ARTICLE: “As China booms, so does Mandarin in U.S. schools: K-12 language classes soaring in popularity,” by Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, 20 November 2007, p. 1A.
What a huge switch and look at how fast this has come!
It took roughly a generation for Japanese “crap” to turn into Japanese “cool,” meaning products that were held to be suspect (when I was a kid) to products so cool and high-tech (young adulthood) that people are learning Japanese to tap into all that intellectual momentum.
China’s stuff was—and sort of still is—crap in many ways but it’s also accelerating rapidly past “good enough” to pretty damn good. This time around, in this super-fast world, Americans are already moving toward having their kids get a jump on the future by pushing them into studying Mandarin in grade school.
Fascinating.
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Comments (5)
Very nifty. The prevalence of German and French in public schools is a legacy of those language's former roles as the scientific and diplomatic tongues of the day. (Both those roles have since been assumed by English).
America's greatest international exposure (on a working basis) now comes from the New Core, and disproportionately involves Spanish and Mandarin.
This is definitely good news.
Posted by dan tdaxp
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December 20, 2007 3:04 PM
Thanks for this post and link.
I am glad your horizontal thinking crosses over into the educational system. You know this dynamic is worthy of notice. Let me suggest that you make it part of your prescriptive thinking. That is, something you advocate as needed and as part of the set of changes we need to make in the US to meet our future challenges.
The US needs to have many more students studying Mandarin. Although the number is rising, still less than 1% of US students study Mandarin. Still less in immersion programs. And I know of no publicly supported program of sending high school students to study Mandarin China. And although the Defense Department "in 2007-2008 will put about $10 million into Chinese-language program," we could wisely use that much alone in Oregon. Consider what percent of the Defense Department budget that is. Consider what the Defense Department is spending on weapons systems to fight China. Consider the imbalance between preparing for war and preparing for peace (and developing a skill set useful in case of war or reconstruction).
Think also of the other foreign language needs of the US as we try to stabilize and develop Gap countries. The US has a list of critical languages: Russian, Arabic ,Azeri, Bengali, Chinese (Mandarin only), Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Marathi, Pashto, Punjabi, Russian, Tajik, Turkish, Urdu, and Uzbek. Where are these in our K-12 educational system. Do we wait until someone is 18 years old and in the military to send them to Monterey to begin to learn a needed language. Language are best learned very young.
Posted by Dave Porter | December 20, 2007 8:13 PM
You want to get more Mandarin taught in our school systems?
Have DOD bankroll a few new seasons of "Firefly".
Posted by Mark in Texas | December 20, 2007 10:28 PM
"Chinese isn't the new French, it's the new English."
English is the new Chinese in China, with some 300,000,000 speaking or studying it...
Posted by Jeremy A | December 21, 2007 5:13 AM
Love your comment, Mark. The Firefly universe, where both English and Mandarin are common tongues thanks to "the Alliance", is a sci-fi extrapolation of what an expanding inter-stellar humanity would be like if the U.S. and China do eventually become strategic partners. The central planets of the Alliance are even called "Core planets".
Posted by Steve Barrera
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December 21, 2007 10:46 AM