Letters of Support - Mandarin For BC Schools

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Letter #1 from MB (parent of a 4 yr old):

I am a resident of the Roche Point area in North Vancouver, and have a 4 year old daughter, for whom I am currently investigating educational options as she enters Kindergarten in 2009. Through this I have become a little more familiar with what the public school system offers and the direction of the North Vancouver School Board. I am excited about the intended progressive direction of the School Board, the Board of Trustees, and committees such as the Sustaining Schools Working Committee. There appears to be a clear intention to add new innovative programming, and expand on existing programs such as French Immersion and the International Baccalaureate programs. With these efforts it is hoped that enrollment can be bolstered and sustained, and that North Vancouver can develop into a leader in public education.

I believe in the public school system, however, as a parent who wants the best education for my child it is difficult not to be drawn towards private schooling. The “value-added” programs that exist in public school are somewhat sporadic (International Baccalaureate) or are offered on a lottery basis (French Immersion). Somehow this doesn’t seem to be adequate, and it is a concern that some children based on catchment or luck of the drawn will benefit while others will not. With this in mind I was astonished to learn that Edmonton has had innovative bi-lingual programs in the public school system for 25 years, in several languages. It appears that in spite of intentions, we are lagging behind.

I recently connected with a group of concerned and committed North Vancouver parents who will be submitting a proposal to the North Vancouver School Board this fall. The proposal details a plan to introduce a bilingual Mandarin/English program into the public school system. There are already dozens of parents eager to see this proposal go forward, and the interest in the proposal is growing daily.

Although the proposal will speak for itself, some of the many benefits of a bilingual Mandarin/English program include:

Advantages in the cognitive development of the child in the program
Enhanced capacity to master a child’s first language of English
Future opportunities in being fluent in the worlds’ most spoken language and the second most important language of commerce

Prior to learning about the above mentioned proposal I had intended to play the French Immersion lottery at the public school in our catchment area, and if we “lost” to seriously consider private school. Once I had heard about the bilingual mandarin proposal, it wasn’t even a question – this is by far our first choice. Even if we were to “win” the French Immersion lottery, I still intuitively prefer the idea of a bilingual program as opposed to an immersion program. It just seems to make sense. This is a gut feeling and is not based on any concrete data, however, parents often make choices in this way and are often right in regards to the particular needs and abilities of their children.

In closing I ask that the forthcoming proposal be given fair consideration. As a parent I am very excited about this potential opportunity for my child, and would be very proud to be part of a school district that supports such programs.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Letter #2 from EC (parent of 6, 4 and 2 yr olds):

As a parent of 3 young children who are about to enter the public school system full-time, I saw that there is room for great improvement when it comes to language program offerings. Here on the North Shore, you only have a choice of French immersion or the regular English program---and you may only get into the French immersion if you win the lottery (literally, if you get chosen on a lottery basis)?! We need valuable programs in the early learning stages at the public schools, especially since we are losing students to the private education system and also closing schools due to low enrollment.

It has been proven that children are poised to learn languages most successfully between the ages of 3 and 10 years of age. So why are we not offering them the opportunity to challenge their cognitive development? Why is there only ONE language option in an area with such diverse cultures and such progressive-thinking parents? Why are we not preparing our children for a global economy?

I’ve recently learned of a program that offers an option for our forward-thinking district. Edmonton school district offers a Mandarin Bilingual program that spans Kindergarten to Grade 12 in 12 schools in the district. A bilingual program, versus an immersion, offers children the ability to not only keep their English, but enhance their learning and language skills with a second language.

Doesn’t it make sense to learn Mandarin--- the most spoken language in the world, the future language of the global economy? Here in BC, we are the gateway to the Pacific Rim. Yet, it's Edmonton, of all places, that's had the forethought 25 years ago to start up their Mandarin Bilingual program. It has had nothing but success with parents, students, and schools. It has helped keep schools that were slated to be closed, not only stay open, but also be renovated and attain almost full enrolment. The Edmonton Mandarin Bilingual program recently hosted a group of delegates from Finland (again, Finland?! Why not BC?!) consisting of high-ranking school officials, who wanted to see, in person, how this incredibly successful program works. Many not only observed but interacted with the students, teachers and parents to get a true impression of the impacts this program has made on them.

Again, why on earth is British Columbia, a province with such a mosaic of cultures, gateway to the Pacific Rim, host to the 2010 Olympics, NOT offering such a fantastic program for our early learners? Let’s begin here, in the North Vancouver school district, at the kindergarten level, in enriching our young minds with a second language bilingual program and just watch the success it brings to their confidence, their global awareness, their appreciation of cultural awareness...the list is endless.

These 5 year olds can begin their journey in not only learning Mandarin (a level 4 language; meaning it takes 4 times longer to learn than French or any other Romantic language--ie. Italian; therefore, further challenging and expanding the mind), but continue to strengthen their English skills, learn and appreciate other cultures, develop those language areas in the brain and enrich their learning in the public education system.

With a Mandarin Bilingual program, the North Vancouver School Distict as well as the BC public education system, may now have an advantage over the private education institutions.

Letter # 3 from SM (parent of a 4 year old):

Dear Sir:

I am a resident of the Fromme Elementary School catchment and have a son that will be entering Kindergarten in the 2009/2010 school year. I am concerned about the prospect of school closures. I am also excited about your intention to consider new programs. I am particularly excited about the possibility of a bilingual education in mandarin chinese. Like many families, I have been puzzled by the absence of a strong offering in mandarin.

