Alan Ruby
Systemic Change: Australia as a Case Study

November 20, 2002 Washington, D.C. --
I am going to talk about Australia's engagement with Asia, particularly as it impacted on the school systems in the 1990's.

I will put that engagement in a political, social and economic context and try to explain why Australia's government: national and state signed on to such a significant policy change.

I will sketch out how this affected the school systems in the nation and give a brief account of what have changed over the last ten years.

To show the what, why and how of a fundamental change in public policy.

Just in case you cannot recall, Australia is a federal national, eight states, two territories and a bi-cameral federal government. The federal constitution separates church and state and makes education a state level responsibility. The eight public school systems are centrally administered at the state capital level and educate 70% of the school age population.

Social and Political Context
Paul Keating became Prime Minister in 1991 and brought to the office three convictions:

• Australia's economic success depended on what the nation did and how it related to the rest of the world
• Australia's future lay comprehensively in Asia
• The times gave Australia an unprecedented opportunity and responsibility to shape the region Keating [2000:15]

These three convictions drove foreign policy, shaped international aid priorities, dictated trade policy and defence alliances for the next five years. They also reignited a campaign to make Australia education institutions more closely aligned to Asia.

Asian studies had been tried in the 1970's - and failed because it focused on putting Asian Studies into Social Studies and because it was driven by university based teacher educators who were driven by a mix of personal interest, love of Asia and liberal values.

The lesson from those years is that:

You can't change a national mind set by looking at one element of our social institution without a compelling purpose and by acting alone.

The next wave of reform came in the early 1900's when a series of fundamental economic and labor reforms made it clear that the nation's economic future was in the region - in Asia.

Its hallmarks included an evaluation and reorientation of our international relationships. (Traditionally, Asia was the place you flew over on the way to Europe - participation in the wordy meetings of UNESCO was more valued than knowing the name of the Thai education minister.)

There was a renewed interest in international comparisions - the league tables of educational performance.

Most importantly this was the time when Australia abandoned the idea that the opportunity to study in Australia was a gift to be bestowed. The aid program had long included a scholarship program and it dominated our relationships in the region. It made those relationships fundamental patriarch. By shifting the emphasis to education and training being a tradable commodity and creating an export industry we were able to shift the basis of many of our relationships in the region. We moved to a principle of "mutual benefit and mutual respect."

They were good years to be in public life, but still the Asia agenda did not grip, despite a panoply of programs and initiatives and some federal government money.

For much of this time, I was a state official and we had more fundamental things to do - like doubling the rate kids finished high school. Even when I was a federal official toward the end of 1980's - the expert market and rebalancing the international relationships was the main game.

That brings us to the 1990's. The drive to engage Asia that Keating energized has many proud parents - which is always a good thing.

There are many good and compelling reasons why Australia - and the United States should engage with Asian, its people, its culture, its history, its language and its economies. Those five things people, culture, history, language and economies probably summarize why.

But let me improvise on those themes and use some other more pointed or popular terms to describe why Australia did this.

The first and most compelling reasons were economic. For nearly ten years, the federal government had driven a tough program of economic reform floating the dollar, changing labor regulations, breaking up monopolies.

By the 1990's economic competiveness was a major policy concern, but all these wonderful structural reforms would only produce products and a capacity to export Australia still needed a market.

The best market, the closest market was the, then booming economies of Asia. "It is possible to create the most competitive product or service on the planet, but still be incapable of penetrating the linguistic and cultural barriers (to the market)." [Rudd 2002]

Yet Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore were in our top ten export markets and we needed to grow our share of those markets and grow faster than Europe and the United States.

Strategically, our traditional defence alliances were with the US and the UK. Yet we had three of the biggest standing armies in the world, nearby - in Indonesia, China and Vietnam. [Cordesman 2002:8]

Culturally and intellectually Australia was dominated by European traditions and US popular culture. We had little contact with the rich artistic religious traditions of Asia.

My two favorite examples of the European dominance are:

• The fact that in the 1970's when I went to Sydney University the only Australia history that was taught was about the First Fleet of convicts and the course ended with its arrival in Sydney.
• The other is the quaint and enduring use of the European seasons - spring, summer, autumn and winter - in a country where the flora is dominated by evergreens and eucalyptus.

Leaving Asia out of your intellectual and cultural canvas is simply denying the existence of half of all there is to know and appreciate in life.

Self identity is an issue for relatively young nation. Building such an identity was best done with some reference to where you are located - rather than imagining you are really just a past of Sussex that has migrated eleven time zones and to the Southern Hemisphere.

Finally there was a need to recognize the plurality of our own people. Migration from Asia had increased significantly from 1966 onwards. Abandoning "the white Australia policy" and moving more towards skill based migration changed the make up the Australia population. It was time to recognize and capitalize on that plurality.

So in summary, we got into the business of engaging Asia for a powerful and compelling piece of economic self interest; trade. But we also engaged with Asia for other valid and important reasons; identity, plurality, security and knowledge.

As you think about your own nations' relationships to Asia it is important not to dismiss any of these reasons. They help you build coalitions and coalitions amplify your voice.

Suddenly you can create common cause with the foreign policy mavens, with multinational business, with trade policy geeks, tourism authorities, the defence department, the academic and cultural institutions and the immigrant communities.

The Education Sector - Engagement With Asia
As we went into the 1990's, we had a burgeoning export of education industry with a large client base drawn from the region. We had education counselors in Beijing, Seoul, Hanoi, Jakarta, Delhi and Bangkok. We had increased our participation in regional fora but our schools were still largely untouched. Kathe Kirby of Asia Education Foundation described the atmosphere as our amalgam of "exotic stereotype," geishas, rice and opium all mediated through Rudyard Kipling and cites a study which found that 90% of texts available in elementary schools about Japan were about origami.

