Indonesians Seek Words to Attract China’s Favor
Ed Wray for The New York Times
High school students in Lamongan, Indonesia follow their teacher, Achmad Tontowi, as they learn Mandarin Chinese, which must be taught at all schools in the region.
LAMONGAN, Indonesia — When the regent of this coastal rice-growing region on the island of Java first toured China as part of an official delegation, his eyes went wide. Here was the future, he thought: skyscrapers and humming factories and grand highways.
Now, the regent, Masfuk, has begun trying to move his Indonesian region toward that future: he has mandated that all the schools in Lamongan, population 1.5 million, teach Mandarin Chinese to prepare the youth for doing business with China.
In classrooms here, girls in white head scarves and boys in button-down shirts are haltingly reciting from Chinese textbooks and scrawling characters on blackboards. The local government has held Mandarin speech contests the past two years.
“It’s like watching kung-fu movies,” Mr. Masfuk said of the wonder of hearing students speaking Mandarin during the contests. Like many Indonesians, he uses just one name.
The policy goes against decades of anti-Chinese hostility in Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population. But things are changing, and the Chinese government is now sending hundreds of teachers to Indonesia, including one who has taught in Lamongan.
As China’s economic power grows, the study of Mandarin is surging around the world. Its rise in Indonesia may be one of the most telling examples of how China’s influence is overflowing even the steepest of barriers.
Leaders here accused China of supporting a failed Communist coup in 1965, and President Suharto banned the teaching of Chinese and all expressions of Chinese culture during his authoritarian rule, from 1967 to 1998. One Javanese man who now teaches Chinese in Lamongan had to study the language secretly in a church group in 1997.
Mr. Suharto’s policies contributed to tensions between various Indonesian ethnic groups and Chinese Indonesians, who make up less than 4 percent of the population but are a powerful presence in the economy. In 1998, populist rioting over economic grievances led to the killings of about 1,000 Chinese.
The riots resulted in Mr. Suharto’s resignation, and the ban on Chinese culture was lifted. The teaching of the language has gained momentum in recent years. One example: the State University of Surabaya, in Indonesia’s second largest city, will start offering Mandarin this year.
Many Indonesian students of Mandarin are ethnic Chinese eager to reconnect with their culture. But there are also students of other ethnicities, like those in Lamongan, who want to capitalize on growing economic ties between Indonesia and China. The two countries did $28.4 billion of trade in 2009, and a free trade zone that took effect this year between China and Southeast Asian countries has already led to a huge trade surge, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
“I think Chinese is important for me to learn because I’ve heard of the free trade between China and Indonesia,” said a student in Lamongan, Andresya Bargiyyatul, 16. “So I think there must be Chinese businesspeople coming to Indonesia, and I want to communicate with them.”
That attitude is exactly what China has been seeking to cultivate by aggressively supporting the expansion of Mandarin programs here and in many other countries. President Hu Jintao has publicly called for China to exercise greater global influence through the spread of culture and diplomacy, or “soft power.” The Ministry of Education is one instrument in that campaign — last year, it sent 4,800 teachers to about 110 countries.
Last December, the Chinese Ministry of Education opened a Confucius Institute to teach Chinese in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. The ministry operates 554 Confucius programs — what it calls institutes and classrooms — in 90 countries and regions. The United States has the most, with 68.
The ministry sent about 380 teachers to Indonesia between 2004 and 2009, most on three-year contracts. But perhaps because of the recent anti-Chinese history, China prefers to play down any soft-power influence. In Jakarta, the Confucius Institute has done little to advertise itself, and it refused to grant this reporter an interview.
Among Indonesian officials, attitudes toward China’s growth are complicated. Indonesia has had a trade deficit with China in recent years, and some officials fear China’s colossal economic might. Then there are optimists like Mr. Masfuk.
“I’m looking at trade and investment between Lamongan and China, which has fantastic prospects for the future,” said Mr. Masfuk, grinning broadly in his office.
Mr. Masfuk began mandating the teaching of Chinese in 2007, two years after his trip to China. The policy has become much more entrenched this school year, which began in July. Education officials here say about half of the hundreds of elementary, junior high and senior high schools in Lamongan now offer at least an extracurricular Chinese class. Many of the 148 junior and senior high schools, both public and private, have mandatory classes. The main limitation on the policy is a lack of qualified teachers and Chinese textbooks, school officials say.
The policy has won Mr. Masfuk some national fame — he was interviewed by a popular Indonesian news network and has spoken to the minister of education.
“It’s a brave policy,” said Mu’ad, a local education department official. “No other regency has this policy. It’s a first for Indonesia.”
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Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese
[full article here - Published: January 20, 2010]
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
The Yu Ying charter school has recruited five native Chinese speakers living in the United States to teach their classes.
WASHINGTON — Thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news for a nation that needs more linguists to conduct its global business and diplomacy.
Room for Debate: The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving
A second-grade class at the Yu Ying charter school in Washington, where instruction in all subjects alternates daily between English and Chinese.
Experts attribute the surge in Chinese language classes to parents’ belief that fluency can open opportunities down the road.
But another contrary trend has educators and policy makers abuzz: a rush by schools in all parts of America to offer instruction in Chinese.
Some schools are paying for Chinese classes on their own, but hundreds are getting some help. The Chinese government is sending teachers from China to schools all over the world — and paying part of their salaries.
At a time of tight budgets, many American schools are finding that offer too good to refuse.
