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September 15 A Very Irresponsible, If Not Offensive, Article Quoted on NYU WebsiteI got to read the abstract of this article firstly from New York University's Steinhardt School of Education website, where they put it under the column of "Faculty in the News" whilst the link also appeared on the main page of NYU website. My first reaction was being totally astonished by the superficial vulnerability in both the statement and the logical thinking through which the statement of something "we all need to ask" comes from. The question I was asking myself at that time was, gosh, how could people look at things in such a negative way and in lack of basic understanding and common sense? Then the anger, as I read through that piece of short news on NYU site over again, started to flame out nearly uncontrollably, although I was all the time very aware of the negativity of involving emotions like anger into judgement of other people's opinions. Fortunately I got friends to communicate about what I read and how I felt. The process of communication is often a valuable chance, a buffer, to filter the unnecessary emotional reaction and further clarify our own arguments through thorough reflection. I indeed calmed down a lot after talking with Michael and my best girl friend, the conversation record of which I will post following this entry because I think I have explained my point of view quite explicitly, in Chinese. But that's certainly not convincing enough to criticise other's political criticism by reading only the abridgement quoted by a website. Therefore I opted to google and eventually found the full text on its original published media Christian Science Monitor. The texts pasted below were post on CSMonitor website of newspaper archives, and thus I can be sure that it is being displayed here exactly as what the American readers were reading from the paper version. The reading of the full text didn't change my initial opposition to the author's way of thinking at all. To the contrary, it reinforced my questioning of the author's attitude toward serious and responsible writing and determination to utter "the other voice" in a fair-play rule of game, within the free speech level of debate without upgrading the argument to any political or ideological level of conflict. I believe in the right of people to choose his or her personal political stance without sound self-justification, but perhaps writing on a national newspaper about his or her criticism of other country's political intrigue of "crime" purely based on a not-at-all acknowledged supposition is a totally different matter. If the statement of China being "a cruel, tyrannical, and repressive" country or the Chinese government being such a government being put up as a declarative sentence in some media top line with worldwide coverage, will the author have his confidence of its being accepted axiomatically without debate? Needless to say whether it is appropriate to compare the Chinese government funding an overseas language teaching programme operated a domestic administrative organisation of education like College Board to the dressing medalists from language-learning programmes with fascist uniform by the fascistic Italy, even in that case of the evil propaganda of fascistic Italy, it is still discussable that maybe the country itself like the United States, where freedom of speech and public free choices are so highly respected and protected, should not be completely exempted from responsibility for the popularity, if any, of those fascism praise-singing textbooks enjoyed in the American jurisdiction decades ago. In a market run by both suppliers and consumers under the regulation administered by a government which is “a democracy, not a dictatorship” and where the citizens “are free to criticise its actions”, speaking for the government of the customer side, I don't see it as a constructive and rational way of dealing with issues to all the time watch over or blame on any suspicious dirty minds behind incentive programmes driven by foreign governments rather than review and improve its own education or scrutiny to maintain a desirable and rational local market environment. In fact, whether the author has described China objectively or, as some Chinese local media often tend to say, demonised the contemporary China is quite beyond my primary concern. It is not just a bad political commentary article, it is a badly written article in general terms despite of its correct grammar and native mastery of English language. It starts from a unproven analogism of China as a stereotyped communist country with fascistic Italy in terms of their dictatorship, tyranny and repression, then describes precisely what the fascist Italy did in its attempt to influence their, i.e. American's, language instruction for real propaganda of fascist ruling of Italy, without going into any details of any clues he might have found in the suspicious Chinese-sponsored language course in an American high school, which means there is nothing provided to see look into for tracking the similarity of the concerned case in reality and the lesson we experienced in history but every points drawn in the following paragraphs were ultimately, and solely based on the debatable assumption that Mussolini's Italy and the People's Republic of China are both “cruel, tyrannical, and repressive” foreign countries, which, please allow me to complete his unspoken part of logical induction, cannot be doing anything in any good purpose or serving good deeds. As long as the “China's rulers” are still in existence, everything from this country in any forms should be marked as dangerous substance to the world of democracy; meanwhile everybody inside the boarder of democratic countries are free from charges even if it is they who takes the money from the “evil” world and runs the whole projects, whatsoever, voluntarily and with their full democratic freedom and rationality. I often thought someone teaching history and education in university would be one of those group of people who are most likely to give enough credit and respect to logic and objectivity in writing when expressing their ideas, but the author here seems having very successfully challenged my well-meant presumption. Indeed the author almost brought up a chance by himself to take the article in a decent direction of argumentation when he mentioned of the similar AP programme supported by the Italian government in the US, but just almost. As a reader who is keen to understand why we should be aware of China's role in US Chinese classes from what's being said in this article rather than from