Mine the only ones not learning Mandarin?

3boysnjmom
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:24:02 +0000

We live in suburban NJ between NYC and the Poconos; there are many here who commute to Manhattan for work. As far as I know --my last kid graduated 1 1/2 years ago – our school district does NOT offer Mandarin either. As a matter of fact, I believe that we offer only Spanish, French, and Latin. Italian, German, and Russian were offered in the past but were discontinued due to low student enrollment.

My 25 year old son is teaching English at a private school in Chongqing, China.
He is learning conversational Mandarin so that he will be able to travel around mainland China on his own: how to purchase train/bus tickets, how to order what you want in a restaurant, how to reserve a hotel room, etc. He tells us that English is required in all public schools in China starting in the early grades but most schools do not have teachers who are native English speakers; that is why many Chinese are proficient in reading and writing but not speaking. Thus there has been an explosion of private schools offering English classes taught by Westerners.

We were in China in November. We took a group tour and then went on our own with our son to Chengdu (towards Tibet – where there is a great Panda Research and Breeding Center) and Chongqing. Other good reads are Peter Hessler’s (author of River Town) new book, Oracle Bones, and China Road.
There are so many changes occurring in China – both physically and in terms of cultural values. They joke that the national bird is the crane (construction crane, that is). They are hoping that the Beijing Olympics highlight all these
changes to the world.