Sp or Ch language?

[Anonymous]

Trying to get back to the original topic...I read about 5 pages and then decided not to read through another 15 pages of back and forth over YY...

While Spanish may be more common in colloquial settings in the DC area, Chinese is more common in technical areas. At many federal agencies and federal contractors in the DC area, there are thousands of Chinese speakers. They are in IT, in sciences and in engineering. I think Chinese is significantly more common in white collar offices than Spanish is. It is also becoming a much more common language in business, particularly international business settings as China is the largest growing segment of the international marketplace.

For the odd poster from page one or two who says that it is only spoke in one country, that is incorrect. It is spoken in many areas of the Pacific Rim, and growing internationally as well. So, if your child will be working in technical fields or may work for a company/corporation that does international business, Chinese is likely to be significantly more important by the time they graduate from college. Also, Chinese as a tonal language is easier to learn when young and harder to learn when older. The romantic languages don't have quite that issue. It is easier to learn Chinese when of grade school age and Spanish later than vice versa. All of these suggest to me that if you don't have any other guidance for which to select, then I would select Chinese for younger students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the charter board doesn't want a school that already attracts bright, well-off kids to have a preferential admission process that may be seen culling out the "unwanted" minorities. Do you REALLY think this hasn't been approached with them time and again? Don't you think that the school has been already looked at suspiciously for the past 3 years for dwindling numbers of low-income AA students? Honestly, the charter board doesn't look towards moving things in a positive direction and making influential change. They tend to only work on big problems that can't be ignored.

The over-simplification of the issues surrounding who does/doesn't choose to apply are too numerous to address here. It is a public school and the student population should reflect the population of the city. It does.

YY parent, not Chinese. By many estimates, there are two or three hundred low-income Chinese kids in this city whose parents might be attracted under a different paradigm. The waiters, dry cleaners and take-out place people obviously don't make professional salaries. I for one don't like how almost all of the Chinese at YY seem to be from six-figure salary families - it's part of what makes the learning environment phony.

I'm certainly not under the impression that the PA, the administration and the YY Board have ever presented a united front on the issue, or been persistent in asking for help from the powers-that-be in boosting the hopelessly low number of bilingual kids.

The case could be made that having more bilinguals would help the low-SES kids with immersion. When you visit one of the NYC Chinese immersion schools, you get a feel for how this works. Invite Charter Board people on a trip to one in Manhattan or Queens to learn about the 2-way model. Invite them to attend that annual CAPE conference on dual immersion programs. Yes, all they could say is no.

The issues surrounding who does/doesn't choose to apply are terribly complicated when it comes to the Chinese families. PPs on this thread have nailed them over and over - suggest that Charter Board members wade through the posts on this thread, and the similarly themed one in Nov, to 'earn what everybody involved should know. This isn't the right model, it just sounds good.

Yawn.


(It's tiresome to listen to people bitch, especially those who don't actually do anything.) Instead of realizing how lucky you are to have one of the best opportunities in the entire United States for your children to become fluent in Mandarin, you whine because it doesn't fit your personal fantasy.

Go ahead then pumpkin, and make a school. Something tells me you know nothing about satisfying multiple constituencies and still remaining a viable entity.

Bottom line: you recognize how lucky you are and thank your lucky stars, alternatively you bitch. In that case, save yourself and everyone else the trouble - just go do your own thing. It's not like you'll miss anything... much less, be missed.

P.S. That goes for many more threads than this.

I love you, "Yawn"!!! Amen, sister (or brother)!!!

[Anonymous]

To Improve Kids' Chinese, Parents Head to Asia

Michael Roemer had never lived abroad before he took a one-year leave of absence from his job as an attorney, rented out his family's Orinda, Calif., house, and moved to Chengdu, a city in western China, in 2010 with his wife and two children.

Mr. Roemer's goal: to give his kids, Erin and Conor, an up-close look at China and an edge in what is fast becoming a must-learn language. "Speaking Mandarin is important," says the 57-year-old Mr. Roemer


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303640804577490671473322992.html?mod=ITP_personaljournal_1

[Anonymous]

An even more effective way to have do this would be to live with a host family who have kids the same age. That way, the family unit isn't defaulting to English when at home outside of school. Imagine living with another family and only speaking Mandarin at the dinner table, etc. It would really force the language learning to another dimension including the cultural adaptations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Also, Chinese as a tonal language is easier to learn when young and harder to learn when older. The romantic languages don't have quite that issue. It is easier to learn Chinese when of grade school age and Spanish later than vice versa. All of these suggest to me that if you don't have any other guidance for which to select, then I would select Chinese for younger students.

This is a great point and one of the reasons that bilingual ethnic families like us aren't as concerned that our kids don't/can't necessarily attend YY, where I'm having a hard time picturing us feeling at home, as y'all outside the Chinese domain might think.

Coming into high school AP and college Mandarin classes with the tones I grew up with speaking good Cantonese, I found I could spend around 1/3 the time most classmates who didn't know Chinese did on course work and still get As. Mandarin tones (4-5) are actually quite a bit easier to contend with than Cantonese tones (6-7). When I took the Foreign Service placement exam for Mandarin, in my 20s, I was surprised to score so high (a "4", "5" was advanced native speaker level) that State didn't bother sending me to language training.

[Anonymous]

Something tells me you know nothing about satisfying multiple constituencies and still remaining a viable entity.

Something tells me that YY and DC Charter might not get away with 2% bilingual forever (the DC Chinese and parents who want their kids to learn Mandarin/about the culture alongside actual Chinese being constituencies that don't sound terribly satisfied). The press might have some fun with the story down the road.

[Anonymous]

The press might have some fun with the story down the road.

