By DEBORAH KOLBEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
What do a growing number of grade school students have in common with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs? They all realize that China is the next big thing.
Just blocks from Wall Street, students at Manhattan's newest private school, Claremont Preparatory, are busy sharpening their Chinese language skills.
All fifth-graders are assigned Chinese names like "little dragon" and "autumn color" and are required to study Mandarin. This year, the school's sixth- and seventh-graders also opted for Chinese over French and Spanish.
The school, which opened in September inside a grandiose old bank building on Broad Street, serves the children of bankers and other professionals.
"People who speak Chinese in the business world are getting the jobs quicker," the head of Claremont, Shari Silverstein, said. "The Chinese economy and Chinese culture is becoming so prevalent and so strong and we do our best to prepare students for high school and college and then the world in general."
A growing number of schools in New York and across the country are also getting on board.
Some of the city's public schools started offering Chinese in the 1980s, although at the time Japanese was seen as the language of the future. Now, 18 city high schools offer Cantonese or Mandarin.
In September, the College of Staten Island High School for International Studies opened in partnership with the Asia Society. In addition to studying Chinese, students have started a Web log exchange with their peers in Shenzhen, China.
In Chinatown, the Shuang Wen School is dedicated to teaching in both Mandarin and English. Shuang Wen, meaning "dual language," opened in 1998 and its students include Senator Kerry's niece. The chief executive of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, has pumped more than $500,000 into the school's budget.
Over the past several years, other schools that offer Chinese have opened up around the city. The Dual Language and Asian Studies High School opened on Grand Street in 2003. It requires all students to study four years of Mandarin. Classes are taught in both Chinese and English.
The city's Department of Education is looking to expand its Chinese teaching program but is having difficulty finding enough certified teachers, according to a spokeswoman, Kelly Devers.
That could soon change: Under a bill sponsored by Senators Lieberman and Alexander, $1.3 billion in federal funds would be funneled into providing Chinese language instruction in American schools over five years. In January, President Bush announced a $114 million initiative to boost the number of American students learning "critical need" foreign languages like Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi.
Cynthia Bing, the admissions director for the Parents League, a nonprofit organization on the Upper East Side that helps guide families through the private school admissions process, said more parents are now inquiring about Chinese language programs. She said elite boarding schools like Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., are aggressively pushing their Chinese instruction and offer students the opportunity to spend a year studying in China.
Earlier this month, the National Association of Independent Schools announced an agreement with a Chinese government-funded organization that will allow nine school chiefs to travel to China to interview Chinese teachers looking to come to America. The organization, Hanban, will pay for the trip and for the teacher salaries during the first year.
Trevor Day School on the Upper East Side is now in talks to add Chinese classes. In the meantime, about eight students spend their free time studying the language with one of the admissions officers. The new head of the school, Pamela Clarke, started a Chinese program at her last school in Minnesota.
"More people in the world speak Mandarin than anything else," Ms. Clarke said. "And we want our kids to be ready to live in the whole world."
