Reply to Sp or Ch language?

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[quote=Anonymous][/quote]  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.  [/quote]

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.

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