Reply to Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?

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Reply to "Bilingual Kids in Language Immersion ES Programs, Which Programs Have Many & Strive to Attract Them?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]

This is quite telling.  These threads always seem to come out the same.  Nobody complains about YY's ability to teach Mandarin.  The basic complaint is that YY isn't Chinese enough for the Chinese because there are not:

1. More ethnic Chinese families
2. Chinese administrators
3. Extra support for dialect speakers

#1 is blamed on #2 & 3, along with complaints that YY doesn't do enough to cater to or reach out to native speakers:

4. By having more Chinese people at open houses or other events.
5. By having the open house in Chinese.
6. (and the worst example from a thread last year) Having an AA principal offends some racist Chinese people

Of course, you don't complain that your IB school doesn't have these things, and other posters have said the same about MoCo.  So what makes you any less comfortable at Yu Ying than at any other school run by non-Chinese administrators with few dialect speakers and no support for them (other than ESL if appropriate)?  You say it yourself -- because Yu Ying is teaching "your own language and culture."  What you view as Yu Ying's sins all stem from the fact that non-Chinese started a Chinese immersion school.  When you say your DH had to walk on eggshells and not seem demanding or entitled, what you mean is that he had to suppress the urge to be demanding and entitled, because he thinks he knows better than the white/AA administrators/PA leadership what makes a good Chinese school.

[b]I'm not trying to attack you.  Think back to college when you had that class where there was an older student who thought that his or her experience in the army or as an engineer or simply by being 50 years old gave him some special insight into history or government or literature or whatever the subject was. [/b] You know you had that person.  We all did.  If you went to law school you definitely know what I'm talking about.  That's who you are.  But the truth is that you've never run a Mandarin immersion school either, and likely have never run any school.  So go ahead and have your opinions about how YY should do this or that to cater to native speakers, but don't pretend that those opinions aren't a symptom of feeling like you should be treated special as compared to white or AA parents.[/quote]
I don't think your comparison quite holds. An older student doesn't automatically have greater insight into any subject area simply on account of his or her age.  A native speaker of Mandarin does in fact automatically have a better, more accurate and more substantiated opinion on whether the school delivers quality instruction in Mandarin and Chinese culture simply on account of being a native carrier of that language and culture - effectively, a final outcome of what YY is aiming to produce, among other things (kids completely fluent in Mandarin and Chinese culture). They may not know better how to get to that point, but they are certainly better equipped than you and I to make a judgment on whether this goal has been attained.

I don't have a dog in this fight, and it is very clear to me that YY and Chinese families have what you call an existential conflict.  YY is a charter school.  As such, it is mandated to offer non-discriminatory admissions to everyone - from those born to two Chinese parents to those whose only exposure to China is wearing sneakers made there. That's one incontrovertible fact.

Presence of native speakers/native Chinese in an immersion language school improves acquisition of this language and culture.  That, too, is an incontrovertible fact.

These two facts are at loggerheads.  But one is law, and the other isn't.  So the non-law must yield to law.

I am a parent of a trilingual child who attends preschool with immersion in one of these languages. I very specifically sought out a preschool staffed exclusively with native speaker teachers and student rosters made at least 50% with children of first-generation immigrants.  I don't care about diversity.  I care about my son acquiring the language and improving it.  If our preschool had to run a lottery and hire non-native speaker teachers, we wouldn't be there.

I get what native Chinese families want for their children.  And I also get the restrictions YY must embrace.  It's an existential conflict.  [/quote]

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