the UK. Outside universities there remains the lingering belief that knowing English is enough. The government’s restrictive visa policy for foreign students is another example of opportunities for dialogue and understanding shut off. The larger public’s fear of immigration has won out.

It is time to study the Australian example in terms of how to engage a wider society – and for the EU to do more to encourage and nudge.

* Anne Corbett is a visiting fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her latest publication is “Lisbon and Education”, in The EU’s Lisbon Strategy: Evaluating success, understanding failure, edited by Paul Copeland and Dimitris Papadimitriou and published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012.