The dialogue following is between little 15 mandarin learners and theirs Teacher Yang.
"What day is this?" she asks, in Mandarin Chinese.
"Confucius' birthday!" the fifth-graders shout in Chinese.
"Why do we celebrate Confucius' birthday?"
"Because he's the greatest teacher in the history of
English is rarely heard in Lisa Yang's class at the
Founded 25 years ago, this small private school in
"In the early days - probably up until 10 years ago - we were considered experimental, kind of 'out there,' " said Betty Shon, head of finance for the school, which runs from preschool through eighth grade. "I'd get questions like, 'What kind of parents want their kids to learn Chinese?' Now, there's just no question. We get families who relocate to the Bay Area just so their kids can go to the school."
Mandarin Chinese, the official language of the People's Republic of
"I think we would have to characterize what's happening with the expansion of Chinese programs right now as an explosion," said Marty Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
"It really is almost unprecedented…. People are looking at China as a force to be reckoned with…. And to ensure that the
The drive to develop Chinese-language programs has not been without its bumps. A shortage of trained, credentialed teachers has made it difficult for some schools to join the race. (With some exceptions, public schools require teachers to be credentialed, while private schools do not.) When schools do get teachers, they often recruit them straight from
Robert Liu, who taught in
"You have to quiet them down and find different activities to attract them or they will lose attention," he said.
Liu stuck it out and revamped his teaching style, and
The
It also helps that class sizes at CAIS are small — the largest have 20 students, and most have fewer. Of course, all of this comes at a price: Tuition is US$17,200 to US$
Spreading the words
With his school's success as a model, CAIS headmaster Andrew Corcoran has been working with the Chinese government to improve training of teachers who are sent to the
Corcoran said that of 30 Hanban teachers sent to the
Corcoran said Hanban officials were sufficiently concerned to invite him last summer to
A Hanban official confirmed that American educators were sought to help with training, but otherwise disputed Corcoran's account. In an e-mail from
Still, to the extent that there are problems, they are the problems of success - too much, too fast.
There is no definitive accounting of the number of Mandarin programs in American schools. But the Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages estimates that the number of students in Mandarin classes in public secondary schools has risen from about 5,000 six years ago to as many as 50,000 today, a tenfold increase. The US Department of Education puts the number at about half that.
Whichever is correct, the number is expected to continue rising. Pressure and encouragement are coming from far-flung sources, including the White House, the Chinese government and the College Board, which is offering an Advanced Placement test in Mandarin for the first time next year.
In January, President Bush proposed US$57 million in federal spending to encourage the teaching of languages considered critical to national security, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In announcing the plan, the administration noted that, in contrast to the relatively paltry number of Americans learning Mandarin, "more than 200 million children in