More students — from kindergarten on — are learning Mandarin Chinese, in some cases instead of Spanish, French or other languages that have long been more popular in U.S. schools. The number of elementary and secondary school students studying Chinese could be as much as 10 times higher than it was seven years ago, says Marty Abbott, spokeswoman for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
When the Council surveyed K-12 enrollment in foreign language classes in 2000, there were about 5,000 students of Chinese, Abbott says. The Council is collecting data for another survey, but Abbott says early figures suggest the number of students now studying Chinese has "got to be somewhere from 30,000 to 50,000."
Nationwide, there are Chinese programs in more than 550 elementary, junior high and senior high schools, a 100% increase in two years, according to The Asia Society. In May, when the College Board offered Mandarin Advanced Placement exams for the first time, 3,261 high school students took the test.
At the college level, enrollment in Chinese-language classes has increased 51% since 2002, according to the Modern Language Association, a language and literature education organization. San Francisco's program is only 2 years old. Starr King, the first of two schools to offer Mandarin immersion, eventually will have 120 students in kindergarten through fifth grade studying Chinese.
In Portland, Ore., Woodstock Elementary has 200 students in a Mandarin immersion program; the school won a $700,000 Defense grant this year.
In Chicago, black and Latino children fill the Mandarin classes. The program started small in 1999, with just a few part-time teachers and one coordinator. Now there are 35 Chicago public schools that offer Mandarin, 22 of them elementary schools. Another 30 schools are on a waiting list for such programs.
In St. Paul, Yinghua ("English Chinese") Academy opened last year to teach Chinese.
In 1981, the USA's oldest Mandarin immersion elementary school program was launched. The private Chinese American International School (CAIS) in San Francisco began with four students; it now has 420 from preschool through eighth grade. In 2006, the Foreign Language Assistance Program of the U.S. Department of Education allocated $6.7 million to Chinese instruction and an additional $2.4 million in 2007. There also were grants from the departments of Defense and State, and from various state government and philanthropic groups.
China also is pushing Chinese as a world language. Its Office of Chinese Language Council International, universally called Hanban (literally "Chinese Office"), is in charge of promoting Chinese worldwide. Part of that effort is creating textbooks and materials for children and adults, as well as teacher training.
Hanban also helps set up Confucius Institutes, which work to promote Chinese language, literature and culture, much as Germany's Goethe-Instituts do for German. There are about 100 Confucius Institutes around the world and 23 in the USA. The newest opened Sept. 8 in Denver. (Source: Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, Nov 20, 2007.