Speaking the language

Since that time, the explosion in teacher re-skilling means the proportion of foreign-background teachers today is most likely even lower. By contrast, a 2002 study of an English-teaching university in Tokyo found that 80 per cent of the faculty were foreigners. Although such a situation is inconceivable in Australia at the present time, yet in Japan such institutions have long proved to be both effective and stable.

Japan also has historical antecedents for supporting such large numbers of foreign teachers, echoing the policies of the Meiji period (1868-1912), during which time the number of foreign teachers ranged between 3,000-6,000.

The educational edict that drove the Meiji reformers was “[k]nowledge shall be sought throughout the world”. Such sentiments helped transform Japan from the isolated feudal-agricultural society it had been under the Tokugawa shogunate, into an open, industrialised imperial power that defeated its two regional rivals, China and Russia, in successive wars in the opening years of the 20th century.

What could Australia achieve if it adopted its own Meiji-style edict? Of course, history mocks comparison, and I don’t propose we unleash well-educated armies upon New Zealand and Indonesia. But instead of being driven by such outward-looking philosophies as "knowledge shall be sought throughout the world", Australia is locked into the Hawke-Keating-era myth of the Clever Country, which we lately have taken to mean that everything we need to succeed is right here within our own ever-shrinking borders. This is a curious mindset for a nation of migrants to hold.

Given the conspicuous educational success that Japan has enjoyed through the large-scale recruitment of foreign teachers, consideration should be given to the possibility that a similar approach could solve the language teacher shortage here in Australia.

However, whereas Japan enthusiastically recruits thousands of foreigners who speak little Japanese, and the sky in Tokyo does not fall; it is obvious that there would be vehement political and popular resistance in Australia to the recruitment of foreign teachers with low English proficiency. For the Japanese-style solution to work in Australia, a number of local cultural and political norms would first need to change.