Why are you cross-posting your anti-YY vitriol on multiple threads? Go grind you ax somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

It's tiresome to listen to people bitch, especially those who don't actually do anything.) Instead of realizing how lucky you are to have one of the best opportunities in the entire United States for your children to become fluent in Mandarin, you whine because it doesn't fit your personal fantasy.

What's tiresome is the assumption that those of us raising salient issues "don't actually do anthing." In what sense does pointing out that YY does an abysmal job of attracting native speakers, which hurts the school's mission, constitute whining?

I'm a non-Chinese parent who majored in Mandarin in college, involving an academic year and summers of study abroad. I've become involved in the PA (we may know one another), and have raised problems highlighted on this thread with administrators, board members, and fellow parents many times. I've also written to the DC Charter Board and talked with the education point person at my DC Council Member's office. I believe strongly not only in two lottteries, but in a mechanism for keeping the many parents running from low-performing IB schools, those who don't care about Mandarin or Chinese culture, out. They speak for themselves here and the bilge they spread has to be hurting YY's rep.

Your kid doesn't become "fluent" in Mandarin at YY. They build a solid foundation for fluency largely removed from the culture, unlike bilingual children learning from family at home. The arrangement is so far gone from fantasy that your put-down falls flat.

Yes, there are great things about the school, but there's also a moral hole that the YY community avoids filling at its peril. When your school turns off almost the entire population of native speakers in your city, but has the audacity to boast about how reasonable its policies and practices are, you're screwing up. The community is so insular (when it's the Chinese who stand accused of this) that outsiders looking in readily see us for what we are. LAMB parents have made fair points here.

We will stay the course, looking forward to the day when our children can study Chinese alongside many native speakers at other institutions. The best opportunities "in the entire US" for children to learn Chinese are in the immersion schools actively enrolling many bilingual kids, not at YY.

[Anonymous]

PP: If my child gets into YY, I hope that you and I meet and are friends; and that there are a lot more people like you at YY who maybe just don't frequent DCUM.

It has saddened me to read this often nasty back-and-forth. I wonder how many people would be able to say these things if we faced each other in real life, with our children by our sides. What kind of role model are we providing?

It seems to that there is a huge divide between people fleeing their lousy in-boundary schools, for which Mandarin is really an afterthought, and those who have a real connection to Mandarin and Chinese culture.

And that these two groups are so defensive (well, one group) and at each other's throat when in fact aren't we all trying to provide a safe environment for a high quality education for our children? Just because you raise questions, challenge, try to improve a situation doesn't mean that you are against it. Quite the contrary, right? We don't bother to try and improve the things we don't care about.

I wanted my child to go there because of the Mandarin not because I have no other options. But that's just where I'm coming from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Something tells me you know nothing about satisfying multiple constituencies and still remaining a viable entity.

Something tells me that YY and DC Charter might not get away with 2% bilingual forever (the DC Chinese and parents who want their kids to learn Mandarin/about the culture alongside actual Chinese being constituencies that don't sound terribly satisfied). The press might have some fun with the story down the road.

So you think the charter board will change charter laws for the <1% of bilingual Mandarin/Cantonese/ethnic Chinese in DC so they will have a "Chinese" School they approve of and will apply to. YY is not exactly hurting for applications, most parents there seem happy (look at reenrollment). Dream on.

You have much better odds by simply starting your own "Chinese" school with a Cantonese speaking administration, majority Chinese kids and all the things that'll make an "acceptable" Chinese school. Lobby the charter board and start working on it but for god sakes stop bitching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Go grind you ax somewhere else.

The view that only a small number of external people think that YY needs to reexamine what it's doing in regard to its treatment of Chinese stakeholders is off base.

The defenders may not wish to admit it, but the issues are discussed internally, more so with each passing year.

With just the one Chinese immersion school, not as easy to go somewhere else as with Spanish, bringing us back around to the topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Go grind you ax somewhere else.

The view that only a small number of external people think that YY needs to reexamine what it's doing in regard to its treatment of Chinese stakeholders is off base.

The defenders may not wish to admit it, but the issues are discussed internally, more so with each passing year.

With just the one Chinese immersion school, not as easy to go somewhere else as with Spanish, bringing us back around to the topic.

And with each passing yr, the # of spaces for preK w/o sibling/employee status grows smaller. It will soon be like 2 Rivers and Stokes, probably even harder to get in since YY does not accept kids after 2nd grade. The question of more accepting more bilingual kids will become moot since all available spaces will be going to siblings/employee/founder kids anyway. As an aside, YY is putting more effort into reaching out to China for it's students that are already there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: So you think the charter board will change charter laws for the <1% of bilingual Mandarin/Cantonese/ethnic Chinese in DC so they will have a "Chinese" School they approve of and will apply to. YY is not exactly hurting for applications, most parents there seem happy (look at reenrollment). Dream on.

You have much better odds by simply starting your own "Chinese" school with a Cantonese speaking administration, majority Chinese kids and all the things that'll make an "acceptable" Chinese school. Lobby the charter board and start working on it but for god sakes stop bitching.

The charter laws will probably be tweaked eventually to better serve the immersion schools as a group. Reenrollment rates are linked to IB school quality, not just what YY is doing. With so many parents with no connection to China, not surprising that most are OK with the 1-way model. Less so with quality of administration.

But then, I'm not Chinese. I haven't heard one say they want their own charter, just a school with the sort of ratio you see at the Spanish immersion schools (1/4 or 1/3). Just pipe down if you can't be reasonable.

[Anonymous]

And the only way they'll get such a ratio and school is if they start their own school rather than trying to change YY.

[Anonymous]

Is it even possible to get such a ratio of native speakers in DC? Though I know they could do better than they are now...but let's face it, the number if Spanish-speaking kids in DC is way higher.