Should K-12 Students in the United States Study Mandarin?
During the last century, the world has had some significant political, economic, and industrial changes, which lead to the advancement of multicultural and multilingual practices. With the development of globalization, nowadays, more and more people are learning foreign languages to better prepared for the fast-changing international situations. Among all the languages, Mandarin Chinese has the most potential to become another dominant global language after English. Should Mandarin classes become part of the Core Curriculum for K-12 students in the United States?
To make sure we address this specifically to the people who are most concerned about this question—the parents of K-12 students—we
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U.S.
To see the comparison of statistics in between China and the U.S., the Asia Society, the nonprofit education institution founded by John D. Rockefeller III, compile a graph that clearly shows the contrast:
Figure 1. Infographic-Learn Chinese. Grace Norman. (2011)
As of 2011, about 845 million people in the world are native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, while only about 328 million people are native speakers of English. China’s population is four times greater than that in the U.S., but China has 3,000% more Chinese-English bilingual speakers. In the near future, there is no doubt that China and the U.S. are going to be the two major economies in the world. For the current generation in the United States to become an effective partner with the current generation in China, the comprehension of Mandarin and Chinese culture definitely needs to increase.
Reasons to Learn As many people may know, Chinese culture is one of the world’s oldest and richest continuous culture with over 5,000 years of history, which provides a great amount of historic literatures and cultural relics. About one-fifth of the people on earth speaks Chinese, which makes it the most widely spoken language in the world. China is one of the largest trading partners of the U.S., and a lot of U.S. companies have business and long-term investments in