Mandarin Chinese in Schools

A reader of this blog sent me an email yesterday to tell me that his wife Kerri Lyon, who is a reporter for CBS news, did a piece on kids learning Mandarin Chinese in school.

He told me that my kids’ school Little Red/Elizabeth Irwin was prominently featured in the piece.

I found it on the Internet and watched it just now.  I was impressed that 25% of the 9th grade class at our high school has signed up for Mandarin.  But I think even that is not enough.

It seems to me that Mandarin ought to be the most popular foreign language in our schools.  French and Spanish are fine, but this century has been called the Chinese century for a reason and our kids should be learning the language at least at the rate the Chinese are learning English.

And we aren’t even close.

It’s a two minute piece.  You can watch it here

For some reason, it won’t work in Firefox, so use IE if you want to watch it.

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