so like… i am (white) australian. in primary school we learned french. in high school we could choose between learning french, japanese, or chinese. chinese is useful i guess, maybe japanese, but french??? there is no reason for us to have learned french. none at all.
but hey!!! you say. there’s a bunch of science that says learning languages is great! why are you trying to stop learning languages! and yeah, that’s true. i don’t think we should stop learning languages. i just think we should stop learning french.
you know what i think i should have learned in primary school? the ngunnawal language. you know, the language of the people who have lived here for 40,000+ years. learning ngunnawal (or for other parts of australia, the aboriginal language for those areas) would help build connections between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students, would help non-aboriginal students learn about aboriginal culture, would help with preventing those languages being lost… like so much good stuff
why did i learn french and not ngunnawal