Not the food. That would be just fine. The course is the problem.
It passed the committee level this past Monday and on the 14th it goes to the full board.
Problem #1
Here's our first problem. This is a major shift; an introduction of a whole new language. One with a plan to offer II,III, and IV plus AP all in the next several years. Yet, it's lumped in with 7 other courses within the agenda heading, where you vote Yes/No on the entire suite:
2012-2013 New Courses: AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination); Chinese I; Arts of Industry; African Literature; Native American/Latin American Literature; Science of Motion; Weather and Climate
Solution: It takes a board member motion to pull out the Chinese I for a separate discussion/vote.
Problem #2: It's further lumped within the class "Consent Items", which itself is a lumping of 12 OTHER agenda items. Yup...the board is all revved up to rubber stamp all 12, which includes the introduction of Chinese language.
Solution: So now a board member must motion to pull agenda item 6.07 (2012-2013 new course proposals) from "Consent" and further pull Chinese I out separately from that!!!!
See the concern? Administration is burying what amounts a potentially very expensive major curriculum move two tiers deep. Hide much? And why are we hiding it? Is it because it's Tim Culver's legacy to be and everyone is bowing to King Culver's wishes?
At issue
Course Title: CHINESE I
Sounds like any other language class, right? French I. Spanish I.
E. Course Description: Provide a short but complete descriptive paragraph about this course to be
used in the course catalog. Include a brief outline of learning expectancies, intended content, and plans for assessment, i.e. brief form of a syllabus.
Chinese I is an introductory course in Mandarin Chinese. Students will learn fundamental skills in
listening, speaking, reading and writing.
They will also learn about many aspects of Chinese culture from
pop culture to calligraphy, from festivals to how culture is embedded in everyday interactions. Class
activities will include role playing, stories, poetry, songs, recipes for culturally authentic food, student
presentations and more. Resources will include materials from a standards-based textbook and authentic
materials such as music and stories. Students should expect homework every day outside of class.
Does THAT sound like a language course?
List the major learning targets (what you want the students to know and be able to do).
Chinese I is an introductory course in Mandarin Chinese, incorporating listening, speaking, reading and writing skills into a standards-based approach. Students will be able to engage in conversations on topics of everyday interest, successfully engage in targeted listening activities based on textbook and authentic materials, recognize and be able to read and compose texts using at least 100 of the most commonly used Chinese characters. They will be able to identify and discuss various patterns of behavior and interactions typical of Chinese culture and understand underlying cultural perspectives.
Time hit the brakes on this one
The expense for just Level I is over $5000, not including the costs of sending Culver and Heipp to China. Not only is developing a Mandarin Chinese program Culver's last stand, but this is something driven by the Chinese government. We didn't want the big corporate spectre of Pepsi of Coke...why do we ant to do something which is the brainchild of the Chinese government?
The studies abound that will tell you that Chinese is THE most difficult language to learn, and has virtually zero value unless one is planning on moving to China or working for a Chinese corporation. If you want to teach a language that will directly and immediately help kids with their learning TODAY, it's LATIN
(yes, Mr. Shimek...Latin. We heard all about your lack of decorum when Latin was suggested at the committee level. Seems like you are back to your old unprofessional skills you used to show at Finance Committee meetings, remember Terry?). Laugh all you want, the number of studies that support learning Latin far outweigh those supporting Mandarin Chinese.
 |
Bad Form (again),
Mr. Shimek!
Board member Terry Shimek got busted
once again for chuckling when another
'committee member suggested Latin might
be of more value to kids than Mandarin Chinese. |
Common Latin phrases used in every day america
Didn't we just cancel the German language program only now to be quietly re-starting it behind the scenes? Is Chinese going to go away after we've invested precious tax dollars into it? Heck we don't even have a commitment that students are interested in taking it!
Do we really need to be part of the "cool kids"...you know the 31 WI school districts (out of 424) that offer Mandarin Chinese? Isn't that small a set kind of like being in a clique? And aren't "cliques" a big part of bullyism?
A move like this should not be buried two tiers deep within a Consent Agenda. At the bare minimum it should be its own agenda item. The school board should take it's time on this one. This isn't adding "a" course. It's launching a major initiative.
And what's the real end game here?
