Mandarin in secondary school?

[Greythorne]

There's a big debate going on at our school (France) about whether Mandarin is going to be useful or not.

Obviously, there are those who think it is an absolute must as trade with China is going to increase in importance and that is will be much more useful thqn German (which is the MFL most often offered after English here(.

Whilst I agree with that, I did read an article (possibly in The Guardian, but can't find it now) which argued that as all educated Chinese will be speaking excellent English going forward, the really is little point especially as:

-- it takes years and years to reach a decent level
-- there simply are not enough teachers of Mandarin and so there's a reliance on student teachers who come on one year exchange programmes (no continuity)
-- the cultural barriers are so high for Euopeans that even with a few years of language learning, they will never be able to compete with Chinese students / adults who have been immersed in Western culture via media / formal learning for years

I don't want to take an anti-learning position, but I really am veering towards the idea that learning Mandarin is a pointless exercise.

Can someone please convince me?

Completely agree with Bluestockings about learning any language at GCSE level. I did French myself and I can't even string a sentence together. But I found it useful when I visit France, just being able to saying a number and point at the thing I want. To be honest, you can argue a lot of things we learned at school aren't directly useful. It's simply part of enriching our knowledge, isn't it?

I think anyone speaking Mandarin will be advantaged in meetings with the Chinese, everyone can be secretive in business and much better to know what your business partners are saying.

MoreBeta, China as you describe it could be America in the 19th Century, there were depressions & even civil war there too. America went on to huge prosperity & wealth in the Twentieth Century.

China has been on the up since 1978.

I think learning Mandarin is probably quite fun, but will it provide a young person with sufficent langauge skills to function in China? Not at school level, no.

The reality si that plenty of foreigners are already doing business, in, for and with the Chinese and the language is not a barrier. If the Chinese want to do business withyou, they will. End of.

And yes, yes, yes, to whoever said that the next generation of Chinese people with influence are being educated here. It could be argued that if one wanted to make Chinese contacts one could do worse than applying to a British boarding school!

I can't comment on the practical applications but no language is ever a pointless exercise, especially a difficult one like Mandarin. If we are comparing to German, well IME Germans speak excellent English and in social situations invariably jump with English in even if your own level is good. However the German language is grammatically complex and will stretch your child if he/she does choose to learn it over Mandarin. The additional pleasure for me of knowing German in addition to Romance languages is gaining an understanding of the origins of English. Also your child is likely to have an advantage over her peers by having English parents- English being so much closer to German than French is

china is not the same as any society in the West, they promote society, not the individual and there will be an uprising. The newly wealthy are creating a clear divide (huge chasm) between the rich and poor. The Chinese sense of 'society' does not mix with the wealthy sense of 'self'.

I think before discussing China you must remember that they really are nothing like us, as a society, individuals may differ.

The Chinese may call themselves communist but really they're the best capitalists in the world.

Actually, if they're learning it from age 11, there's no reason why Mandarin should be any more difficult than any other language. Or that they won't reach the same level of fluency after GCSE (i.e. not really that fluent, being realistic).

I'm doing Mandarin GCSE and the new textbook by EdExcel is very good. Same sort of subjects are covered as are covered in other MFL, and it's a well-structured course.

Yes, they have to learn the characters - but whilst this makes it more complicated, grammatically it is a much simpler language than, say, German. (And learning the characters apparently helps to develop the right side of the brain - the conceptual/creative side).

I would say that it's not so much about future trade relations between China and the rest of the world, more an acknowledgement that China is a massively important world culture.

I don't think learning any language is a pointless exercise, as it's all about intellectual development. But I would argue that Mandarin, along with English and Spanish, is probably going to be more useful than German.

Interesting, BIWI. Do you find that even an elementary grasp of Mandarin gives you any more insight into such a different culture?

Posie - No offence but (why do people say that when they are about to offend somebody?) but that reads like you lifted the passage from Heat magazine Socio-Political Comments column :o

I particularly liked the 'you must remember that they really are nothing like us'.

The workers work hard to feed their families. The ruling elite line their own pockets. Certain jobs are reserved for cronies, political allies and children of. You are right. They are nothing like us :o :o

Well it's starting to - but that's also because some of it, inevitably, comes through the subjects you study. Both the teachers I've had so far are Chinese, and so they also talk about their home life, their parents, etc.

But it's pretty superficial so far!

My rudimentary experience of other languages has been enriched by learning their idioms and they can be wonderfully colourful and revealing. I remember learning years ago that Welsh says 'it's raining old women and sticks' and of course the French sleepless night is 'une nuit blanche'. I wonder whether you are learning this kind of thing with Mandarin? They are a great ice breaker between peoples, it seems to me.

Interesting debate.

Seems to me that learning Mandarin is "useful" in the sense that all learning is useful, all languages are useful (stretches the mind, benefit of thinking in a different language, grammar, culturak awareness etc.) but not necessarily that it is useful in the way the oarents at our school hope and expect it to be useful, i.e. To allow their children get high flying jobs where speaking Mandarin is going to be required.

