At some point in the school saga of every parent with a child in Mandarin immersion, the stray thought goes through their brain; “I wonder what it would be like to have my kid in school in China? Could they hack it? Would it be all that different from what things are like in our school?”

Hard to know if you (or your child) could hack it, but here’s a definite answer on the last one: It would be so very, very, different.

We know this in part because of a book that came out recently, Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese school, and the global race to achieve by Lenora Chu.

Chu is a free-lance American journalist who’s working in Shanghai. Her husband is Rob Schmitz, NPR’s Shanghai correspondent. When their son reached school age, they decided to put him in the local (and very highly regarded) school.

Chu and her husband speak Mandarin, which made the placement possible, but even so the cultural clash was astounding. Many U.S. parents worry that the Chinese-raised teaches in their children’s immersion classes are “too Chinese.” But frankly, reading Chu’s book, it’s impossible to even compare the two.

Kids in U.S. immersion schools don’t memorize poems about the glories of communism. Or have their teachers stuff scrambled egg in their mouths at lunch time for days on end after they say they don’t like eggs. Or humiliate students who do poorly on tests. Or demand bribes from parents to keep their students doing well.

In fact, Chu’s son is no longer in the Chinese school system because when their second child reached school age, they hadn’t properly bribed the school and so he wasn’t granted a coveted seat in the same high-scoring school his brother attended. Think about that next time you complain about the school lottery in your district…

It’s a fascinating book, with a lot of information about how China’s educational system works. My take away is that the grinding, demanding memorization and rote learning-laden educational culture of China results in a lot of hard working, science- and math-capable students.

On the other hand, it means that a lot of students fall through the cracks. Students who in a more fluid system (like in the United States) would probably flourish and go on to do great things.

That said, China’s system is in many ways the way it is because it had to educate hundreds of millions of students at low cost. China has the largest education system in the world, with almost 260 million students and over 15 million teachers in about 514,000 schools.

Compare that with the United States. In 2017, about 50.7 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools and another 5.2 million were in  private schools.

China is also a much poorer country, so it’s educating more than four times as many children on much less money.

I once had a Chinese parent tell me that the educational system in China is harsh and that “we break some students along the way, but we have lots, so it’s okay.”

If you’ve ever thought about what school was like for your children’s teachers (if they grew up in China) or other families in your school, Chu’s book offers a fascinating look into a very different system. It’s not one I would willingly put my children in, I must say – and I’m accused of being a Tiger Mom a lot (though truth be told it’s usually my own kids who are doing the accusing.)

It’s also helpful if you haven’t spent time in China and are trying to understand the motivation of Chinese-educated parents in your school. The system they went through is demanding and leaves so little leeway for error. They quite naturally can sometimes feel as if our system is far too loosey-goosey.

The SAT’s may seem daunting, but once you’ve read about the gaokao in China, one test that basically determines the entire course of a person’s life, it will seem like a summer camp in comparison.

Chu’s book is interesting and a pretty fast read. I recommend it.

Chinese language teachers at Baton Rouge school get pay raise after parents advocate cause

From: The Advocate

Chaoqing “Mary” Wang never made more than $10,800 a year – barely minimum wage – during her two years working as a first-grade teacher at a popular foreign language immersion school in Baton Rouge.

The original Mandarin Chinese kindergarten teacher the school hired back when the program started in August 2014, Min Zhang, has never made more than $18,900 a year. That’s also what second-grade teacher, Yujie Liu, has been making. That works out to $105 a day or $13.13 an hour.

By contrast, the rest of the faculty at BR FLAIM  — short for Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet — earn more than twice that amount. The starting salary for an East Baton Rouge Parish public school teacher is $44,500 plus benefits, and many teachers’ salaries top $50,000 a year.

Indeed, the two other Mandarin Chinese teachers at this elementary school, both hired last August, earn $44,500 and $45,700, respectively.

The lower pay for the three Mandarin Chinese teachers is the result of their classification as substitute teachers. Despite the fact that they work the same hours as other teachers, they are paid less and get no benefits. And if they get sick or otherwise miss work for any reason, they don’t get paid.

Please read more here.

What happens to kids who start in Mandarin immersion in Kindergarten when they hit high school? And once they’re through, what happens in college?

There’s precious little data out there about what options our kids have in high school and what it means for them in college. There aren’t many programs that have gotten to high school yet and of those that have, not many have graduated multiple classes yet.

Sharon Huang, the founder of Hudson Way Immersion School in New York City and Summit, NJ, is putting together a workshop on the topic for the upcoming National Chinese Language Conference in Salt Lake City in May (and you should be fund-raising to send your teachers if your school isn’t able to pay their way!)

