New York’s Chinese Schools Revival
February 25, 2005
One Saturday afternoon, 20 7-year-olds squirm in their seats in the basement of the Transfiguration School in New York City’s Chinatown. The ones who aren’t squirming are slouching. One industriously arranges and rearranges four practice booklets into patterns on his desktop.
These students are joining the generations of Chinese Americans forced to sacrifice afternoons or weekend mornings and sit in uncomfortable desks and be admonished in a foreign language. In a community where obedience to your parents is seldom questioned, Chinese-language school is inevitable.
Chinese American communities have existed in the United States for at least 160 years, yet Chinese culture and language show no signs of disappearing here. In fact, in New York — with more than 374,000 Chinese Americans, the largest such concentration in the country — Chinese-language schools have never been more popular. As the community has expanded outside Manhattan, language schools have spread, too. In 2000, 71 percent of the city’s Chinese American population lived in Brooklyn or Queens.
According to a 1998 survey by the Modern Language Association, 28,456 students were learning Chinese nationwide — the sixth most commonly studied language in the United States, after Spanish (656,590), French (199,064), German (89,020), Italian (49,287) and Japanese (43,141) but ahead of Russian (23,791), Arabic (5,505), and Korean (4,479).
Now more Mandarin classes mean that the official language of China is overtaking the historically prevalent Cantonese dialect in schools and in the population. Some schools are even developing new programs to serve older students who have come to appreciate the classes in Cantonese and want to continue learning a second dialect in their high school and adult years.
Plainview Chinese School in Long Island is one new school, boasting 500 students after only five years of operation. Assistant Principal Barbara Tjiong said enrollment has increased steadily. That increase seems to reflect the recent Chinese American population explosion on Long Island — the number of Chinese Americans grew by 44 percent during the 1990s, according to the U.S. Census.
Tjiong said Plainview’s wide variety of classes — including bilingual classes, classes for non-Chinese, and both simplified and traditional Chinese classes — attracts students to the school. “Our school stands out because we teach every format,” Tjiong said. “Most others teach one or another.”
Plainview has also tried a more creative teaching approach; for example, it incorporates computer programs and PowerPoint presentations into the curriculum and takes a lead from successful public school teaching techniques. “We’re not just writing the characters 100 times,” Tjiong said. “That doesn’t work. We don’t tell the kids to go home and do homework. We say, ‘Let’s play games.’ We try to keep things interesting.”
But this education doesn’t come cheap — tuition is $500 per year at Plainview.
Not all Chinese schools are as successful as Plainview. Transfiguration’s Chinese school is one of the older schools facing declining numbers because newer schools in other boroughs have lured many students away. Established 52 years ago, Transfiguration’s enrollment has steadily declined in the past few years, according to Principal Beatrice Fung. Today there are only 800 students at the school, down from the more than 1,000 prior to 2001.
Fung points to Sept. 11 as the root cause of the decline in the student population. Located a mere mile away from the World Trade Center, Chinatown, and its economy, was hit hard post-Sept. 11. In the first two weeks after the attacks, three-quarters of the neighborhood’s work force — nearly 25,000 workers — became unemployed. Before the massive closure of Chinatown’s garment factories after Sept. 11, many garment workers put their children in Chinese schools like Transfiguration during work hours.
Fung said her school’s growing Mandarin program is fueled by the newest wave of immigrants from the Fujian province who speak their own Fujianese dialect and want to learn the official Mandarin dialect. Estimates from U.S. State Department show the city’s Fujianese population has doubled over the last 10 years to 200,000.
The increasing popularity of Chinese schools may stem from the search for cultural identity or a parent’s sense of tradition, but the increasing interest in learning Chinese comes from the importance of knowing other languages in the era of globalization. Mandy Szeto, 16, thinks that she will definitely use her language skills because she plans to work in China. Andy Poon, 21, also believes that someday he will conduct business in Chinese.
If students like Poon and Szeto are any indication, Chinese schools are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Both intend to send their own children to Chinese school someday.
“Even if it’s forced,” Szeto said.
Lisa Wong Macabasco is a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a writer for the Applied Research Center. She is a fourth-generation Chinese American who never attended Chinese school but sometimes wishes she had.
Chinese Schools Lure Thousands in Bay Area
By Carla Williams-Namboodiri
While the trend toward greater Chinese-language instruction is growing in New York, the picture in the Bay Area is slightly different. There are about 100 Chinese-language schools and over 20,000 students learning from more than 1,000 teachers. Competition is squeezing out smaller institutions.
According to Oliver Wan, president of the Association of Northern California Chinese Schools, “The public schools now compete with Chinese schools. The trend is moving towards a situation where Chinese language is becoming more important in the world, especially the United States. Also the economy has also effected the enrollment, with job losses in [the] technology field in particular. When a parent can’t work, the child can’t attend special schools.”
Some schools have operated for more than 10 years. For example, Berryessa Chinese School, one of the largest in the state, opened 25 years ago. Its program in San Jose will graduate about 100 students from the 12th grade.
In areas with large Chinese American populations, the public school systems get involved, Wan says. “Quite a few school districts have Chinese — Fremont Unified School District and Piedmont, Saratoga have Chinese courses, offered just like French or Spanish. So where you live effects your options.”
Wan said that most of the Bay Area’s private schools are run by volunteers. Each school has different credentialing requirements, but most teachers have taught in mainland China, Taiwan or Hong Kong. Quite a few are parents who also became teachers. Roughly 95 percent of the students come from families who use Chinese languages at home. A smaller percentage of hapa learners, and Chinese youth adopted by non-Chinese parents, make up the other 5 percent.
The Chinese School Association in the United States (a group of schools that use simplified Chinese texts from the People’s Republic of China to teach Chinese) reported in the Sept. 30, 2001, issue of its Quarterly Newsletter that 202 heritage Chinese-language schools in 40 states enrolled 24,349 ethnically Chinese and 658 non-ethnically Chinese students.
At the El Cerrito Chinese Christian Church, administrator Winnie Cheung says that the interest in Chinese school has a lot to do with “the role of the economy and also business.” “There’s a growing sense of China’s importance in the world,” she said.
Cheung’s view is echoed by Heather Lin, at the award-winning Chinese American International School in San Francisco. Lin said, “There’s a ‘China syndrome’ where the whole world is looking into China, setting up offices in Shanghai or Beijing, and people outside of China, Westerners, are trying to actively understand China. The best way is to learn the language.” In the past year, the school has seen a 60 percent increase in the number of applications.
Sean Lin, principal of the Fremont Chinese School, notes that the school’s enrollment has changed a lot. Nearly 1,100 kids fill a space rented from the Fremont Unified Public School District. When it started more than 25 years ago, only 10 to 15 children attended in a garage.
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