Thomson Elementary

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Cantonese is different from Mandarin, but uses the same characters. Part of the reason DCPS does Mandarin is because it gets supports from the Chinese embassy for Mandarin. All schools in DCPS that teach Chinese, teach Mandarin.

Cantonese speakers in this country generally use traditional characters, not mainland simplified. Most Cantonese speakers living downtown hit the road for MoCo when their kids reach 2nd or 3rd grade. We meet them at the Cantonese weekend school our kids attend in Rockville. MoCo carefully transitions bilingual kids from Cantonese to Mandarin in public school language classes, which isn't done in DC public schools.

How many Cantonese speakers are there in DCPS?

Not sure, but all the downtown chinese families are Cantonese speakers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder what will happen to all the Chinese kids when Museum Square is knocked down? That is where many of the kids come from.

Looks like the lawsuit will make sure that doesn't happen.

[Anonymous]

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I think foreign languages are great.

But seriously, why should that be a priority for a struggling school system? I don't get adding Chinese to a struggling school.

Thomson has had Chinese for a while -- its not a new addition. The school is in an area that has a relatively high (for DC) concentration of Chinese residents, and I'm pretty sure the school has a higher percentage of Asian (likely Chinese) students than any other DCPS. I suspect the Chinese instruction (limited though it is) helps retain those Asian students, who as a group perform better on DC-CAS than most of the other students.

okay, that makes more sense.

Few of the East Asian immigrant families stay at Thomson and the once or twice a week Mandarin instruction is no more than window dressing. Many of the kids are taught Chinese dialects at home (Fujian, Cantonese, Toisonese etc.). They will learn Mandarin easily later. Most of the Asian families bail for MoCo by 2nd or 3rd grade. We meet them at our heritage language school in Rockville on weekends and they tell us how relieved they are to be gone, despite commute hassles to downtown places of work.