A historical overview of the teaching of Greek

In the late 1980s in Victoria there were 80 government schools and the VSL teaching Greek to more than 9,700 students


The big question now for Greek, for other ethnic Australians, for the entire nation is also how to introduce multicultural education in the English language

The teaching of Greek and other languages reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period characterised by unprecedented community intervention, supportive teachers and schools, and some favourable government policies and attitudes.
Tens and hundreds of thousands of ethnic Australians in one way or another were demanding their rights in the national education system. Thousands of Greek parents, for example, became involved for the first time in their lives in what was happening in schools, many joining Greek and other parent committees.
Thousands of teachers learned for the first time something about the social, cultural and linguistic background of their school community which enabled them to respond better to teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) or Languages Other Than English (LOTE) and prepare appropriate materials. The nation was becoming more aware of its place in Asia and the world, and the value of languages.
Generations of Australians of all ethnic backgrounds went through schools, exposed to the realities of a changing and diverse Australia. It was such practice that put the real substance in multiculturalism. Acceptance and celebration of diversity in schools is now the rule, not the exception. To maintain this, schools must teach and practice multiculturalism.
Where the Greek Communities threw their considerable strength behind campaigns to improve government schools, such as in South Australia, the results in language teaching have been relatively better and more enduring than when such support was directed to ethno-specific schools only.
In the late 1980s in Victoria, there were 80 government primary and secondary schools teaching Greek to more than 8,000 students, mostly of Greek background. The Victorian School of Languages (VSL) taught Greek to another 1,700 students; 210 teachers were employed by the Department of Education to teach Greek. The total number of students learning a language other than their original language was 112,000 (Victorian Ministry of Education 1987); Greek represented about 10 per cent of that, a very substantial base for long-term viability in the state education system.
However, this historic opportunity to consolidate a main community language in the state education system was not grasped with both hands. The non-government schools (private, Church and community), some 60 of them, were teaching Greek to about 6,500 students (mostly at primary level) and another 1,800 at the three secondary colleges were gathering some momentum under the privatisation bandwagon.
Since that burst of achievement and growth, there has been a constant decline in all sectors, but more so in government schools. By the early 2000s the number of government schools in Victoria teaching Greek dropped to below 40, and the number of students learning Greek dropped to under 4,000. The decline in VSL Greek was arrested at about 1,000, thanks to some inspiring work by teachers and management, such as Frank Merlino and Maria Foscolos.
The non-government Greek ethnic school student numbers were also reduced, especially in the community and Church schools. The private schools in Melbourne are owned by two or three people running a good business. The number of students learning Greek at VCE level in 2013 is under 300.
Universities have almost ceased producing community language teachers. This catastrophic drop over a short period cannot just be attributed to lack of interest. Surveys have shown that cuts in government funding for languages and the ditching of the short-lived National Languages Policy have been major contributors.
Demographic, societal and geographic changes were also determinants of outcomes.
The all-important community factor had grown weaker in a climate where those in authority wanted people to be spectators not participants. The ‘lack of demand’ argument fuelled the usual excuse for starving schools of the means to sustain language teaching -the classic ‘killing by neglect’. The late Michael Tsounis, an Adelaide based historian, told me that: “Generally the decline can be attributed, among other factors, to the antagonisms between Greek Community education bodies and individuals and their refusal to cooperate with those Anglo and ethnic teachers who were fighting for Greek learning to be the natural part of education as a whole in an Australia that was rapidly developing into a multicultural one”.
In comparison with the USA and Canada we fare better and this we owe to the Left, Greek-Australians and Australians generally. Dionissios Koutsovelis of Melbourne, who has spent 25 years first as a teacher at the Auburn Primary School teaching 300 pupils Greek (of whom only 80 were of Greek background), who then moved in the Department of Education’s Migrant Education Branch had this to say on the same issue, in a paper on Greek in government schools (2004): “The economic rationalist discourse imposed on languages appears to have had a significant effect on the state sector as did people’s priorities. As the rationale for learning languages shifted towards utilitarianism, as the demographics of school populations had changed to being disadvantageous for Greek, Greek language education had receded in systematic schools and its existence is threatened. The existence of Greek in systems where it is widely available for study by all students is of paramount importance for the existence of the language. Our efforts should encourage cooperation to support Greek programs in systematic schools”.
Making LOTE compulsory in the early 1990s and incentives given to teaching commercial languages such as Indonesian and Japanese, usually in place of community languages, produced some amazing figures on paper. Overall, 91,712 were studying Indonesian, 69,556 Japanese and 91,712 Italian, according to the report Languages Other Than English in government Schools, of the Victorian Education Department in 1996.
But language acquisition actually fared worse than ‘the maligned’ community languages. The numbers dived again. Once again, the ideas were good but the resources and commitment was not there. Democrats leader, Senator Lyn Allison, wrote that: ‘A mere 4 per cent of class time is spent on foreign languages, almost one third of the OECD average. The government allocated $110 million for students to learn languages other than English over the next four
years.’ (Australian Mosaic, no. 2, 2005).
The inability of the government education system to deliver is denying the opportunity to all students in Australia to learn another language. As a consequence, this failure is feeding the out of school, out of reach and out of sight para-educational and segregated ethnic schools system.
The fact that English is the national language and the modern lingua franca does not diminish or wipe out the ongoing necessity and importance for language maintenance and language learning, for internal and external uses, for cultural fulfilment and expression. In the interest of the people and the nation, this valuable multilingual asset and resource should not be left to rest on the vagaries of para-education, but be entrenched in Australia’s public education system.
The big question now for Greek and other ethnic Australians and indeed for the nation is not only how to have languages taught in schools and in society, but also how to introduce multicultural education in the common English language. That is an education that records and reflects the history, culture, values and contribution of all to the nation’s commonwealth and its destiny. This is the story of the real Australia that does not begin and end with the glorified white Anglo-Celtic settlement and conquest of this country, but with the indigenous people and every successive wave of immigrants, including Greeks.
The issues of culture, language and identity have meaning for all if they are addressed within the national context and institutions. Otherwise history will never forgive us for missing not only the ethnic language bus on which a decreasing minority can travel, but also that of multicultural education on which all can ride and benefit from. Language is above all a means of communication of learning and creation.
* George Zangalis is a former Unionist. This article is an edited version of extracts from the first chapter of his book “Migrant Workers and Ethnic Communities”, published by University Press and Common Ground.