Chinese immersion program in elementary school--What do you think about it?

Question

There is a Chinese immersion program in my local school district. Math and science are taught in Chinese (Mandarin) to children who join; they can join in kindergarten. The Chinese program runs through high school.

At the same elementary school, art, phys ed, music, and Spanish are "Specials". The children take one Special for a two-week period, and the Specials rotate, so each child has one Special for two weeks and then does not have that Special again for six weeks.

(1) Would you send your child to this type of program and (2) what do you think about the way "Specials" are taught?

All answers are appeciated.

Answer 1

If you are talking about having these programs in a non-Chinese and non-Spanish area, I personally don't think that these programs are necessary. Oh by the way, I am a Chinese and have lived in Hong Kong for 17 years (I was born there) before coming to the US.

Back in the 50's, because the communist took over the mainland China, a lot of people had fled to Hong Kong, which was a British colony at the time. Many of these immirgrants were so poor that they couldn't even afford to go to school. These immigrants spoke Mandarin and people in Hong Kong speak Cantonese. Mandarin and Cantonese are two different dialects in Chinese language. If one only knows Mandarin but not Cantonese and the other one only knows Cantonese but not Mandarin, they cannot communicate verbally. But these immigratns are doing fine; in fact, the richest man in Hong Kong (one of the top 20 richest men in the world) is from that era.

When I first came to the US, yes, I already knew English because Hong Kong was a British colony at the time and I had to learn English in school, but still, since I didn't need English in order to survive in Hong Kong, I knew some English but not enough to survive in the US. I can tell you that the first six months was quite painful. I didn't understand what was going on when I turned on the TV. I understood mainly because of the video and then just guessed the rest. When I had a general conversation with others, I didn't understand a lot of things that they were telling me. But I survived and I started to understand English in my daily life after spending about 6 months in the states. In the process, the majority of the time, I dealt with people outside of my own race. This forced me to learn English in order to survive.

What I am trying to say is, the key is, we need to encourage the immigrants to be part of the new society. By providing these programs to the people, it is like saying that they can survive on their own and they don't need to be part of the society. And also, these are children that we are talking about. They learn very quickly. Language barrier is not really a problem to them.

Answer 2

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