any prejudiced prepossession settled in mind, I really expect to read a lot more than what there actually is following the author's brief but strong statement of “but there's a big difference”. What is the big difference between the Chinese AP programme and the Italian one, except from one is labeled by China and another by Italy? We are led to point again to the root that there are two plants growing from different sorts of earths, (if I can use such an allegory here) but never have been given any explanation or proof of how the two plants are different in themselves that one is lethal and another is healthy. Is it about the textbook where one is highly ideologically misleading while the other is well positioned in a pure language-teaching domain? If so, prove it with whatever appears in the textbooks and then upon discussion we can both start to take actions whether to reject the programme or discard the textbooks. If not, tell the readers anything else you deem inappropriate as a result of Chinese government offering to pay partly for this project, and that's the way to justify the title you pick for the article. If there's nothing you can say any further, what's the point of gabbling here for 700 hundred words and bringing about the tension and nervosity around this AP programme? Well, yes, I have been gabbling for more words than he did. But I do tried my best to make logically sound argument despite my inevitable language defects rather than speaking publicly about a question in my head which is really in the end nothing but a question. So here goes the full text of the article. Once again to restate my standpoint, all I am calling for is just the responsible attitude for a public writer, especially an intellectually capable person such as a university faculty, to make sure the work presented in public is first of all a quality work in terms of basic logic argument before there is any needs to delve into the issue about objectivity or subjectivity in expressing personal opinions which is protected by the liberty of speech. Beware China's role in US Chinese classes By Jonathan Zimmerman NEW YORK – Let's suppose that a cruel, tyrannical, and repressive foreign government offered to pay for American teens to study its national language in our schools. Would you take the deal? Actually, we already have. Starting this fall, American high school students will be able to take an Advanced Placement (AP) course in "Chinese Language and Culture." Developing the course and its exam cost the College Board, which runs the AP Program, about $1.4 million. And half of that sum was picked up by - you guessed it - the People's Republic of China. That's right. The same regime that has brought us public executions, forced labor camps, and Internet censors will soon be funding a language and culture class in a school near you. Given what we know about China's rulers, it's fair to ask what's in it for them. And to answer, we might examine the last time a dictatorial foreign government tried to influence our language instruction. The Mussolini model The era was the 1930s, and the nation was Italy. Fascist Italy. About a decade after he seized power, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini began a broad campaign to promote Italian-language instruction in American schools. In a special enticement, Mussolini's government awarded medals to US high school students for "excellence in the study of Italian." The top five scholars won free trips to Italy, where they attended state-run summer camps. They wore fascist uniforms, received military training, and learned how to hail the Italian flag. Several students even received audiences with Il Duce ("the leader") himself. Textbooks sang the praises of Mussolini's government. "Fascism has remade Italy," boasted Andiamo in Italia ("Let's Go Italy"), a text used in New York public schools. "Italy was a disorderly and disorganized country in which all wanted to talk more loudly without listening to the voice of the ruler. Now this voice which commands is well heard by all and order has been restored as if by a miracle." After 1941, when the United States declared war on Italy, such propaganda came to a halt. Today, thankfully, Italian is enjoying a small renaissance in American schools. Shortly before the Chinese agreed to fund the Advanced Placement course here, the Italian government pledged $300,000 to establish an AP program in its own language. This spring, the first handful of AP students took exams in Italian. But there's a big difference. The current Italian government is a democracy, not a dictatorship. That means Italians are free to criticize its actions. Not so with the Chinese. The regime, I suspect, will probably follow Mussolini's model and try to use the new AP course to play up China's economic achievements and play down its crimes. But if any Chinese citizens protest, they'll risk prison, or worse. So it's up to the rest of us to monitor the program. Any school district offering this course should also make its textbooks and lesson plans available in English, so parents and other concerned citizens can read them. What, if anything, will the texts - officially, written by the College Board - say about the Tiananmen Square massacre? About the jailing of Chinese journalists? The abuse of psychiatric patients? We have the right to know. Study Chinese - on our terms Of course, American students desperately need to study non-English languages. Everyone who cares about our national future should consider this appalling fact: Less than half of American high school students even take a foreign language. Compare that with almost every other developed nation, where foreign-language study is compulsory. Our problem is especially embarrassing when it comes to Chinese, which is spoken by 1.5 billion people around the globe - and studied by fewer than 50,000 Americans. More than 1 million American students study French, by contrast, while only 70 million people in the world speak it. So yes, absolutely, more Americans should take Chinese. Our economy, our cultural life, and our national security all demand it. But we should study the subject on our own terms, making sure that it also reflects our best civic language of freedom, open discussion, and democracy. Now, more than ever before, it's a tongue that we all need to speak. • Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century," which will be published this fall. TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://isadora.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9FFC846C4C108E68!1071.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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