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=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I think you are mistaken to think that YY focuses on any Chinese at all.  YY does not aspire to becoming a destination school for the Chinese-origin DC residents, a home away from home, so to speak.  It aspires to catch DC's growing ranks of middle-class parents who want decent schooling for their kids.  Currently bilingualism is a fashionable trend in the concept of decent schooling. That this language is Mandarin is irrelevant. It may as well be Portuguese.  The underlying frustration you see in YY-focused threads is that Chinese-origin families come to this school with an expectation of finding somewhat of a "home", a special place for the Chinese, and the school was never designed to be that. That's the only reason you see these threads.[/quote]

Er, Mandarin isn't a language, but you're onto something, if in a somewhat dated way.  As time marches forward, fewer and fewer DC bilingual Chinese have illusions about YY.  Learning that our culture is explored in the school community via hired help has been a small wake up call.  We were shy about asserting ourselves culturally growing up, a time when China was an economic basketcase and you hardly saw a non-Asian face in a US Chinatown.  You stop by DCUM and think, wow, we've come so far as immigrants and ABCs that we can provide our kids with a marketable commodity, one that others are left praying for down a wait list stretching to hundreds of names, or paying through the nose for at Sidwell.  YY is a reminder of how our cultural and linguistic stock has shot up in our lifetimes.  We have our weekend heritage schools as homes away from home.

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