District Administrator, Tim Culver, in his "InspirED" blog, plugs (we won't even bother describing it as blatant) for kids to jump onto his Mandarin Chinese bandwagon.In his recent post, he calls out to parents and students as next year's course selection process nears. There might be a teensy bit of ulterior motive here.
"Mandarin Chinese To best prepare for the future, every student should learn one or two languages in addition to English. Next year, for the first time, students in grades 7 through 12 have an opportunity to choose to learn Mandarin Chinese. We intend to build this program year by year until we are able to offer Advanced Placement Chinese, graduating students with a high level of language proficiency--the same as we have been doing for the three European languages currently offered in our schools. Even if students have taken a second language for several years, this can be a good option for beginning a third language - - and the more languages one speaks, the greater opportunities one has in our rapidly globalizing world. Why learn Mandarin Chinese? Check out this recent article: " Chinese-most-useful-business-language..." or this little 4 minute video: Mandarin video. For more information please check out your student course catalog or contact Alice Murphy at 834-6516 or aamurph @spasd.k12.wi.us.
Our take:
If you have all your college courses lined up, and have some free time to fill...sure ...why not? But if you think this one course is going to allow you to Skype with some from Beijing.... fuhgeddaboudit.
More to the point, we'd direct you to other classes that can help facilitate your college entrance, or better position yourself for your post-high plan.
What if they offered a course and nobody came?
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