A LAPSTONE Public School student has been named as one of eight finalists in the Whitlam Institute’s prestigious What Matters? essay competition.
The competition is run annually for students in years 5 to 12 in NSW and ACT.
Entrants must submit a 400-600 word opinion piece on the issues in society that are important to them.
Alexander Husarek, 10, of Lapstone, wrote the 400-word essay “Language is the inventory of human experience” about the decline in Aboriginal dialects.
The year 5 student, who hopes to become a vet one day, competed against more than 3500 entries.
“My essay is about how Australia once had heaps of Aboriginal languages and how each area had its own language, but now there aren’t very many left,” he said.
“It is an important issue because the Aboriginal people have lost their languages because people didn’t really care about them a long time ago and they haven’t had time to pass them down because Aboriginal kids were taken away from their families.
“It is pretty exciting to be a finalist and I didn’t expect to do so well. I just entered because I thought it would be fun and interesting.”
- This article originally appears at:
- http://penrith-press.whereilive.com.au/news/story/language-essay-laments-loss-of-dialects/
- Article taken from the following publication:
- Penrith Press
- Article submitted by:
