On March 30th, the Daily Breeze reported that LAUSD is gearing up to offer Mandarin Chinese language and cultural classes at all its middle and high schools. The plan calls for these courses to be implemented at 200 schools with at least one dual-immersion program aimed at all grade levels (K-12) in each of LAUSD's eight local districts. This move is touted as putting LAUSD on the "cutting edge" of public school language and cultural instruction. (I guess no-one informed this reporter about Palos Verdes .....)
Regardless, the District has been working on this plan for the last 18 months with Mandarin in the Schools, a local committee created by a prominent non-partisan Chinese-American organization. It includes representatives of Los Angeles, LAUSD and California State University, Los Angeles. By 2008-2009, it is their goal to require at least one high school in each local district to offer language courses. By 2009-2010, each district would expand the program to include participation at the middle school and elementary school level.
Stewart Kwoh, vice-chairman of the committee stated that "there are 200 million Chinese learning English, and less that 50,000 Americans learning Mandarin." His comments mirror our belief that it is important for American yourth to learn Mandarin to be able to compete in the global marketplace, to understand a fast-growing country and culture, and to be able to converse on the world stage with Chinese being one of the most widely used languages of the world.
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