Top universities to tackle languages dieback

Hmmm... I am a bit dubious about this. Although I am myself a great dabbler in languages, it is undisputable that acquiring a native command of a foreign language is a rare feat that is usually accomplished only under conditions of total immersion in that language -- and even immersion is often not sufficient. So most students of a foreign language are wasting their time if they expect a useful outcome from it. It is however a good cultural experience. For me, being able to understand Schubert Lieder in the original is sufficient recompense for my studies of German. So I think availablity of foreign language study should be there but I would oppose any compulsion or mandatory requirements

Leading universities are demanding radical action to tackle a crisis in the number of Year 12 students graduating with a foreign language, which has dropped from 40per cent to six per cent over the past four decades. The Group of Eight universities want a second language to be compulsory for all students from primary school to Year 10, more incentives to study languages at university and an advertising campaign promoting the benefits of learning a foreign tongue.

The Group of Eight, consisting of research-intensive institutions such as Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland universities, say the number of foreign languages taught at the tertiary level has almost halved, from 66 to 29, in the past 10 years. "Crisis is not too strong a word to describe the decline in foreign language education in our schools and universities," Group of Eight executive director Michael Gallagher said. "Despite many positive efforts from committed teachers and language experts, the percentage of Year12 students graduating with a second language has fallen from 40per cent in the 1960s to as low as 6per cent in some states in Australia today."

He called for a national approach involving schools, universities and state and federal governments. "Our national deficit in foreign-language capability is something we can no longer afford to ignore," he said. "It is Australia's great unrecognised skills shortage, and the one most directly relevant to our competitiveness and security in an increasingly global environment."

A planning paper released yesterday by the Group of Eight found that most schools, public and private, do not require students to take a second language. It says this lack of emphasis on foreign languages at school put pressure on university language departments. "The number of languages taught at our universities continues to fall," it says. "Of the 29 languages still on offer at tertiary level, nine are offered at only one Australian university and only seven are well represented across the sector."

The Group of Eight found only five universities offered courses in Arabic and fewer than 3per cent of university students studied an Asian language despite Asia representing 70per cent of Australia's largest export markets. The Group of Eight proposals include more funding to strengthen language education, especially at universities. Targeted funding to boost the morale, skills and number of language teachers was also recommended, along with the expansion of bonuses for students who took languages in Year 12.

Source




When eating "right" goes too far

EXTREME healthy eating is becoming such an obsessive ritual that it is risking young women's health and spawning a new eating disorder - orthorexia. A term coined by international doctors in the past decade, orthorexia is when sufferers - particularly adolescent girls - become hooked on healthy and "pure" eating and put serious and damaging restrictions on their diets.

One leading Sydney expert, who said she was seeing an increasing number of teenage girls with the condition, said orthorexia could have short and long-term effects on bone quality, mood and immunity. The Children's Hospital at Westmead dietician Susie Burrell told The Saturday Daily Telegraph the signs of orthorexia were hallmarks of a serious eating disorder to come. "These are usually girls who only want things very healthy, they are very fat-phobic, they cook the meals themselves, they are very fussy about what they will and won't eat," she said. "There is a focus on keeping lean and thin and looking good and it's often smart girls who are doing well; they get very good grades, they're a good daughter and it goes to the next extreme."

Sufferers of the modern food affliction tend to control their meal portions to the extent where they avoid processed foods entirely and eat very small amounts and sometimes exercise obsessively. Unlike clinically diagnosed eating disorders such as anorexia, orthorexia is characterised by sufferers who have a fixation with food, rather than with weight loss.

Anthea Durrell, 14, said she saw schoolgirls in her year who became fanatical about what they ate and said messages about obesity could be misconstrued. "Lots of celebrities these days are really skinny, like Nicole Richie, and they have such a bad impact on what girls see as beautiful," she said. "It gives them messages that it is really bad to be even on the edge of being chubby.

Eating Disorders Foundation chief executive Amanda Jordan said current messages in regard to childhood obesity and increased weight gain could be wrongly interpreted in young, image-obsessed women. "You get really valuable messages that are getting interpreted in a way that actually works against a person's health," she said. Ms Jordan said orthorexia could become an obsession cycle of self-starvation which then escalated into life-threatening eating disorders. "There is a clear trend in people thinking there is a right way to eat and people going too far in following those guidelines," Ms Jordan said. "It's good to be working against having an obese population, particularly in children but the message over time is getting confused with the message that all fat is bad. "The tendency is sometimes to go overboard and I am really worried it will lead to an increase in eating disorders."

Source




Wait for elective surgery getting longer

WAITING times for elective surgery have jumped, with patients nationally now typically having to wait more than a month before receiving the treatment they need -- and in many cases nearly a year. Median waiting times for patients admitted to hospital from waiting lists have been creeping up since 2001-02 by one extra day each financial year, reaching 29 days in 2004-05.

The latest nationwide hospital statistics, published today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, show patients needing elective surgery had to wait a median of 32 days in 2005-06. This means half of the patients waited 32 days or more. Waiting times are blowing out on some other measures too, such as the time needed to get 90 per cent of patients admitted. In 2005-06 this was 237 days, up from 217 days a year earlier, and 44 days more than in 2003-04.