There's very much a feeling that the children have to learn Mandarin if they are going to be able to get a job as the world will be ruled by the Chinese in 20 / 30 / 40 years. I still don't buy this vision of the future and feel that Mandarin, German, Latin, Greek are probably all good ideas to study in and of themselves.

I feel as Bonsoir does that if my DC long to learn Mandarin, I will not stand in their way, but I am not ready to push it based on future career prospects grounds just yet!

Greythorne - the language of science and progress is English and nothing persuades that Mandarin is going to take over shortly!

persuades me

Perhaps in learning a bit of Mandarin one might find:

1. Not all speakers of Mandarin are from China. This seems to be a weakness in the English language that "Chinese" means people from the People's Republic of China. In Chinese (the langauge) we have many different words to describe ourselves from ethnic, language, national perspectives.

2. Not all speakers of Mandarin are communist/capitalist.

3. Chinese people are people too. If you cut us, do we not bleed etc etc.

4. Does anyone realise that Chinese people have been writing things down for a long time? It stands to reason that there might actually be one or two very nice things to read. You could perhaps consider that if you learned to read Chinese you might just quite possibly find enjoyment in these things, in the spare moments you have when you are not busy doing business with these Chinese people.

This is a sore point with me. My parents sent us to Chinese schools when learning Chinese was regarded as the most useless, deadend, laughable thing ever. (Does anyone remember when the PRC was NOT the great capitalist venture that it is now? No?) And I am forever grateful because we have all these books to read and all the stories to enjoy. And I'm teaching my children Chinese so they can read these books. And I get upset when people tell me how wonderfully useful that would be. (OK I admit I'm a bit touchy, but really, I've had enough...)

Uptoapoint funny you mentioned the point about not all mandarin speakers are mainland chinese. (That's what we call people from the large communist country. Mainlanders). I remember an article not that long ago on the bbc website, talking about whether the Chinese language will be the world dominant language. It is about whether others in the pacific regions are willing to learn it. One of the example is on Malaysian kids crossing the border over to Singapore to get an English education. Instead of learning chinese. The author is ignorant of the fact that those malays are native Chinese (easy to tell from their names), and that singaporeans are also native mandarin speakers.

Also I'm impressed you learned enough chinese to read. Your parents must be very tiger mum!

This is the article

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17105569

BabyTerror - I am Malaysian Chinese. We don't call ourselves Malays. Malays are Malaysian (nationality) Malays (ethnicity).

My parents are the most laid back people ever though. We went to the local Chinese school. (In fact there is a local Chinese school round almost every corner where I come from!) But we could have gone to the seriously pushy Chinese school. We managed to learn Chinese because there were and still are such a lot of good exciting things to read.

It's true though that you can often tell from the way Chinese names are written in English whether someone is from PRC, Taiwan, HK, Singapore or Malaysia. I'm ignorant of how Chinese names are written in Peru (which I'm told has a large number of Chinese schools) and other places.

I believe Mandarin will be a differentiator in the future. Two candidates go for the same job (which involves some contact with China/Asia) one has some Mandarin and the other doesn't etc.

Thanks for posting the link. Interesting to read about Singapore and the push for Mandarin in schools etc. Even those with Chinese immigrant parents/grandparents won't necessarily be strong in Mandarin as English will often be spoken at home. Many local families send children to Chinese enrichment outside of school hours - which is expensive and barely affordable to many (especially if they have more than one child) to promote fluency.

How many here in the UK would go without to give our children a perceived educational advantage? I wonder as the power shifts from West to East whether they'll be a cultural shift in this area? I believe there may well be no NHS in place in many of our children's lifetimes and there will be enormous competition for jobs in increasingly difficult economic times with less of a safety net.

Wow! This got serious!

One other thing from me - learning Mandarin is actually fun. From a child's perspective I would certainly say it would be more fun than German, which is a bit of a stolid and complex language. (And I speak as someone who endured several years studying it up to O level).

Learning the characters (as well as the history behind them) is great - it's a bit like learning a secret code!

I think that's a little unfair on German, BIWI. OK so it's not always the most nuanced but I wouldn't call the language of Goethe, Schiller and Mozart 'stolid'. It can be delightful when you get to know it!

lordcopper I think everyone accepted that learning any language, Mandarin included might be a nice thing. Certainly the cultural context is an interesting one.

However, this debate was focussed on whether it will be useful for our DC. In that schools are often now promoting it as useful for the future in a working/business context.

And some of us are saying that we don't think the amount one could learn in a school context would be sufficient to provide the proficiency needed. BTW I would say the same for most MFL. Even an A* at GCSE will not provide you with anything like a workbale knowledge of French.

cortina I think I can safely say that I am one poster who takes my DC's education extraordinarily seriously.

I put a huge amount of thought into it. And energy. And hard cash.

If I seriously thought learning Mandarin would benefit my DC I would be pushing it. But I just don't see it...