Illawarra Sports High School Year 8 students were transported to Bali yesterday as they learnt to perform a kecak dance and music drama and listened to a traditional gamelan band.
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They also learnt how to play the angklung - an instrument made of two bamboo tubes on a bamboo frame - and watched a sila martial arts demonstration by performers from the Australian Indonesian Arts Alliance.
The workshop was part of the school’s push to prepare students for living and working in what Federal Education Minister Peter Garrett has called ‘‘the Asian century’’.
Language and geography teacher Jennifer Jurman-Hilton said children starting school this year would begin work in 2030, when many Asian countries are likely to emerge as major world economies.
‘‘Students will need to able to speak Asian languages and understand how to work across different cultures,’’ she said.
‘‘Australia tends to see Indonesia through a kaleidoscope of negative images, so I just think [this] serves to break down those stereotypes.’’
Illawarra Sports High has been named an Access Asia School by the Federal Government and Year 8 students have been learning the Indonesian national language, Bahasa, since the beginning of the year.
The school is also one of only 16 in Australia to get federal funding for the Building Relationships Through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement (BRIDGE) project this year. It recently hosted two Indonesian teachers from its sister school in central Java.
