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Brighton College, one of the South of England’s oldest public schools has announced that it is to make Mandarin Chinese a compulsory subject from September.
The new headmaster, Richard Cairns who has just joined Brighton College from Magdalen College, said, “One of my key tasks is to make sure pupils at Brighton College are equipped for the realities of the 21st Century.”
I’ve not seen any other school in the UK make such a move as yet. I think this is a very sound move by the new headmaster. There is no doubt that China is going to become more and more prominent in our day to day lives and preparing kids for that, especially teaching them the main dialect of Chinese, has got to be a good thing. Personally, I’m pretty excited about the ‘brave new world’ that China presents at the same time as having serious misgivings. China’s human rights record is well documented and to be quite frank, horrific. Whilst wanting to explore and embrace the Chinese people and all they bring to the wider world I just don’t know how to ‘get over’ their government’s recent (and current) disregard for human rights.
What a great idea, hopefully that will replace the French that has been compulsory until just recently. Spanish, German, French and (sometimes) Japanese will no doubt still be offered as optionals in most schools. Refreshing forward thinking.
I’m studying Mandarin now myself, but I’m not sure of the sustainability of forcing an entire school district to do so. I guess that’s the nature of a centralized, compulsory school system though.
Richard, is French not compulsory until options still then?
John, Brighton College is a public school (in other, confusing words, private school!).
It’s a fee paying school basically, and not connected to the state system in general terms. I certainly can’t see this policy being implemented in mainstream education in the UK, unfortunately…
How’re you getting on with Mandarin? Is is personal interest that made you take it up?
Regarding your concern of current problems in China, what a better way to communicate than in their own language. It removes some of the outsider barriers and makes the message a little more palatable.
good point, well made Thomas… 谢谢
Pete, re “public”: whoops!
vanderwal: English is the global hub language, the one where people are most likely to meet. But those who know English and something else have certain advantages over those who are primary-English. On the other hand, primary-English folks, who are already in the hub, are better positioned to reach out to various spokes on the hub; slightly easier to be global if you’ve already got the lingua franca covered.
Pete: Yes, personal interest, I guess, but triggered by practicalities too — China is important, no matter which way things play out. Putongua is also a lingua franca for the region, with many Chinese who learned Mandarin as a second language, so it’s a bit more attainable than languages in more homogenous societies like Japanese and Korean. But it’s fun, too… where’d you get that “xie xie”, Pete, are you studying too…?