Secretary Clinton’s challenge, the 100,000 Strong Initiative, and more
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently issued a letter challenging American universities to double the number of students they send to China for study by the year 2014. Read her letter here: http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/2011-1-10-100000-Strong
Secretary Clinton hopes that this measure will aid in the achievement of the Obama Administration’s “100,000 Strong Initiative,” an effort launched in May of last year to eventually increase the number of American students studying in China to 100,000. In 2010, the number of American students studying in China was a paltry 13,000. Did you know that 600 times more Chinese study the English language than Americans study Mandarin? (Read more about the 100,000 Strong Initiative here: http://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/100000_strong/index.htm)
In a recently published HuffPost column, Dori Jones Yang writes that:
“…[D]espite the surge of interest in Chinese, the numbers are still minuscule. About 4 percent of U.S. middle and high schools offer Chinese, according to a recently released survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics, up from only 1 percent since 1997. But that’s about the same as the number of schools teaching Italian. And 93 percent of all U.S. secondary schools offer Spanish. In 2010, more than 6,000 American students took the Advanced Placement exam in Chinese — a 25 percent jump from last year. But that’s tiny compared to the 118,000 who took the Spanish language AP exam.
The number of Americans studying in China jumped 19 percent in 2007-08 and 4 percent in 2008-09. But last year’s total, more than 13,000, represents only 5 percent of all Americans studying abroad. And it is dwarfed by the number of Chinese students in the United States: 128,000 in 2009-2010, up 30 percent from the previous year.”
(Full article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dori-jones-yang/new-years-resolution-stud_b_801990.html)
Interestingly, Yang’s column was published the same day as the immensely popular Nick Kristof article “Primero Hay Que Aprender Espanol, Ranhou Zai Xue Zhongwen,” which blew up the blogosphere after Kristof argued that Spanish is the foreign language of primary importance for Americans, with Chinese coming in as runner-up. (Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/opinion/30kristof.html?_r=2&ref=nicholasdkristof) Most of his readers agreed with him. Your thoughts?
It’s a wonderful objective, but how is the U.S. government addressing any security concerns for students who decide to study in China?
Ma Israel