Sharon and I spoke and because there’s no national data available, I told her I’d put out a request to parents for at least some anecdotal information. So if you’ve got kids in high school who did Mandarin immersion (or if you know what your district or school had planned) some questions below. I’ll pass answers along to Sharon and will also write them up for the blog.

• What school and school district are you in?
• Does your program have a clear pathway from Kindergarten through 12th grade?
• What happens in high school?
• Do most students continue through high school or do they choose other schools if only one offers an immersion continuation?
• Do students take the AP Chinese exam, and if so when? Are there more classes available for them after they take it?
• What about the SAT Chinese Subject Matter test?
• Bonus questions: What do students do in college? Do they continue with Mandarin? At what level do they test in? Do they go on to study Chinese in college? Do schools seem to care whether they’ve been in immersion or not?

High schools that I know of, from my list of Mandarin immersion programs:

K – 12

Pacific Rim International School, San Mateo, Calif.

Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School, Hadley, Mass.

International School of Indiana, Indianapolis, Ind.

Camelot Academy of Arts Science and Technology, Orange, Calif.

International Charter School of Atlanta, Atlanta, Ga.

9 – 12

Queens High School for Language Studies, New York

Northern Hills High School, Grand Rapids, Mich.

El Capitan High School, Lakeside, Calif.

Minnetonka High School, Minnetonka, Minn.

High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies, NYC

Cleveland High School, Portland, Ore.

Highland Park High School, St. Paul, Minn.

International High School, San Francisco

Lincoln High School, San Francisco

• For immersion parents who don’t speak Mandarin we’ve written a two-part series looking at Mandarin from a linguistic perspective, exploring what makes it easy and what makes it challenging. Our hope is that by helping parents understand some of the linguistic features of the language they can better help support their language learner

 

• Our new online Recommended Chinese Reading List for Childrenrepresents a partnership with the non-profit Great Chinese Reads, and is intended to help parents find high-quality Chinese books at the right level for their children.

 

• We’ve made free Chinese word gamesavailable for students, to make learning vocabulary more fun.

 

• Kids can watch or read classic stories herein Chinese, with many more stories to come.

I love the Internet. You can find anything (well, most things) there, and things you never thought you’d find. And people spend tremendous amounts of time and thought writing up answers to questions you’ve always wondered about Just Because It’s Cool.

Take this blog post, “The Battle of the First Grade Chinese Textbooks: China vs. Taiwan vs. States”

A Chinese-American mom gives a great introduction to the textbooks used by beginning students in China, Taiwan and in U.S. in a lot of heritage classrooms.

She shows pages out of the textbooks, discusses what they teach, how many characters, what they expect of kids and generally how literate they get.

Note that the U.S. textbooks she talks about, 馬立平, are used in Chinese Saturday schools for kids who come from Chinese-speaking households where the parents (generally) read and write Chinese. So it’s not really fair to make a comparison between what those schools do and what immersion schools do. But it’s kind of fascinating to see what’s expected of kids in those schools.

All in all it’s a great look at the similarities and differences between China and Taiwan.

A few notes:

The “zhuyin” she refers to is also known as Bopomofo, the phonetic syllables used in Taiwan to help kids learn to read characters. In China they use pinyin.

Later on she says “The one extra difference that people in China learn is 唐詩.” That’s the Tang Dynasty poems that your kid will probably memorize at some point in their school career. All literate people in China know a bunch of these and can recite them. Using lines from them in your speech makes you sound educated (which you are if you can do that, of course.) In China they’re build into the curriculum starting in grade school.

It’s a great blog posting and you can read it here.

在IFS，我们通过在“贵格教育”体系下构建现代、沉浸式、以及多语言的环境，帮助我们的学生养成意志坚强的习惯，从而在日后成为个性鲜明、拥有高沟通技巧和跨文化理解能力的世界公民

At International Friends School we create habits of strong heart and mind through Quaker education in a modern, immersive, multilingual environment.

Our students have the character, communication skills and cultural competency to meaningfully participate as world citizens.

On five stunning acres in downtown Bellevue, the International Friends School opens its door this fall to it’s first classes of 3 and 4 year old children then growing a grade a year until 8th grade. As a Quaker Friends School, IFS joins a 300 year old tradition of excellent academics mirrored by the thoughtful concern for the moral and social development of children. IFS  is the first Friends’s school in Washington state and the first in the world to offer a multilingual environment. Students will learn through a Mandarin/English immersion program with some daily exposure to Spanish. The third commitment of IFS is to offer students a balanced year calendar where learning is more evenly dispersed throughout the school year. Check out more at: ifschool.org

 

So glad you asked… The good people at Education Week recently published an article on that very topic.