In Massillon, Ohio, south of Cleveland, Jackson High School started its Chinese program in the fall of 2007 with 20 students and now has 80, said Parthena Draggett, who directs Jackson’s world languages department.
“We were able to get a free Chinese teacher,” she said. “I’d like to start a Spanish program for elementary children, but we can’t get a free Spanish teacher.”
(Jackson’s Chinese teacher is not free; the Chinese government pays part of his compensation, with the district paying the rest.)
No one keeps an exact count, but rough calculations based on the government’s survey suggest that perhaps 1,600 American public and private schools are teaching Chinese, up from 300 or so a decade ago. And the numbers are growing exponentially.
Among America’s approximately 27,500 middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1 percent, from 1997 to 2008, according to the
survey, which was done by the
Center for Applied Linguistics, a research group in Washington, and paid for by the federal
Education Department.
“It’s really changing the language education landscape of this country,” said Nancy C. Rhodes, a director at the center and co-author of the survey.
Other indicators point to the same trend. The number of students taking the
Advanced Placement test in Chinese, introduced in 2007, has grown so fast that it is likely to pass German this year as the third most-tested A.P. language, after Spanish and French, said Trevor Packer, a vice president at the
College Board.
“We’ve all been surprised that in such a short time Chinese would grow to surpass A.P. German,” Mr. Packer said.
A decade ago, most of the schools with Chinese programs were on the East and West Coasts. But in recent years, many schools have started Chinese programs in heartland states, including Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest, Texas and Georgia in the South, and Colorado and Utah in the Rocky Mountain West.
“The
mushrooming of interest we’re seeing now is not in the heritage communities, but in places that don’t have significant Chinese populations,” said Chris Livaccari, an associate director at the
Asia Society.
America has had the study of a foreign language grow before, only to see the bubble burst. Many schools began teaching Japanese in the 1980s, after Japan emerged as an economic rival. But thousands have dropped the language, the survey found.
Japanese is not the only language that has declined. Thousands of schools that offered French, German or Russian have stopped teaching those languages, too, the survey found.
To prepare the survey, the Center for Applied Linguistics sent a questionnaire to 5,000 American schools, and followed up with phone calls to 3,200 schools, getting a 76 percent response rate.
The results, released last year, confirmed that Spanish was taught almost universally. The survey found that 88 percent of elementary schools and 93 percent of middle and high schools with language programs offered Spanish in 2008.
The overall decline in language instruction was mostly due to its abrupt decline in public elementary and middle schools; the number of private schools and public high schools offering at least one language remained stable from 1997 to 2008.
The survey said that a third of schools reported that the federal
No Child Left Behind law, which since 2001 has required public schools to test students in math and English, had drawn resources from foreign languages.
Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.
Also stoking the interest has been a joint program by the College Board and
Hanban, a language council affiliated with the Chinese Education Ministry, that since 2006 has sent hundreds of American school superintendents and other educators to visit schools in China, with travel costs subsidized by Hanban. Many have started Chinese programs upon their return.
Since 2006, Hanban and the College Board have also sent more than 325 volunteer Chinese “guest teachers” to work in American schools with fledgling programs and paying $13,000 to subsidize each teacher’s salary for a year. Teachers can then renew for up to three more years.
The State Department has paid for a smaller program — the Teachers of Critical Languages Program — to bring Chinese teachers to schools here, with each staying for a year.
In the first two years of its Chinese program, the Jackson District in Ohio said it had provided its guest teacher housing, a car and gasoline, health insurance and other support worth about $26,000. This year, the district is paying a more experienced Chinese guest teacher $49,910 in salary and other support, in addition to the $13,000 in travel expenses he receives from Hanban, bringing his compensation into rough parity with Ohio teachers.
Ms. Draggett visited China recently with a Hanban-financed delegation of 400 American educators from 39 states, and she came back energized about Jackson’s Chinese program, she said.
“Chinese is really taking root,” she said. Starting this fall, Jackson High will begin phasing out its German program, she said.
Founders of the
Yu Ying charter school in Washington, where all classes for 200 students in prekindergarten through second grade are taught in Chinese and English on alternate days, did not start with a guest teacher when it opened in the fall of 2008.
“That’s great for many schools, but we want our teachers to stay,” said Mary Shaffner, the school’s executive director.
Instead, Yu Ying recruited five native Chinese speakers living in the United States by advertising on the Internet. One is Wang Jue, who immigrated to the United States in 2001 and graduated from the
University of Maryland.
After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like “I want lunch” and “I’m angry” in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.
The secretaries of the military departments recognize the need for a corps of commissioned officers proficient in critical foreign languages and/or foreign cultures. The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) emphasized the need for greater language capability and included the following wording in their report: "Developing broader linguistic capability and cultural understanding is also critical to prevail in the long war and to meet 21st century challenges..."
This training and expertise needs to be acquired before the officers are commissioned. To this end, the DoD has instituted a Foreign Language and Cultural Studies Skill Proficiency Bonus (SPB) program with a goal to encourage SROTC members to acquire proficiency in critical foreign languages and cultures.
Currently these critical languages include Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Farsi and the Central Asian languages. Central Asian languages are defined as the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The nations of Mongolia and Afghanistan are also included in Central Asia, in addition to the western Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet. In addition to these languages, the secretary of the service may designate other languages as critical to the mission of the service and therefore eligible under Foreign Language SPB guidelines.
Payment of the Foreign Language SPB may not exceed $3,000 per year. The program will be in effect from the date of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Personnel & Readiness) memorandum authorizing payment (not yet released) through December 31, 2013.
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