Why You Should Not Teach Your Child Chinese

With the start of the new school year, the usual topics around which school to send your child, and the extra-curricular activities your child is attending become the common topics of conversation around the water cooler at work. For Asian Americans those conversations are a little more intense, and a little bit imbued with criticism when your responses don’t quite match up to the other person’s expectations.

We’ve talked previously on 8Asians about the lofty ideals some Asian Americans have with regard to sending their child to the best schools and making sure they learn a foreign language like Mandarin Chinese. So it should be no surprise that an article appeared on the Wall Street Journal this week discussing whether children in general should be learning Mandarin Chinese. The author, Tom Scocca is a white American married to a 2nd generation Taiwanese American.

He starts out by showing a downside to learning Mandarin Chinese. His little boy at the age of two, tried to speak and use English with Chinese grammar. Instead of referring to his “blue cup”, the little boy called it the “the blue of cup”, where “of” is used in the manner of using “de” in Chinese to turn a noun into an adjective. Scocca goes on to say learning Mandarin isn’t something that’s necessarily a good thing for a toddler, especially if there’s no other reason to learn the language. In Scocca’s case though and in mine, there’s a good reason for our kids to learn Chinese, and that’s of course communication with our other family members who are Chinese and only speak Chinese.

My own little experiment in teaching my daughter Chinese starts in two weeks, when she starts a two hour a week Chinese class. It’ll be interesting to see how much English grammar she puts into her Chinese speaking. For me the reasons to teach her Chinese far outweigh the reasons not to, and I hope she’s able to thank me for putting her in Chinese class when she’s older.

My daughter has a classmate, a little boy who she’s known since pre-school. He’s Caucasian, as are both his parents. I found out from his mom at a recent birthday party that he’s been in Mandarin Chinese class for a few months now. Neither of his parents speak Chinese, nor do they have any Chinese relatives. They’ve got him in the class as a way of buying security for his future. While I applaud their decision to try and give their son the most opportunities for his future, I do have to stop and wonder if it’s the right thing for their son to learn Chinese now, as opposed to letting him make the decision to do so when he’s older.

[Photo courtesy of Simon Shek]