An Australian politician is looking into reinvigorating Indonesian studies into Australian schools and universities after decades of decline but what I’m hearing is “Indonesia is important because it’s our closest neighbors, they have more than 250 million people, and important to Australian trade.”
What I’m not hearing is how they plan to make Indonesia relevant to everyday Australians so that they and their kids would have any level of interest into studying about Indonesia, learning Indonesian, and visiting the country beyond just Bali.
You can't be pushing a country's language without fully incorporating the importance of that country socially, culturally, and politically into your country's mindset. Saying Indonesian is an important language for Australia is meaningless when there's no real significant and thoughtful social and cultural engagements, interactions, and relevance of Indonesia and Indonesian anything in the daily lives of Australians. Indonesia is just simply not socially and culturally relevant for Australians in general.
If you want Indonesian to be learned, studied, and adopted by Australians, the government should have incorporated all things Indonesia in long running culturally impactful shows like Neighbours and Home and Away, by making it more than just a point of interest or topic of the week but infuse it into the lore and bring it up every so often over the years.
#TootSEA #Indonesia #Australia