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 today.
The declaration called for greater attention to learning about Asia in schools.
"Building our knowledge of Asia, its cultures, its languages and its peoples, is a priority task for our education system, so that New Zealanders can become more informed about the region and better equipped to deal with it," the declaration said.
"We want to increase the opportunities for New Zealanders to learn more about Asia and to learn the language of Asia."
The declaration 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," Dr Grant said.
The launch of the partnership declaration today 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.
"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," Dr Grant said.
Fonterra is one of the businesses involved in the initiative and its senior trade strategist Ken Geard told NZPA the company had a "large Asian footprint".
"We have a lot of business with Asia, both in exports and investment and we see that as a very sensible thing they are doing in terms of promoting education about Asia and awareness about Asia in New Zealand."
Fonterra would work through its own training and education programmes and work with what programmes the Asia NZ Foundation would put forward, Mr Geard said.
Did you know?
• Three-quarters of New Zealanders say that Asia is important to New Zealand's future
• 60.4 percent of the world's population lives in Asia
• The Asian communities in New Zealand now comprise about 10 percent of the population and will be 16 percent by 2025
• In the 2008 calendar year, of the New Zealand imported goods worth just over $48.5 billion, nearly $21 billion came from Asia – or 48 percent of the country's imports. After Australia, China was the country's second biggest source of imports. 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 percent of New Zealand tourists come from countries in Asia
• GDP per capita in China in 2009 is 13 times the size it was in 1990
• More secondary school students in New Zealand study French than the sum total of those studying Chinese, Japanese and Korean
• Last year more secondary school students learned Latin than Chinese
• Last year fewer than 2000 students were learning Chinese and fewer than 50 schools taught the language
• Only one in 10 New Zealand-born New Zealanders of working age can speak two or more languages, and the majority of those who can are of Asian ethnicity
NZPA