Some Georgia Schools Make Mandarin Mandatory
npr.org
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However, this superintendent really seems stuck on this "China as the future of the world" idea. It seems a bit short sighted to base policies solely on extrapolated trends.
If this were 1995, he'd be insisting that student's learn Japanese or they'd be suffering in a future economy dominated by Japan.
From personal experience, the majority of students just aren't going to get as much use from Mandarin as they would from Spanish. Furthermore, Mandarin is much harder for native English speakers to learn than Spanish--It takes much more instruction and practice to get to an equivalent level of competence.
I have strong doubts that Chinese will ever become the lingua franca of business. It has language features that make it difficult for us Westerners to learn (mainly, tones that carry semantic meaning)... I think that Chinese people will be more motivated to learn English instead.
Also, who's to say China's economy won't crash and burn in the next 50 years? Forcing Mandarin on everyone is putting all your eggs in one basket. Learning a foreign language is a difficult thing, and one good way to keep motivated is to be truly interested in the culture of the country whose language you're studying. I'm all for mandatory foreign language education, but I think people should be able to choose a language they care about. They shouldn't have to take Chinese because it might be a big deal in the future. Learning any foreign language can open doors, not just Chinese. Take it from me, an American living in Japan.
But I agree that it's not a given that China will be the superpower, and even if gets there, it's not clear that Mandarin will immediately become that important.
Over the past 150 years this past generation is the only one not to suffer some horrific war, genocide or starvation. China has a revolt somewhere almost daily, it has none of the institutions we are pretty sure are necessary to managing power (independent judiciary, enforceable contracts etc) and has worrying signs of becoming a mafia state, with none of the benefits of one guy in charge ala Putin .
So basically there are a huge number of ways it can go wrong, very little to hold it together except the fear that if we don't keep on this course it will be a lot worse.
Sure, you've got user manuals in multiple languages, but for chip specification, pin diagrams or anything really, I am unable to find manuals in a non-English language. I believe, the same thing applies to other Engineering fields too. Sure, you've got formulae that's universal. Say, you're a Mechanical Engineer working on some modeling-simulation software, you'd be hard pressed to find a non-English version.
And seeing that most of the world is embracing technology, even in the smallest capacity, I feel English isn't going anywhere.
Chinese people are learning English, they are already better at it than the Japanese. But again, huge population, many of the powerful guys don't feel like learning or speaking English for face reasons.
Totally agree with you on language choice, learned Japanese in the 90s, never went anywhere with it. Mandarin has been much more rewarding. Take it from me, an American living in china.
Much like you, I studied another language before I found one that worked for me. I studied German, before I committed to Japanese. I had fun studying it, but I was never excited enough to the point where I wanted to move to Germany. Learning a language is a very difficult process (especially Chinese for English speakers) and having the freedom to choose to take a different language is what allowed me to find one that I was truly passionate about.
I believe that Chinese will continue to remain important, but forcing kids into it might dissuade them from finding a foreign language they truly enjoy. That's all I wanted to say.
But yes I don't think Mandarin is a good candidate for a global language. It is probably the most difficult language on this planet. Seriously, even the Chinese themseleves have trouble with it. I am Chinese and the last time I wrote long paragraphs of Chinese characters was at the College Extrance Exam (and whenever I mention this to friends everyone agrees). So if you ask me to write some less commonly used words I can only tell you I forgot - I have seen this happen many times to everyone. And the idioms - very hard for westerners without learning all the Classics and History, which are in Classical Chinese - think about Latin.
Chinese is beautiful though. Personally I think we probably have the most exquisite poems - the ancient Chinese spent more times on them than any other art forms or scientific researches. It was the highest among the high arts.
Reading and writing is another matter, I'm almost fluent in conversation, but I can only write conversationally (e.g., SMS), Im basically illiterate otherwise.
Idioms are also a pain, but you don't need all of that to be functional, argue with taxi drivers, and impress at business meetings.
To help speakers of non-tonal languages understand how difficult it is to differentiate between tones, after you get used to hearing them - it is as apparent as the differences between "rebel" as in "to rebel" and "rebel" as in "He's a rebel."
So hearing is not as difficult as might you think. However, in line with what cageface said, I think it is easier to hear the difference, than to reproduce it yourself.
