The Washington Post this morning talks about efforts to expand early-age language teaching for critical langauges, including Mandarin. The drivers, notes the article, are an assumption on the part of many parents that being able to speak Chinese will give them an advantage in a world where China is a major power, as well as a realization on the part of the government that America is falling behind in language training, especially in languages that are associated with countries that can affect our security -- China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc.
I think it's great that more kids are learning Mandarin, or at least getting exposure to the language. We send our daughter to Mandarin class on the weekend, to reinforce what she's learning at home and to get her started with reading and writing. Most of the kids there have a Chinese background -- either through parents or adoption -- but there are some kids who do not. In fact, one of the standouts of the Mandarin speech competition in the spring was an eight-year-old blonde girl who wowed the crowd with a story about her ballet class in Mandarin, using proper grammar, vocabulary, and tones.
I also was exposed to Mandarin while still in school, although not at such a yong age. Until I was a junior in high school, the only languages we could take were very Euro-centric: French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Latin. That year (1985 or 1986) my public high school discontinued German and began offering Russian and Mandarin. I took the inaugural Mandarin class, taught by a Swedish academic who had lived in China. I can't say I learned a lot -- by the time I got to Taiwan five or six years later, I only knew basic numbers and had a concept of tones and measure words -- but that high school class planted a seed.
However, while exposure to Mandarin can be rewarding, I would caution against parents jumping to conclusions about Mandarin classes leading to a high-flying career in business or government. I remember a time in the early 1980s when people were saying the same things about Spanish and Japanese, but those language fads have petered out. Additionally, Mandarin can be frustrating to master, especially when it comes to tones and Chinese characters. So before you sign up your kids for classes, be aware that it will be challenging, the rewards are more likely to be social and intellectual than financial or career success, and by the time they grow up Mandarin may be fading, and there will be new language fads -- Hindi, Arabic, or something else.
Related post:
Raising Mandarin-speaking kids in America
No comments:
Post a Comment