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Is it conscionable for Chinese to immerse in an "all English" environment?
wchao37 Updated: 2004-03-19 09:09
It is paradoxical but true that China and America are both developing into bilingual societies.
America is fast developing into a bilingual (Spanish and English) society with two manifestly different sets of cultural values. The Mexicans in Los Angeles and the Cubans in Miami are taking over the American political culture, the former through political influence (twenty-three million Mexicans, mostly illegals) and the latter through economic clout in a single city in Florida.
Clinton said in 2000 that he hoped he was the last president in U.S. that couldn't speak Spanish. He was not far off. Bush found it necessary to woo the Hispanic vote by courting Mexican president Fox, who claimed in turn that he was the president of the 100 million Mexicans in his country plus the 23 million in the United States.
The Hispanics are proving themselves the most difficult foreign immigrants to assimilate because they have pride in the distinctiveness of Hispanic cultural values in contrast with those of the Anglo culture primarily associated with British Protestants, and their numbers are multiplying through illegal immigration into the American Southwest from the porous borders dividing the two nations.
According to research, U.S. students from Mexico feel that America's southwest belong to them and they do not identify with the Anglo mainstream culture. They speak Spanish at home and a splatter of English in various degrees of sophistication.
This has not hampered their everyday life.
In contrast, places like Shanghai in China are in a rush to let their kindergarteners immerse totally in an English environment. Maybe the long period of semi-colonialism has proven too deep a scar to wash away by fifty-five years of revolution. Why the hurry to let the kids have a perfect accent-free English environment?
The more serious problem is the degree of subservient mentality it reflects. No software engineer needs to have accent free ability to speak the English language before he can master his job, and some of the best programmers and electrical engineers may not be good at learning languages and can still do their job superbly.
The problem has become so serious that recently schools have been ordered to shut down such "English only" environments in Kindergartens. The experience of living as foreigners in one's own country cannot be countenanced and this should be made clear as a matter of national policy.
The situation facing China and America is paradoxical. One marches towards bilingualism willy-nilly and the other is trying to fend off the inevitable outcome imposed upon them by the geographical proximity of Mexico to Southwest United States.
Yes, it is paradoxical because when mainstream WASPs in America are trying to get rid of the growing destabilizing phenomenon of a bilingual society in their midst, Chinese in affluent cities are trying to create an all-English environment for their own kids in their own country.
A great man once said that Lu Xun's most precious quality amongst people living in a semi- or full- colonial country was the total absence of "meigu" or "sycophancy in his bones." The advocacy of an all-English environment at such a young age is counterproductive because it belittles the rightful place of centrality of one's own culture and language in a child's psyche, especially when adults keep on goading them onto fast-track English learning classes to the exclusion of everything else.
Is it worth pouring all resources into the teaching of a foreign language by coercion when the relative importance of that language itself is decreasing in its own country (American English)?
At a time when China is apparently prospering and cultural self-respect should be at its highest in history, it is painful to watch the nation descending into an extreme exemplified by the "English=professional competence=job" psychological mirage.
At a time when English is becoming relatively weaker in standing in America, China is spending too much resource to have the ENTIRE population learn a foreign language by coercion -- resources that could have been put to much better use in building greatly needed post-secondary technical and occupational schools in the country.
China is fast moving towards a bilingual society just as America is -- except that China is bringing this upon herself as a matter of national policy, and America is trying to resist the cultural and demographic invasion of the Southwest by Mexicans and the imminent threat of becoming a bilingual society by default -- i.e. by her physical congruity to a neighbor bent on the re-conquistadors (re-conquest) of the American Southwest.
Wei Chao, M.D.
HKSAR
| The above content represents the view of the author only. |
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