That's a qualitative difference with significant ramifications. Their economy can and probably will crash, more than once, as most tend to do. But demographics is destiny.
Now I hear people saying things like, 'yeah we went through this already with Japan, and the US is still the largest economy'. But that's generally just a knee-jerk response that doesn't take population differences into account.
It's not just Japan, it happened with the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan (and other Asian countries with fast growing economies), The EU, and now China. If you haven't read it before there's an old Krugman article that's relevant.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/b8268ffe-7572-11db-aea1-0000779e2...
When I was a kid in the 90s we were all terrified of the talk that we'd have to go to school on Saturdays to keep up with the Japanese. When my parent's were in school they were worried about the Soviet Union and their unstoppable command economy.
People have been predicting the end of US dominance since the beginning of US dominance. It will happen at some point, it's inevitable. Obviously the fact that China has more people than the US means that eventually, all other things being equal, they will have a larger economy.
However, they cannot keep up anywhere near the growth rate they've enjoyed over the past decade, which means it will take significantly longer for their economy to overtake ours than is popularly perceived.
In the time span we're talking about, who knows what may happen--what new technologies may be developed. That many extra people may prove to be less of an advantage with the increases in automation we'll see over the next 50 years.
My point is that history shows that basing our future decisions solely on what seems "inevitable" today, is folly.
In summary, don't worry about learning Chinese because you'll have to know it to transact with our new overlords in 2050--come the middle of the century, you might realize it wasn't necessary after all.
Learn Chinese because you want to learn it, because you find it interesting, or learn Spanish, or German, or Japanese for the same reason.
Today, the US + EU have about 50% of the world's GDP. Do Chinese kids pay a 'heavy price' because they cannot function successfully in the Western culture? It seems more like the heavy price is paid due to lack of economic integrity and opportunity in China. The importance is in getting a solid education. There will be plenty of work to do here in the US and in China.
Related topic: The Hong Kong Chinese don't want their kids to learn about about China: http://news.yahoo.com/hk-drops-china-education-plans-mass-pr...
Chinese kids who do not command at least passable English are barred from the best (or even slightly above-average) schools and jobs. So yes, they do pay a heavy price.
I'm not sure if I agree with this decision given the circumstances of this particular school district, but I won't be surprised if we start to see other schools strongly encouraging Mandarin studies.
Let's not jump too quickly to politics. Mandarin is a language, and will be spoken by the Chinese regardless of politics. It is also spoken in many places outside of mainland China.
Few of them learn it well enough using their rote methods to be of much use though. It's good to learn english as it is currently the lingua franca of the world. In europe German teens talk to their Swedish friends in English, just as Italians talk to the Croatians in English. It's used universally for communication.
I wonder though - are all English classes in China taught by american government representatives whose salaries are paid for by the United States? Do they also introduce American values as part of the classes?
I noticed the article said the classes, throughout the future, will be free to the schools because the Chinese Government (which is as we know run by the Communist Party) is paying for them and the teachers are being sent from mainland China.
Nothing seems odd about that to you?
I know, I know. I must be some "conspiracy nut" just to be asking whether the Chinese Communist Party completely financing and sending trained and educated Chinese Communist Party members to the US to teach poor american children to speak Chinese and understand modern Chinese perspectives defined by their government in order to "prepare for 2050" is a strange thing. It's safe to disregard these "crackpot ideas", right? Or is it.
No. Many governments have or have had programs to spread understanding of their language, including paying for teachers at times, as well as paying for radio stations, TV channels, web sites.
Some of these are or have been blocked by various countries at various times because they didn't like the political views espoused, sure, so it's not like one should assume that there are never political motives (and that goes for all "sides" - the US has done this as much as everyone else).
But it is also important for commerce, diplomacy etc. to ensure a good supply of people with an understanding of language, and "seeding" interest for later language studies by introducing it earlier is a good solution.
> I know, I know. I must be some "conspiracy nut" just to be asking whether the Chinese Communist Party completely financing and sending trained and educated Chinese Communist Party members to the US to teach poor american children to speak Chinese and understand modern Chinese perspectives defined by their government in order to "prepare for 2050" is a strange thing. It's safe to disregard these "crackpot ideas", right? Or is it.
