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?

Cortina - British parents are some of the world's highest spenders on education (and childcare).

The other issue, which is not negligible, is how useful a specific language will be for your particular child. I have friends and relatives who have studies Arabic, Chinese and Russian at university and spent years abroad in relevant countries. Some of the men have then gone on to have careers that used those languages (in business or diplomacy). Absolutely none of the women have.

I'd rather my DD spent time learning the languages of countries where being a foreign woman will not be a total professional non-starter.

That's interesting, Bonsoir. In Asia surely education is valued more? I've lived in Asia and seen the extreme sacrifices parents with very little money will make for their children's education. You don't generally see parents on the breadline here paying out for daily tutoring and enrichment, perhaps even going without food to do so? I may be wrong. There are broadly different cultural expectations etc. Your PP is thought provoking. Will come back on that.

Wordfactory - there's a post on primary currently. Someone who has their child/children in Mandarin immersion in the States. Do you think this will add no value long term/a gimmick etc? Genuinely interested.

"There are broadly different cultural expectations"

One only has to read the threads here on MN to get a feel of cultural expectations here in the UK.

"Let children be children"
"There is nothing wrong being at the national average"
"Why do you want to push your children towards University?"

etc etc

Its as if a child can't be pushed and have a childhood at the same time.

Re Cortina's question about whether a Mandarin immersion course is a good thing. Anything that enriches their lives has to be a good thing. Whether being fluent in Mandarin is a must have life skill is another matter.

Immersion may be very different cortina it would, presumably, result in a very high level of proficiency, which could be very useful.

However, I think simply learning a language at school never provides that level of proficiency. And Mandarin is much harder than French or Spanish, say.

If one were, I won't say fluent because that is a very big ask, but extrememly proficient, it would be very labour intensive, I think. And I think the labour involved might very well outweigh the benefits it would provide.

Also, I think it very much depends how one sees oneself working with the Chinese. If one were doing remote business, with frequent trips, then the language isn't a barrier. If one wanted to live in China and work for a Chinese company, then proficient Mandarin would be useful.

And I guess whether you imagine your DC doing business with the Chinese, or working for them, depends on how you see world economics panning out

There are opportunity costs to doing absolutely anything and learning languages, which are time, energy and $$$ consuming, are no exception. If you spend your childhood learning languages (as I did - French, German, Italian, Spanish and Latin, and all the MFLs were taught by native-speaker teachers who didn't speak English, so the demands were high), you probably won't spend your childhood doing team sports/advanced maths & physics/in the art room. My biggest issue with Mandarin is that - I think that the opportunity cost of Mandarin is too high for our family (unless the DCs were wildly self-motivated).

I know DCs here in Paris whose French parents have sent them to Mandarin lessons since they were tiny, who always have Mandarin-speaking nannies and who send their (primary-aged) DCs to China on language exchanges... Those DCs don't ski/act/sing etc. You cannot do everything.

Is a foreign woman really a professional non-starter in China? I've been told that about Japan but my father went on a recent business trip to China and said that there were lots of driven young Chinese women succeeding there- yes they had to work harder than the men to get to the same place but it seems to me that this is the case in Europe too? Does anyone have any experience of whether Western women are taken seriously in business in China?
And of course it depends what your child wants to do in life. A female friend of mine studied Arabic and is doing brilliantly in the academic field.

Why do people see the Chinese as a breed apart?

People don't seem to have any problems with American companies like Apple, Google or Microsoft dominating the market but when it comes to the Chinese it is a case of OMG those Chinese are taking over and we are all going to end up working for them.

And before anyone goes on about human rights, read up on Apple's factorys in the Far East or the British mining companies in Africa. Then pick up a newspaper and read about how many civillians - men, women and children - have been killed in Iraq and Aghanistan by Western forces.

cortina - the language may well delightful when you're reading Goethe, et al - but that isn't going to happen at GCSE level!

PushedToTheEdge maybe this is another reason why our children will benefit from studying Mandarin- as languages give an insight into the thought process and culture of another people, not to mention the opportunity to make friends, it may eliminate the fear that comes from ignorance. Look at the things our grandparents' generation used to think about the Germans and Russians

Conchita - the mother of DD's best friend at school (here in Paris) used to live in China and worked in one of the top global law firms there. She moved to China to follow her now exH when he moved there with his consulting firm.

When her H left her, she moved back to Europe like a shot (though not to her home country). She speaks fluent Mandarin (as well as English, French, German and a few others) and had a career in China, but she said it was very hard work and that her long-term career prospects would be wildly better in Europe.

Pushed, I'm with you. If my gut feeling is correct, coming extremely bleak economic times are going to change any previous complacency dramatically. We may well look back at the times when we could let our children play every night & they were allowed this luxury. I may well be wrong & don't mean to be miserable & pessimistic. As an aside I don't understand why encouraging a hunger to learn seems to be seen as such a negative in the UK. Study can be such fun and so rewarding even in the very young.

Wordfactory when there are so many applicants for each position anything you can do to differentiate yourself will count. A knowledge of Mandarin perhaps suggests an internationally minded, hard working, interested and curious candidate. It might suggest you are not insular and entitled and are very open minded and willing to learn. All will help. Again I hate to be a pessimist but it's going to be very tough out there for our children I fear. A good friend of mine secured a banking job based in London working for a Japanese bank. There was enormous competition for the role, her basic Japanese meant she was remembered & got the job. Just one example but you'll see my point.

People may not like it but things are changing whether we like it or not. IMO.

In the family boys are valued more than girls because the son will support the parents in their old age whereas the girl will be married off and she will become part of her husband's family.

