It is good that the first thing we hear from the Opposition in the new year is a constructive suggestion. National's education spokeswoman, Nikki Kaye, proposes a bill to require primary and intermediate schools to teach children a second language.
Each school would have to choose at least one language from a list of 10. The list would include te reo Maori and NZ Sign Language but the rest of the options could be varied by ministers of education.
The obvious difficulty, quickly heard from school principals, is, where are the teachers? Many schools are struggling to find enough qualified teachers to offer the curriculum as it is. Education Minister Chris Hipkins can dismiss this challenge if he is so minded, by asking why National allowed a teacher shortage to reach this point. But it is to be hoped he responds in a better spirit. He is being offered bipartisan agreement on an important step in education.
Most importantly, it could put to rest the contentious issue of "compulsory" te reo lessons. Kaye said, "We need to legislate for this, it's not an optional thing to provide that access to languages, and that is a big shift as a country." There are few options in primary and intermediate school, education at those levels follows a national curriculum and it would always have been absurd, as well as offensive, to treat the learning of te reo as something from which a parent could insist their child be withdrawn.
Schools have quietly moved well past that debate. Some te reo is now taught in at least 95 per cent of primary and intermediate schools, up from 79 per cent in 2000. The improvement has occurred despite a chronic shortage of teachers of the language, but children are getting only a smattering of the language that is unique to this country, passed on by teachers who have learned a little of it in their general training.
Maori are not alone in wishing much more of their language was learned, and used, by all New Zealanders. Those who share this dream will worry that Nikki Kaye's proposal could dilute rather than deepen the place of te reo in the national curriculum. It would become just one of 10 languages schools could chose to fulfil their second language obligation. No many may be able to afford of offer more than one.
When she first floated this scheme, as Education Minister in August, she nominated Mandarin, French, Spanish, Japanese and Korean as alternatives that would be on her list. Now she invites he successor to propose a list for cross-party agreement. That would not be hard, 10 languages is as many as most people could name.
But for a practical, long-term bipartisan programme of teacher development, 10 languages seems too many. It would be better for the parties to agree on how many languages can be properly provided within the resources likely to be available, and choose those that best reflect New Zealand's multi-cultural population.
Languages are not a mere trading device, they are a cultural possession. We should provide as many as we can and primary school is the place to start.