Chinese Language Program
There is a very interesting program that is going on in Ohio right now that is teaching students in Elementary schools Chinese. China was the highest increasing economy is 2010, according to the news article. Chinese culture will be much more profound in the years to come and that is why they are starting to teaching the kids young about the language and culture. The Chinese government is also paying for this program. The school shown on clip is receiving $30,000 to pay for American students to learn Chinese. Some are worried that they should not be doing this because China is a communist country. I don’t think that teaching students about the culture and language is going to form these kids into communist. It broadens their horizons.
I think this program is a great idea and more schools across the country should do it. I know that for that to happen there would have to be funding for it and I highly doubt China would be able to pay for all of that but in some way teachers need to start adapting other cultures around the world into their lesson plans. I went to a private school for the first four years of Elementary school and I had to take Spanish class. By kindergarten I could count to 100 in Spanish. I can’t even do that now because I have lost that knowledge from never using it. In high school most students are able to take a language course but it is not forced. I have close family friends who are from the Netherlands and to graduate high school they must know 5 or 6 different languages. Frankly American students have it easy but I think that this culture idea needs to be in classes at all ages much more.
One of my best friends attends the University of Minnesota (tc campus) and her minor is Chinese. When she told me that I was really thrown off because I had never expected her to take a Chinese class, and further more choose that as her minor. Her father is in the army and made a huge impact on her and explaining the benefits of knowing other languages. I was extremely impressed when I visited her and she started saying sentences in Chinese. It is a very interesting language and hard to keep up with.
Over winter break I went on a cruise with about 16 family members. My uncle married a woman from Columbia about 4 years ago and some of her family was there. My aunt Rocio is very good with English and actually speaks better than one of my professors here at SCSU. Her family did a great job trying to interact and speak English to have a conversation. It really made me wish I had kept up with my Spanish from high school and continue on with it besides the two courses I needed to get into college. Over the weeks time with the Mariano’s (my aunt’s family) I realized that I know nothing about any other cultures besides the US. And I really don’t know that much about news or government issues in the US. I wish growing up I would have been more informed and cared about these other cultures because now I have to play the catch up game.
It would be extremely cool if the classrooms would start having to learn different languages at a young age and keep learning more and more as the students get older. I know as a parent I am going to try and put my children in schools that have programs like the one I was in or similar. As a teacher I am also going to put global issues in my lesson plans. Learning about these global issues really helps a person be well balanced and informed on the world today. I think it is great that some Ohio schools are teaching their students Chinese in Elementary schools, now if only that could be a countrywide program!
I think that program is a great idea and should be implemented in schools across the country. It can only be of benefit to students around the country.
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