Teaching Chinese is un-American!
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek article at shangaiist.com highlights debate about Mandarin-language classes in US schools, and pulls quotes from Free Republic’s loonier commenters.
Mandarin in schools: Americans annoyed at idea of teaching children useful skills
By James Griffiths
As the teaching of Mandarin becomes more common in American schools, it was bound to attract controversy sooner or later, after all, this is a country that’s still debating whether to teach evolution.
The new curriculum [in Bibb County, Georgia] has had some pushback, to say the least, and the word communism has often been raised. Jane Drennan, a deputy superintendent, told a TV station in Macon, the county seat, that she and other school officials had heard from many parents who said, ‘I don’t want my kid learning Chinese.’
Admittedly, “I don’t want my kid learning Chinese” is a long way down the crazy scale from “I don’t want my kid taught critical thinking”, but it’s still comes from a mindset that rejects the idea of teaching children valuable skills or exposing them to different cultures.
Here’s a primo Freeper comment pulled from the article:
I don’t care for my children to converse with foreigners. I see no advantage to it because we do not travel, we do not invite foreigners to our property or town, we do not travel or have an interest in traveling. We are happy and well rounded using American English only. [Shanghaiist: amazingly this doesn’t seem to be satire]
What was that about Mitt’s views on the need for a clear foreign policy platform?