Is Mandarin Immersion Worth it? The first five years for one family

A nice essay about one northern California family’s first five years in Mandarin immersion. Thanks to Devra for allowing me to repost her essay.

• DEVRA NELSON
• FEB 8, 2022
• The We Have Kids blog

When we enrolled our daughter in a Mandarin immersion charter school five years ago, no one in our family could speak a word of Chinese. We have no family connections or ancestral roots in China; and in fact, we’d never even been to China, or anywhere else in Asia, for that matter.

You might wonder, then, why we chose to send our daughter to a Mandarin immersion school—and what our experience has been like, now that we’re five years in.

Why Mandarin Immersion?

Our family’s reasons for choosing Mandarin immersion aren’t particularly unique. There are more than one billion Mandarin speakers in the world today. China is one of the world’s largest economies, and it’s reasonable to think that Mandarin speakers might have an advantage in the workplace. In addition, China is increasingly influential in terms of global politics and environmental impacts, and a deep cultural knowledge seems important in terms of building connections and finding solutions.

Please read more here.