Do you for a second believe that the curriculum won't be read by someone in these schools prior to use? Someone who is pretty much guaranteed to hold viewpoints sufficiently far from any devout supporter of the Chinese regime to react quickly to blatant misrepresentations?
It's not like these teachers will be let free on a class with no follow up. I very much doubt the Chinese regime is interested in risking their promotion of Chinese language and culture by adding controversial political content. Not least because ideology has long been a secondary priority for the Chinese leadership after economic growth.
What do they care if American school children agree with their policies? What they do care about is that American school children grow up to be useful when Chinese companies want to do business with American companies and need people who understand both languages and cultures.
Mandarin will definitely be a widely spoken language. But having studied some Mandarin in college, an average American doesn't have enough opportunities to interact with Mandarin speakers to make it a useful day to day skill.
And it's much harder to learn (for a native English speaker) than Spanish (or French or German). Given equivalent instruction the average student learning Spanish will be significantly further along.
Do you think that they (Chinese) don't have similar barrier when learning English? Do I have enough opportunities to interact with Japanese? No. But I'm still learning it.
"Not enough opportunities to interact with [language]" is poor's man excuse to not learn it at all.
Do you speak Hindi? Russian? Why not these too? Are you too busy just learning Japanese?
I'm not too busy just learning Japanese (as a matter of fact I'm also learning German and Russian and I still have some free time).
If you have a passion to learn a language, lack of opportunity is just an excuse. If you're choosing a policy for forcing kids to learn a language against their will, lack of opportunity is a significant factor that should be considered. English is compulsory in Japan too, which makes the average Japanese citizen the best example of compulsion without opportunity equating to a lot of wasted effort for very little return.
English is pretty much compulsory in entire world. And the same can be said in Poland - almost everyone learns English in school (often for 9 years) and only 30-50% of those people can use it in its written form (and situation is far worse when it comes to spoken form).
To answer your post:
This has nothing to do with excuses or perceived difficulty. It has everything to do with cost benefit analysis. When forcing a group of students to learn a language, usefulness vs difficulty is a valid concern.
The State Department estimates that it takes only around 600 hours of classroom instruction to learn Spanish, but 2200 hours for Mandarin (for a native English speaker). They also recommend that half of the hours learning Mandarin occur in country.
30 minutes a day for 13 years of school won't provide enough instruction for these kids to become proficient, but it could provide enough to become proficient in 2 category 1 languages.
Usefulness? Ability to communicate with more than 1.7 * 10^9 people is not enough for you? Also once you know Mandarin learning Japanese is much simpler.
... for simplicity I will assume 364 days/year 0.5 * 364 * 13 = 182 * 13 = 2356, which is more than those 2200.
It is generally advised to learn language in place where it is being used on day to day basis, no matter what language you are using.
In Most of places in the United States kids only go to school for 180 days per year.
>Usefulness? Ability to communicate with more than 1.7 * 10^9 people is not enough for you?
Where did you get 1.7 billion from, that's way too high.
Usefulness is relative. If I can communicate with a billion people on the other side of the world, is that more useful than being able to communicate with a few hundred million people whom I'm much more likely to contact?
>It is generally advised to learn language in place where it is being used on day to day basis, no matter what language you are using.
Yes, it makes it easier for all languages. But for category III languages, it is nearly impossible to become proficient without spending time in country.
>Also once you know Mandarin learning Japanese is much simpler.
Apart from a bit of the writing system, Chinese and Japanese are not similar. They are from 2 completely different language families. They are more distantly related than English and Russian.
Beijing wants to spread Mandarin abroad, and at just $16,000 per instructor per year, the price is right for Dallemand.
That's a very wrong interpretation of the current events in HK. The parents and students are opposed to the National Education plan because it inaccurately presents recent mainland Chinese history and Chinese cultural values, is an attempt at brain washing (or 'wash brain' in local English) and is being used as a way of monitoring the political reliability of students & their teachers. This last point is a particular concern, as its an extension of the surveillance network & could be used to hinder job promotion and educational advancement.
Now I am teaching myself programming to prepare for a career when I return to the US.
Take from my anecdote what you will.
Its much better to be immersed in a language for a month than spend three years learning it that way. And it takes less time altogether.
People should get their heads out of the sand..
Besides, isnt this the first step to the Mandarin-English pidgin language spoken in Firefly? ;)