So into this unpromising landscape sailed two initiatives: one to transfer teaching and learning about Asia and the other to change the landscape of language learning.

You all know that changing what actually happens in a classroom after the students have all wandered in and the door is closed is the horror part of educational change.

We approach it the same way good managers approach job re-design: we tried to make it easier to teach and learn about Asia.

How do you do that? Three ways: materials, training and exposure.

But as well as making the necessary investment in these three change agents, we made Asia a priority. We "made the case", using the economic driver-to provide a basis for a change in emphasis in the content of schooling. Business and community leaders helped make the case.

Consistency of message, which is easier to get with only nine elected government, also helped. All signed on to a national strategy lead by a government funded entity, The Asia Education Foundation (AEF).

Established in 1992 the AEF and associated programs has in the last ten years:

Kathe Kirby who I mentioned earlier is a key actor in the AEF and is here today and knows more about these materials and achievements. Her favourite is the series of 4 CD-ROMS, Voices and Visions in China that brings contemporary with media text into classrooms.

• Produced 45 text and electronic publications
• Created 15 web sites
• Initiated the Asia education electronic discussion group
• Provided professional development to 100,000 teachers
• Helped 900 teachers take post-graduate programs in teaching studies of Asia and helped 2000 teachers make study tours and exchanges in the region
• Fostered alliances and partnerships with universities subject associations business and community groups.
• About half of the schools in the country teach Asia in a sustained and systematic way and another quarter do it somewhat superficially.
• Asia access schools

These achievements have been funded in a relative modest way by the federal government. While the money is important-the way it has been used and the hallmarks of the strategy are equally important.

• First and foremost, teaching and learning about Asia was not mandated as a "subject" that had to be programmed into an already full school day. The aim was to infuse Asia into the common curriculum. In my field, I would love to teach from Balzac and the Little Seamstress: one of the best of the current crop of fiction about the Cultural Revolution. If you look at the policy statement on studies of Asia for all Australia schools, it says "in all learning areas, studies of Asia deserve status comparable to studies of other nations and cultures traditionally included in the curriculum."
• Second is the alignment of materials, training and exposure-all focused on the common goal of making it easy (& fun) to teach and learn about Asia.
• Third is using traditional and contemporary materials to capture the spectrum of ideas and connect with history and novelty.
• Fourth is to encompass all of Asia
• Fifth, there was a coherent statement of what we wanted to achieve through studies of Asia. We had five emphases:
  • Develop concepts of Asia
  • Challenge stereotypes
  • Study contemporary issues
  • Look and include the world contributions of the people of Asia
  • Look at the likely implications of closes links

The second initiative was language learning. Up to the early 1990's, the three most common foreign languages taught in Australia schools were French, German and English.

Driven by economic concerns about competitiveness and trade, the state and federal governments agreed and funded a national strategy for the study of Asian languages in 1995.

The key elements of the strategy were:

• A focus on four languages: Chinese, Japanese, Bahsa and Korean -chosen because of their economic significance
• The goal was to have 60% years 10 and 18% of year 12 secondary school students study one of the four languages by 2006
• Money.

The strategy was evaluated recently. The achievements can be summarized as follows:

GROWTH IN ENROLMENTS IN PRIORITY LANGUAGES, 1994-2000

In 2000, more than 750,000 students

• 23% of all students, were studying one of the four priority language.
• Greatest exposure is in years 5-7
• The targets set ten years ago are not being met, but some progress has been made

What next? The federal government has announced that it will cease funding the strategy at the end of 2002. The decision was described by political opponents as: "a complete failure of leadership" and an example of the federal governments "deep pathology towards Asia." [Rudd 2002]

From my point of view, that is a charitable assessment. In the last eight years, about $500 million has been sent on "Asia literacy" in Australian schools, about half of it from the federal government. A cautious professional assessment is that, if the federal government stop its funding, the initiative will founder and momentum will be lost.

This is simply a bad business decision. It was always a 12 year strategy and abandoning it is foolish, fool hardy and wasteful.

It was not a perfect strategy and it could be improved. The poor take up of Korean is a ready example of a bad call in the design phase. But to stop now is like walking of the job in the middle of concrete pour.

It is not just an issue of money. A decision to stop federal support is a clear and unwavering signal that Asia literacy does not matter anymore. Yet Australia still does 50% of its trade with the region. It breaks the bi-partisan all nine government commitment that underpinned the strategy.

The lesson to learn from this is that a sustained intervention over a long time is needed to make change that last in schools and that consistency of message about what is important really matters.

So to conclude, there are simple and compelling economic, cultural and public policy reasons why the U.S. federal and/or state governments and businesses should work together to increase Asia literacy in young Americans. And if you stay on message, you can get change in America's schools.

Alan Ruby is Senior Vice President, Atlantic Philanthropies. Ten years ago, Mr. Ruby was Deputy Secretary in the Australian Department of Employment and Education, where he helped to create a major reorientation of the Australian education system to introduce the study of Asia and Asian languages into Australian schools.

NOTES

Cordesman, A. H., "The Asian Military Balance," 2002

Erebus Counsulting Partners, "Evaluation of Ten National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools Strategy," January 2002

Keating, P., "Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia Pacific," Sydney 2000

Rudd, K., "Creating a Asia literate Australia," Address to the 2002 Australia in Asia Series, The State Library of New South Wales, 8 October 2002

LINKS

Asia Education Foundation

AEF News

Access Asia website (materials for teachers and students)

Studies of Asia Support Document professional development handbook for Australian teacher educators (72-page PDF)