Bridge of language links both banks

Education initiative takes off as number of American students learning Mandarin doubles in two years.

NEW YORK — The number of US K-12 students learning Mandarin has doubled to around 400,000 in two years, says Morgan Jones, chief operating officer, US-China Strong Foundation.

The US nonprofit is leading a Chinese language education initiative called 1 Million Strong that seeks to expand to 1 million the number of US K-12 students learning Mandarin by 2020.

The nonprofit has seen a lot of growth since the program was announced in 2015.

“They were somewhere around 200,000 Americans learning Mandarin Chinese. There are currently 400,000 learning Mandarin Chinese,” says Jones, who speaks fluent Mandarin himself.

Jones says the number was estimated based on data collected from various resources including American Council on Education that focuses mostly on public and private schools.

“We also look at heritage schools where Chinese-Americans are learning Mandarin Chinese,” he says. “We also have our own in-house data team that has been reaching out to immersion schools throughout the United States.”

Jones says that “there are many case studies with more schools opening up”, bringing in “tens of thousands of students to their school districts and programs”.

Three factors have led to the rising popularity of learning Chinese in the United States, Jones says.

First, there’s a strong economic relationship between both countries. “I think that’s really a huge cost to get people to want to learn Mandarin Chinese, to get involved in business, to find career opportunities or even compete fairly competition economically with China, which is key,” he says.

Second, learning Chinese helps Americans “dig deeper” into China’s 5,000-year history and culture as one has to learn the language to get immersed in that environment. And many Americans are “very interested in that” including Jones himself.

Third, the rapid growth and expansion of private Chineselearning schools, programs, as well as related online programs, and mobile phone apps, also provides Americans greater accessibility and convenience to learn this language.

Jones, who had lived in Shanghai, China for about seven years, says he is very happy to see Mandarin becomes popular in the US as English does in China.

“Both countries will be able to speak in a language that they can both understand,” he says.

“We don’t have to be best friends. We also don’t have to be adversaries, but if we can communicate with each other respectfully, that’s gonna be able to bridge the gap between both cultures and the best way to start.”

“Our mission is all about strengthening US-China relations through students and (the) youth,” he adds.

“There’s various ways that you can strengthen the US-China relationship on a very immediate level,” Jones says.

“(But if you) do that for more long-lasting behavior, you have to start with the youth and you have to start with education.”

Jones suggests the best way to start is to get more people to learn Mandarin, “to study, to live there for a significant period of time, to meet teachers, make friends in China and hopefully these are friends who are going to be long lasting for years to come”.

The 1 Million Strong initiative is divided into three separate pillars, Jones says.

The first pillar is teacher training.

Second is the curriculum pillar, which makes sure there are proper standards K-12 schools are implementing to learn Mandarin nationwide.

The last pillar is state and local outreach, where teachers will be trained to learn how to better teach Mandarin to K-12 students.

The 1 Million Strong is the second initiative led by the US-China Strong Foundation.

The first, 100,000 Strong, started in 2009 and its initial goal of getting 100,000 American students to study in China by 2014 was not only achieved but also surpassed.

Our mission is all about strengthening US-China relations through students and (the) youth.” Morgan Jones,