LAUSD Ready For More Mandarin Chinese Language (Even Though Many Still Don't Know English)

"If the school board adopts this plan, Los Angeles would be a pacesetter in the country in terms of aggressiveness of a plan to broaden Mandarin programs," Kwoh said. "This is a very aggressive plan." I agree that Mandarin Chinese will indeed become more and more critical in the global economic future. But, should the school district with one of the lowest graduation rates, and lowest English speaking student body be the districts embracing "a very aggressive pacesetting plan?"]

Excerpts from Daily News
LAUSD talking about speaking more Chinese

To help students compete globally, new classes might be offered
[ZD comments in brackets]

Acknowledging the growing force of globalization, the Los Angeles Unified School District is gearing up an ambitious program to offer Mandarin Chinese language and culture courses at all of its middle and high schools.

The plan, which will go to the board next month, calls for the courses to be offered at about 200 middle and high schools, and each of the LAUSD's eight local districts also would have at least one dual-immersion program in which students started studying the language in kindergarten.

The move would be one of the largest of its kind in the nation and would put Los Angeles Unified on the cutting edge of language and culture instruction in public schools.

School board member Yolie Flores Aguilar is sponsoring a resolution for the program, which proposes requiring at least one high school in each of the eight local districts to offer Chinese language and culture courses in the 2008-09 school year.

[Villarigosa backed LAUSD boardpuppet] Aguilar says, "I don't think we have a second to spare. The rapidness of the economy in terms of moving in a global direction is not something we should take lightly, and there's no reason to wait."

["Not a second to spare." Wish some folks at LAUSD felt the same way about teaching English to all that don't speak it within the school district.]

Harry Haskell, director of world languages and cultures at LAUSD, said it's critical that U.S. schools make Mandarin more available.

"Mandarin is and will continue to be a very critical language," Haskell said. "We're realizing right now that because of globalization, it's vital that we have second-language skills because we have to compete with the rest of the world.

"And we are not."

"We felt that it was very important for American youth to be able to learn Mandarin to be able to compete in the global marketplace, to understand a fast-growing country and its culture, and to be able to converse on the world stage with Chinese being one of the most widely used languages of the world."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa long has emphasized the need for students to be proficient in more than one language to remain competitive in a growing world economy.

"In a global work force, knowing a second language like Chinese or Spanish will be critical to our children's success," Villaraigosa said.

"It's very important for American kids to learn not just Chinese, but a foreign language." [Which one is it? Critical to learn Mandarin Chinese, or to learn a foreign language? You are claiming it is critical to learn Chinese, not just a foreign language. Again, which one is it? We are already offering many foreign languages and now it will cost more money to offer more Mandarin Chinese, when money is needed for immediate classroom needs.]

Full article