Options for Language Instruction after DCPS Cuts?

[Anonymous]

DCPS is much too brainless to think of Chinese in those terms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:+100. Moreover, not teaching Mandarin helps turn off East Asian immigrant families from our schools. IMHO, we don't have nearly enough of them in DCPS as it is. Collectively, they punch far above their weight academically. Not strategic to axe Mandarin as we try to improve our by-right middle and high schools.

East Asian care a lot of education which is why they generally live in DC or send their kids to DCPS. MoCo or Fairfax (for a shot at TJ)

[Anonymous]

DON'T generally live in DC?

I concur that you can't improve local schools by axing instruction in the Asian language of the world's next superpower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy Middle in Ward 2 cut Mandarin but kept Spanish and Italian.

Madness. 1.8 billion Chinese in the next superpower and they kept...Italian? Where's the vision on DCPS' part?

So ignorant on your part. And the Italian programming is partially funded by Italian grant program

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's official, DCPS is in decline. Teaching Mandarin isn't a frill, it's a far more important world language than others DCPS isn't axing, namely Italian and French as noted. In the burbs, it's not uncommon for high schools in upscale areas to teach all 6 AP languages: Latin, Japanese, German, French, Spanish and Mandarin, plus Arabic and Russian. Looks like soon enough, J-R and Walls will only teach a few languages, all Romance languages. This just isn't a 21st century approach.

Ummm. There is AP Italian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy Middle in Ward 2 cut Mandarin but kept Spanish and Italian.

Madness. 1.8 billion Chinese in the next superpower and they kept...Italian? Where's the vision on DCPS' part?

So ignorant on your part. And the Italian programming is partially funded by Italian grant program

Is it? Shows us the line item in the DCPS budget where these teaching positions are funded by external allocations. We will wait.

Not sure how it is ignorant to point out that Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language in the world.

The value in studying Mandarin is self-evident. The value of Italian much less so.

[Anonymous]

Listen, I’m not happy about the cuts to Mandarin either, but blame the students and families that are choosing other foreign languages (including Italian) over Chinese, not central DCPS, which is not making the decision of what language to cut, or the school leaders who are simply cutting the language that has the least demand so that the fewest students are impacted by the budget cuts. I think many students avoid Mandarin because they think it’s too difficult, a view that is exacerbated by the posters who say that no one can ever learn enough Mandarin for it to be “useful.” If you want students to be interested in Mandarin then stop promoting that narrow-minded narrative. It’s neither true nor helpful to your cause.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy Middle in Ward 2 cut Mandarin but kept Spanish and Italian.

Madness. 1.8 billion Chinese in the next superpower and they kept...Italian? Where's the vision on DCPS' part?

So ignorant on your part. And the Italian programming is partially funded by Italian grant program

Not at our school, although Chinese used to get some funding from the now-defunct Confucius Institute.

[Anonymous]

What about at oyster adams? My kid would be thrilled if they cut Chinese… many kids get Cs and below since the teacher is tough and gives tons of hw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh. Unpopular opinion but most of these kids aren’t going to learn enough Mandarin to do anything with it anyway. In fact most kids don’t learn enough of a second language in the US (in school) for it to be useful.

None of them has a chance of it becoming "useful" if they don't learn it in the first place.

But there is so much more education involved in learning a language than it being useful for a job or something. Grammar, vocabulary, memorization, geography, history, comparative arts, literature, and culture, etc etc. are all part of learning a language. And it's good for the brain.

Everyone learning Spanish is what's "meh." It's a good language to learn, but it hardly makes us educated in aggregate.

You can smell the Maga on you a mile away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy Middle in Ward 2 cut Mandarin but kept Spanish and Italian.

Madness. 1.8 billion Chinese in the next superpower and they kept...Italian? Where's the vision on DCPS' part?

So ignorant on your part. And the Italian programming is partially funded by Italian grant program

Is it? Shows us the line item in the DCPS budget where these teaching positions are funded by external allocations. We will wait.

Not sure how it is ignorant to point out that Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language in the world.

The value in studying Mandarin is self-evident. The value of Italian much less so.

Just as a reminder, there are around 34 Italian dialects so I’m not sure how useful it will be to learn some crappy dcps taught Italian.

Btw I always think that people who learn Italian are just too dumb for French and too racist for Spanish.

[Anonymous]

It's not a systemic answer, but honestly, Duolingo is more effective than several years of MS foreign language.

[Anonymous]

Not from the DMV here. My kid's high school doesn't offer Mandarin, but he was very interested in taking it. He has studied on his own for about a year using Duolingo and some other sources. (We're sending him to Concordia Language Villages for Mandarin this summer to kick things off.)

We found this program out of Michigan State University, and our high school has agreed to enroll our kid (and cover the cost).

https://www.education.msu.edu/international/teaching-learning-chinese/

He'll be starting it in the fall, so I can't offer any review.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about at oyster adams? My kid would be thrilled if they cut Chinese… many kids get Cs and below since the teacher is tough and gives tons of hw.

Interesting. The Chinese teachers at Deal are much easier graders than the Spanish teachers, according to my child who takes Chinese and has friends who take Spanish. Even with the easy grading, she has learned a good deal of Chinese at Deal — more than she did with years of weekly private tutoring. The daily exposure makes a big difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh. Unpopular opinion but most of these kids aren’t going to learn enough Mandarin to do anything with it anyway. In fact most kids don’t learn enough of a second language in the US (in school) for it to be useful.

None of them has a chance of it becoming "useful" if they don't learn it in the first place.

But there is so much more education involved in learning a language than it being useful for a job or something. Grammar, vocabulary, memorization, geography, history, comparative arts, literature, and culture, etc etc. are all part of learning a language. And it's good for the brain.

Everyone learning Spanish is what's "meh." It's a good language to learn, but it hardly makes us educated in aggregate.

You can smell the Maga on you a mile away.

What an odd response. Just in case your reading comprehension is the issue, note that I did not say learning Spanish was "meh." What I said is that *everyone* learning the same, one foreign language -- ie, Spanish -- is bad. There should be diversity in the languages we study or else, in aggregate, we are a narrow-minded community.