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Medgar Evers College Preparatory School is a public school in central Brooklyn, New York. Most of its students come from low-income families: about 90% are eligible for free or reduced lunches. The student population is mostly African American and Afro-Caribbean. And here’s one other thing to know about Medgar Evers. It runs one of the largest Chinese language programs for students not from a Chinese background in the United States. About 400 pupils take Chinese, from grade 6 through to 11. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.
(Photo: Alex Gallafent)
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Learn a foreign language. That’s what many parents tell their children. The government needs linguists, so does business. But most Americans don’t heed the advice. The latest figures show that many schools are cutting back, even shutting down their language programs. There is, though, one big exception, Chinese. Across the U.S., from kindergarten to college, Chinese programs are starting up. One place that Chinese has taken hold is Medgar Evers College Preparatory School. That’s a public school in Brooklyn, New York. Most of the students there come from low income families, about 90% are eligible for free or reduced lunches. The student population is made up of Americans and immigrants alike; most are black and 400 of them study Chinese. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.
ALEX GALLAFENT: Meet sixth grader Clayton Williams.
CLAYTON WILLIAMS: In my opinion, a very honest opinion, Chinese is the easiest second language that I can learn. And trust me when I say, it’s way easier than Spanish.
GALLAFENT: Just a regular kind in FC103. That’s code for sixth grade Chinese at Medgar Evers College Prep. Ms. Wu puts the students through their paces. They’ve only been learning Chinese for a few months, but they’re into it, at least if you believe one of Clayton’s classmates, Lauren Mighty. I asked her if she always did her Chinese homework. She said.
LAUREN MIGHTY: Yes.
GALLAFENT: All the time?
MIGHTY: Yes.
GALLAFENT: Really?
MIGHTY: Yes.
GALLAFENT: You get extra credit?
MIGHTY: Yeah, because I do Chinese heading.
GALLAFENT: What’s Chinese heading?
MIGHTY: You write Ms. Wu’s name in Chinese characters and then we put the date in Chinese.
GALLAFENT: The lesson is filled with songs including this one from the Beijing Olympics. Assistant Principal Jean Adilifu directs the language programs at Medgar Evers. She’s even started Chinese lessons herself.
JEAN ADILIFU: It is developing.
GALLAFENT: And as we leave the sixth graders and head to the elevator, she marvels at their progress.
ADIILIFU: And this is since September, with no previous exposure, background and all of that. When you get into the songs you’re learning words, and it’s painless because the songs are so engaging. I love the Beijing song. You know the song from the Olympics? Its one of my favorites. Ms. Perry, can I get number five please? Okay, thanks. Because if we have to analyze it as adult learners, oh the tones, oh the nuances, oh the characters, it’s like oh, we get overwhelmed and it’s so difficult. But for them, they love it, it’s easy. We’re not going to tell them it’s hard. Let’s just get in there and teach them. Let’s go ladies, gentlemen, let’s go. You got a class here?
GALLAFENT: The approach Medgar Evers is taking to its language learning is refreshing says Chris Livacarri. He runs the Chinese and world language education programs at the Asia Society in New York. We talked in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a stone’s throw from the school.
CHRIS LIVACARRI: They have done what few schools have, which is to start a Chinese language program and make it much more than just a class in a school building. They’ve made it a core part of their school culture and they’ve really embraced Chinese as a way for helping their students become more globally competent and having a stronger vision of the world outside their borders.
GALLAFENT: Indeed, Jean Adilifu told me that rooting lessons in things like ordering food in Chinatown or celebrating the Chinese New Year is a big part of building that kind of real life context for students. Here’s another sixth grader, 11-year-old Giselle Ashby.
GISELLE ASHBY: It’s easy because the way that the teacher teaches and that we have certain materials and we get to learn fan dance and all of that. My parents came here and they were impressed of how we learned so much in this little bit of time.
GALLAFENT: What would you say if your teacher wasn’t standing right over there?
ASHBY: The exact same thing.
GALLAFENT: The Asia Society is offering some direct help too. It’s building a network of 100 schools across the United States.
LIVACARRI: We have urban schools, we have rural schools, suburban schools. We have independent, charter and public schools.
GALLAFENT: And Chris Livacarri hopes those schools will act as models for other schools. To that end, the Asia Society is pairing up places such as Medgar Evers with partner schools in China and launching an online knowledge sharing community for teachers. It’s also offering those hundred schools a small amount of financial support. But Livacarri stresses that all this isn’t about jumping on the China bandwagon. Simply pushing Chinese into high school because it’s likely to have more and more utility in the global work place. That happened before with another language.
LIVACARRI: If you remember, 15, 20 years ago everyone in this country was rushing to learn Japanese. And if you look now, there aren’t that many Japanese programs that are out there anymore. But if you do find some, these programs are extremely dynamic. So even though Japan has faded from the headlines, the programs continue because people recognize that this is a wonderfully engaging experience for students.
GALLAFENT: Livacarri acknowledges that Chinese is the language to be learning right now and that the United States needs more Chinese speakers. But he says the broader agenda for the Asia Society is to develop language learning in general as a means to help students simply be more effective global citizens regardless of what the future holds. Jean Adilifu at Medgar Evers agrees. Staking out a position in some China dominated future isn’t important, at least for the school’s young learners.
ADILIFU: For the sixth graders that’s so far away. The immediacy of the actual real life experiences is really more of what we have for them. But we are a college prep school and we make no bones about it.
GALLAFENT: This is Medgar Evers advanced placement class in Chinese Language and Culture, a college level course for high schoolers. It’s the first year the class has been run. Adilifu says this group of tenth graders will be well positioned in the global economy.
ADILIFU: They can run any business here in China and still remain in Brooklyn because of the technology. They can convey it, it opens up their clientele base, it opens up the markets for them, it opens up a whole array of options for them.
GALLAFENT: And ambition is not in short supply at Medgar Evers. Here’s one example; 15-year-old Akeem Noble. He thinks he might continue with his Chinese studies after he leaves the school.
AKEEM NOBLE: For me, maybe Chinese as a minor in college, but definitely not a major because I’m planning to become a medical doctor, so maybe it will help me to interact with some of my patients that are of Chinese descent.
GALLAFENT: Before all that comes a trip to China. Some of the advanced placement students will head there on a short immersion course later in the year. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in Brooklyn, New York.
WERMAN: For pictures from the Medgar Evers School and to check out our podcast on language, The World in Words, go to the world dot org slash language.
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