Teach more about Asia, schools urged

Asia New Zealand Foundation director Richard Grant.

Leading New Zealand businesses are urging schools to prepare their students for the future by teaching crucial Asian culture and language classes.

Asia New Zealand Foundation director Richard Grant said the Business Education Partnership, an initiative between the foundation and the business community, called for people to think about how to prepare youths for a future dominated by Asian economies.

"It is not a choice we have to offer these skills but an imperative," Dr Grant said. "It is encouraging that the companies and organisations that are signatories also see the critical strategic value of this initiative."

More than 40 companies and employee organisations launched the Business Education Partnership in Wellington yesterday.

The declaration called for greater attention to learning about Asia in schools.

It said the 43 companies involved would develop programmes within their own organisations that supported greater Asian awareness.

Dr Grant said the school curriculum acknowledged the importance of students having opportunities to explore future focus issues such as globalisation and citizenship.

"It's time for New Zealanders to join the dots, to acknowledge our growing interdependence with a region that will have a huge impact on world affairs in the 21st century.

"We need greater emphasis in education on the Asian region to prepare young New Zealanders for a world that's very different from the one we grew up in."

The launch of the partnership declaration will be joined by the release of the New Zealand Curriculum and Asia Guide.

The guide includes school stories and comments from principals, teachers and students already engaging with Asia and Asian communities as well as a series of questions to trigger discussion in schools about how to become more Asian-aware.

Said Dr Grant: "Our aim is that by 2015, all young New Zealanders will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to take advantage of the opportunities to live, work and interact with Asian communities in New Zealand and with the peoples and countries of Asia."

EASTERN PROMISE

*Three-quarters of New Zealanders say that Asia is important to New Zealand's future.

*But last year, more NZ students learned Latin than learned Chinese.

*60.4 per cent of the world's population lives in Asia.

*The Asian communities in New Zealand now comprise about 10 per cent of the population and will be 16 per cent by 2025.

*Last year, of the goods worth just over $48.5 billion that NZ imported, nearly $21 billion worth ( 48 per cent ) came from Asia.

*China was New Zealand's second-biggest source of imports, after Australia. Japan was fourth and Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Korea were in the top 10.

*Half of New Zealand's top 20 trading partners are now in East Asia.

*Asia contains not only the world's second-largest economy, Japan, but also two of its biggest emerging markets, China and India.

*Nearly 20 per cent of New Zealand tourists come from countries in Asia.

*Gross domestic production per capita in China this year is 13 times the size it was in 1990.


- NZPA