Teaching Chinese in schools

[oladub]

4% of US schools now teach Chinese. China's GDP is expected to surpass our own within our children's lifetime. There are already more Chinese people on the internet than there are Americans. It only makes sense to teach more US students Chinese to prepare them for tomorrow's world of science, commerce, politics, and culture. With the exception of Spanish, foreign language studies have actually faultered in the US. We probably already have 60M Americans who speak Spanish so we have that base pretty well covered.

What prompts me to post this is this NY Times article. China is subsidizing US school districts which hire Chinese language teachers with $13,000/teacher/year. Besides the opportunities American children who learn Chinese will have, teaching Chinese might now be the least expensive language to teach. This is a no brainer. Beyond having primary and secondary Chinese language school teacher, what if, for instance, Detroit, or any other school district, were to set up a Chinese language magnet school?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/ed...nese.html?_r=2

[Hypestyles]

there should be, yes. The earlier kids learn foreign languages, the more marketable skills they gain as adults.. I wonder if DPS leadership would even take this seriously, however...