Some good (quick read) links
Unlike other languages, Latin isn’t just about conjugating verbs. It includes a crash course in ancient history and cosmology. “Latin is the maths of the Humanities,” says Llewelyn Morgan, “But Latin also has something that mathematics does not and that is the history and mythology of the ancient world. Latin is maths with goddesses, gladiators and flying horses, or flying children.”
“In 1971, more than 4,000 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade pupils of all backgrounds and abilities received 15 to 20 minutes of daily Latin instruction. The performance of the fifth-grade Latin pupils on the vocabulary test of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills was one full year higher than the performance of control pupils who had not studied Latin. Both the Latin group and the control group had been matched for similar backgrounds and abilities
Llewelyn Morgan, an Oxford Classicist and co-author of a recent Politeia pamphlet on why Latin should be taught in primary schools. “Those kids are learning through Latin what I did: what verbs and nouns are, how to coordinate ideas in speech and writing, all the varieties of ways of saying the same thing,” he says. “I did not and could not have learned that through English, because English was too familiar to me. It was through Latin that I learned how to express myself fluently in my native language.”
Mark Zuckerberg. The 26-year-old founder of Facebook studied Classics at Phillips Exeter Academy and listed Latin as one of the languages he spoke on his Harvard application. So keen is he on the subject, he once quoted lines from the Aeneid during a Facebook product conference and now regards Latin as one of the keys to his success.
However economically important Chinese may be this ignores the fact that it is incredibly difficult to learn languages which have no vocabulary in common with English, are written in a different script and are tonal to boot - the same word can have completely different meaning depending on whether you use a rising, falling or flat inflection! Its a bit like expecting a student to study calculus without having to learn basic arithmetic!
Spanish will take you as a first or second language from Texas south to Argentina. The only exceptions are
Portuguese speaking Brazil, English speaking Belize and Dutch and French speaking Guyanas. In addition Spanish is spoken in Spain. It gets better Spanish and Italian are so close that they are mutually comprehensible. Portuguese, French, Romanian are also closely related languages. Spanish will take you a long way around the world.
So should you teach your kids Chinese? Well, foreign languages are always a good thing to know, and if you really want them to live and work intensively in China, sure. But despite China’s rise, Chinese isn’t the world language of the future; the writing system simply makes it far too hard for the vast majority of the world’s people to use if they care to reach for the widest possible audience. I simply can’t imagine a Dutch physicist in 2110 learning Chinese in order to write up his research, or Finnish musicians recording in Chinese, the language “everybody” knows.
If China switches to an alphabet? That’s a different story
Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time
1. Many Well Educated Chinese People Would Prefer to Speak to You in English
2. Little Applicable Value Outside of China
3. Possible Negative Market Value
4. Huge Opportunity Cost
5. Non-Negligible Maintenance Costs
Difficulty, according to Uncle Sam
First, consider some cold facts. The U.S. State Department groups languages for the diplomatic service according to learning difficulty:
Category 1.
The "easiest" languages for speakers of English, requiring 600 hours of classwork for minimal proficiency: the Latin and Germanic languages. However, German itself requires a bit more time, 750 hours, because of its complex grammar.
Category 2
Medium, requiring 1100 hours of classwork: Slavic languages, Turkic languages, other Indo-Europeans such as Persian and Hindi, and some non-Indo-Europeans such as Georgian, Hebrew and many African languages. Swahili is ranked easier than the rest, at 900 hours.
Category 3.
Difficult, requiring 2200 hours of study: Arabic, Japanese, Korean and the Chinese languages.
Many of us share the same instant questions: Is she really a teacher? Which district does she work for? Is she really "just" a teacher? What's her story?
After narrowing it down, all signs point to our "Kristi" as one Kristi Lacroix, a teacher in the Kenosha Unified school district, specifically at the "Lakeview Technology Academy", a specialty high school preparing students to enter the field of engineering or higher level technology. This public high school has 375 students in grades 9-12. DPI salary data for 2010-11 indicate that she is 37, with 34.9 years of teaching experience. Huh??? Something's not right there. Other sites we find indicate she has 13.5 years experience. That seems about right. Her salary is $60,377.00 with fringe benefits totaling $32,840.00. Not bad for 13.5 years experience!!!
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