However, the Australian Hospital Statistics 2005-06 report found a lot of variation between states and territories. Queensland took only 127 days to see 90 per cent of the patients, whereas the ACT took more than a year, 372 days. The ACT was the worst performer on elective surgery waiting times, with 10.3 per cent of its elective patients waiting for more than a year.

Of the states, Tasmania performed the worst, with 8.7 per cent of elective admissions taking more than a year and 90 per cent of patients seen within 332 days. The Northern Territory was next (7.7 per cent waiting for more than a year, and 313 days needed to see 90 per cent of patients), followed by NSW (5.4 per cent and 291 days). However, the proportion of patients nationally having to wait more than a year fell slightly - from 4.8 per cent in 2004-05 to 4.6 last year.

A spokesman for ACT Health Minister Katy Gallagher said the territory's median waiting figures had increased due to a policy of targeting patients facing extremely long waits. An extra 94 patients who had been waiting two to three years had their operations in 2005-06 and the "additional throughput" had affected median waiting times. A spokesman for the Tasmanian Government said the biggest hospital reforms in the state's history, including plans for an elective surgery hospital, had been launched. A spokeswoman for NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher said more elective surgery was being done than ever before, and only 66 people had been waiting longer than a year for elective surgery - down from more than 10,000 in January 2005.

John Dwyer, chairman of the Australian Healthcare Reform Alliance, said long waits cost the system more because patients often required expensive drugs.

Source





Captain Cook was a wise and compassionate man

The report below corroborates many other reports of him by non-political writers -- including of course Cook's own detailed journals of his voyages and other reports by those who accompanied him. To modern-day Leftist historians, however, his heroic voyages of discovery in the Pacific on behalf of the British navy -- including the first reports of the East coast of Australia -- are just another example of evil white men exploiting noble primitive people. A short biography by Richard Alexander Hough offers good factual background



It was high summer, 1774, when Georg Forster crossed the Antarctic Circle on board Captain James Cook's ship Resolution. But as he recalled several years later, it did not feel, look or sound like summer to the 118 men shivering with cold and fear on the converted coal carrier. "Fogs and storms alternated with each other; often a storm would rage even during dark fogs; often we did not see the sun for a fortnight or three weeks," wrote Foster, who was 17 at the time. Vast masses of ice "emerged from the sea like floating islands", moving unseen until the last moment, encircling the ship. "How often were we terrified by being able to hear the waves breaking on the ice without being able to lay our eyes on the object of our fear," reflected Foster in a remarkable essay written in German in 1787, but only now published in English.

More revealing, though, than the conditions during the three-year expedition - Cook's second great voyage of exploration - is the picture that emerges of the conduct of the captain. Not only did Cook deny himself many of the pleasures due his position, but he showed uncharacteristic "fatherly care towards his men", Foster, a German naturalist, philosopher and polyglot adventurer, said. "At just the right moment he allowed them to have a party. Or, when the weather was too cold or the work had exhausted the crew, he would personally serve an invigorating drink." He even gave up his own quarters to make the overworked sailmaker more comfortable.

Foster's essay goes some way towards restoring a hero's reputation that has been tarnished by a series of recent "revisionist" histories. "There has been a bit of a backlash against the traditional idea of 'Cook the great white explorer'," says Nigel Erskine, curator of exploration at the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. Indeed, books written from the point of view of indigenous people - such as the acclaimed Discoveries by Nicholas Thomas - have so moved minds that Cook is in danger of being rebirthed as "someone who shot his way round the Pacific".

Now, belatedly, the publication of Foster's essay Cook, der Entdecker (Cook, the Discoverer) - accompanied by a facsimile of the original German text - provides yet another correction. Erskine says Foster had the literary skills to transport readers with no knowledge of life at sea into the shuttered wooden world of the Resolution. "When the sea is very rough the mast may swing up to 38 degrees from the perpendicular," he writes. "At such times I have seen the tip of the yardarm immersed in the crest of a wave. "Every wave, therefore, swings a sailor on a yardarm some 50 yards up the mast through an arc of 50 to 60 feet."

From such vivid accounts, Cook re-emerges as a hero - not just an extraordinary finder of far-off lands, but a man who combined courage, compassion and a seafarer's eye for detail. Ultimately, Foster eulogises Cook, who was clubbed to death in Hawaii in 1779. "I imagine him as one of the beneficient heroes of antiquity who, on the wings of eagles, ascended to the assembly of the blessed gods."

Foster had sailed with his father, Johann Reinhold Foster. It was not a happy trip: a shipmate later described Foster snr as an "unsociable, ill-tempered, lying, bribing, knavish . piratical pretender of knowledge". On their return, relations with the British establishment deteriorated further, as the Fosters became involved in a strikingly modern wrangle over publication rights to Cook's voyage.

In a limited edition of 1050 copies, Foster's essay is the sixth book in the museum's Australian Maritime Series. Derek McDonnell, of the publisher, editor and translator Hordern House - which tracked down a copy of the German book in Massachusetts - says: "Cook is still a superstar."

Source