Many Westerners read stories about this and deduce that women in general are not valued. China had female combat soldiers back in the days when the US were discussing whether to allow African Americans to serve in regular units.

Because of its poor background the A Woman's Place is in the Home concept never developed. Yes the ruling elite in China is made up of old men without a woman in sight but if you were to look at the business sector and visit places like Shanghai you will see loads of female entrepreneurs and business leaders.

That is not to say that they aren't hurdles or sexist attitudes but the same exist in Western countries.

BIWI I was lucky to have some excellent German teachers at GCSE level so I did find it a delight. I remember how much we loved the word Schwarzwaelderkirschtorte, the gross but cute word Mutterkuchen for placenta (literally mother cake) and other things that kept me interested enough to go onto degree level. Fair enough many people don't get on with German but my experience at school was that some kids engaged with it despite hating French. For some reason at my school it was far more popular with boys than French was and my language teacher friends have observed the same thing.
Sorry to veer slightly off topic but OP says that German would be the alternative to learning Mandarin

Cortina - I have no doubt at all that fluency in Mandarin may provide DCs with a useful advantage in later life.

My questions are (a) how much time, energy and $$$ are DCs going to spend on this venture (b) are they actually going to achieve a useful level of knowledge (c) for girls, is this a useful way to spend their time.

I used to work in a consulting firm in Paris. There were whole swathes of cases that women couldn't be staffed on in North Africa and the Middle East...

So many interesting points going on at the same time! In terms of pushing children I think the argument against it is not about spoiling or indulging but whether it's useful or could even be counterproductive. I think it's important to introduce a child to as many educational experiences as possible early on, and when they are old enough to understand to tell them about the realities of the world and what one needs to do to be employable, teach them about the value of money etc, but I think pushing a child in a 'Tiger Mother' way may result in a miserable, stressed child who thinks that learning is a chore, not a pleasure. I want my DS to find his own motivation to succeed, otherwise will I be standing over him to do his university essays, sending off his CV etc?

wordfactory - I agree my posts are not quite what this thread is about. It is really in response to some slightly strange posts about the strangeness of the Chinese people, as if there is one uniform "type" of Chinese people, as if, as someone else pointed out, Chinese people are a breed apart. These things are a bit annoying, to say the least.

Hey ho. I'll leave you all to debate this usefulness. I wish our school would offer Punjabi or Urdu. Or anything with a different script. That would be so much fun. A cat would not just be another word for cat but will look entirely different on paper. Such fun!

cortina I utterly agree with you about the baffling level of complacancy I see here on MN and to a lesser degree in RL.

I am not an immigrant, but I am from a very disadvantaged background, and thus cannot share the complacancy of many of my native middle class counterparts.

Life is going to be very tough for our DC. The globalised competition for work and money will mean they will need a greater edge to succeed, than perhaps I did.

That said, I agree with Bonsoir that there are onl so many hours in the day. We are a family who probably make use of more of them than most. I know that there are some of my comrades here on this thread. We wicked pushy parents .

As a family we have to decide what will be the most use/fun/important to us when deciding how to spend our time. And for us, Mandarin wouldn't necessarily feature.

I've always fancied starting a thread about what we MNers do consider the most important skills for our DC to master, but fear an avalanche of 'I just want my DC to be happy'.

Bonsoir, I think a limited investment - Saturday school for example - may pay dividends. Start a child very young, choose a fun environment, maybe follow up with a Mandarin tutor once a week. In time they'll know a little, perhaps enough for GCSE & this may be enough to make a child stand out in the way I described in my PP.

The phrase 'Tiger Mother' gets thrown around a lot but do they really exist?

There was a BBC program a few months ago about 'Chinese' tiger moms. One was a Taiwanese mom and one was a Canadian. Watching it reminded me of a visit to Amish country where I was shown around by a Menonite. No we don't have a Chinese Tiger Mom or an Amish person but here is the next best thing :o

Sure there are some obsessive parents out there but there are IMO a minority that is not invariably Chinese. One has only to look into the personal history of the Williams sisters (tennis) and other world class athletes to read stories of long hours of training and personal sacrifices. Let us not forget all the MN posts about people who have been heavily tutoring their kids for years. They can't all be Chinese unless everyone is posting about the same Chinese family :)

Interesting post Wordfactory. I think I try to do too much sometimes & spread resources too thin if that makes sense. How can I best add value?

Even an A at GCSE will not provide you with anything like a workbale knowledge of French.*

However you have to have a foundation in any subject on which to build.

The old O Level used to include grammar that is not even expected now for A2. It was a much better foundation and the teaching methods taught students how to be independent manipulators of the language. As opposed to the regurgitators that so many of today's students are taught to be.

Nevertheless most students are only offered the GCSE, so that must be their starting point.

Cortina - the thing is, I know plenty of plurilingual children. Their language skills are not going to be "GCSE level" at 16. My frame of reference for language skills is the CEFR and, frankly, all the parents I know expect their DCs to have two languages at C2 and another two at C1 by the time they leave school, at a minimum, in addition to a maths/science based school leaving qualification. GCSE Mandarin is not going to be enough to stand out.

I'm with you Pushed but would say stereotypes exist for a reason. My Jewish and Chinese friends do broadly value education ahead of my Australian ones (who care more about swimming!) For example. We all laugh about our different values. IMO there are cultural reasons for them all. Yes, my Chinese friends all have a schedule on a whiteboard & insist on study at home - some more than others. Over time I've got more like them & can see their reasons. Just my experiences.