Like many others, I have enjoyed the benefits of studying other languages and cultures. Although I began with french, I believe that young students deserve additional options. Within British Columbia, the study of french is often a substitute for other languages. Although I was more interested in Asian languages, I had no opportunity to pursue them until the university level. The early study of second languages contributes to brain development and dramatically assists in further language acquisition. Mandarin is a good choice because it differs markedly from english in addition to being highly relevant.

Mandarin is the second-most spoken language in the world and will become more important as China exerts its global influence. Proficiency in mandarin will become a key differentiator as British Columbia positions itself as gateway to the Pacific Rim. As it happens, children in North Vancouver tend to have strong english whether or not they have a connection to China. This makes North Vancouver particularly well-positioned to launch a bilingual mandarin program that builds on strong english in the home.

It is worth noting that the Edmonton School District has offered bilingual mandarin for 25 years. It may be necessary for us to move to Edmonton to pursue educational opportunities that would fit more naturally into the fabric of Greater Vancouver. It is my hope that the North Vancouver School District will move quickly to provide similar opportunities.

Letter # 4 from CW (parent of a 2 year old):

Dear Mr. Lewis:

My wife and I would like to express our support for a proposal to bring a Mandarin bilingual program to our public schools in North Vancouver. We believe that such an offering would not only be a positive experience for our children but could also yield tremendous value in their later years.

The choice of Mandarin as a bilingual language seems to be an logical one;

Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world.
Mandarin is the second most popular language of business.
Learning a second language has been known to enhance cognitive development, especially when it occurs at a young age.
We are blessed to be part of the “gateway to the Asia Pacific”.

We have a two-year old daughter who will not be attending school for another few years. However, we are committed to offering her the best education we can. We also think that this should start as early as possible in order to take advantage of the language development capabilities that young children possess by the time they are ready for Kindergarten.

Not only do we recognize the importance of early language development but we feel that the choice of language is equally significant. It is well known that Mandarin is considered to be one of the most complex languages to learn. Rather than being an impediment, we believe this is a golden opportunity for young children to acquire a new language with relative ease. Research also indicates that learning a difficult language such as Mandarin can stimulate the brain in positive ways that enhance other cognitive skills.

Furthermore, rapid growth and development is transforming China into an economic powerhouse for years to come. In my career in high tech, I have personally witnessed a significant increase in the amount of technology offshore outsourcing that occurs in China. In fact, IDC predicts that China may overtake India in IT outsourcing as early as 2011. Thus, the ability to speak Mandarin has tremendous practical upside in terms of doing business, especially in light of modern globalization.

Recently, we were surprised – and encouraged – to learn that Edmonton has had a fully-integrated Mandarin bilingual program for over 25 years. Given British Columbia’s ethnic diversity, we anticipate that a similar program here would not only be welcomed with open arms, but with proper support and development, it has the potential to enjoy even greater success than our Alberta counterpart has experienced to date.

Being residents of Blueridge, we are ecstatic about the prospect of introducing such a bilingual program to the North Vancouver district. Your support would help make this dream a reality for our communities, and it would serve as a life-long gift to children for generations to come.

Letter # 5 from MC (parent of a 6 year old):

Dear Mr. Lewis:

I am a resident of the Capilano Highlands area in North Vancouver, and have a 6 year old daughter now entering Grade 1 at Canyon Heights. I have investigated the option of placing her in Mandarin Immersion, but was disappointed to learn that nothing like this is offered on the North Shore. It is, however, offered in East Vancouver and in Edmonton, which has had innovative bi-lingual programs in the public school system for 25 years, in several languages. It appears that in spite of intentions, we are lagging behind.

I understand that enrolment is declining in North Vancouver’s schools, and that the District is seeking ways to bolster enrolment, and create “magnet” schools to reverse this trend. Mandarin Immersion would be a powerful way to draw new students from both North and West Vancouver, and possibly stem the flow of children from public to private schools on the North Shore.

Although the proposal will speak for itself, some of the many benefits of a bilingual Mandarin/English program include:

Advantages in the cognitive development of the child in the program:

Enhanced capacity to master a child’s first language of English
Future opportunities in being fluent in the worlds’ most spoken language
and the second most important language of commerce.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Letter # 6 from Dr. SB & Mrs. TB (parents of 4 & 2 year olds):

Dear Mr. Lewis,

We are writing this letter in support of the Mandarin for BC School’s proposal to the North Vancouver School District to establish a Mandarin bilingual program for kindergarten to grade 12. We have two daughters, one of whom will be entering kindergarten in September 2009. Prior to hearing about this proposed bilingual program, we were not interested in enrolling our daughters in a French immersion program, as we have some concerns about an immersion-focused learning environment. In addition to Blueridge, the elementary school in our catchment area, we have also considered sending our daughters to an independent school. Both of us are products of the public school system (in Vancouver and in Richmond), but have seen the quality of public education decline with over-enrolment, teachers having to deal with social issues rather than focusing on teaching and the threat of school closures due to declining enrollment. Furthermore, we believe that public schools have lagged behind independent schools in offering progressive programs for students.

Having said that, we are excited about the possibility of a Mandarin bilingual program, as it will provide our daughters with a platform to learn a second language, without compromising their English language skills. A bilingual program in Mandarin makes sense in British Columbia, since this province is the Canadian gateway to Asia Pacific. Given this status, which is reiterated in the media and by both the federal and provincial governments, we were surprised to learn that the Edmonton school board has had a Mandarin bilingual program in place for 25 years and no school board in British Columbia has a similar kindergarten to grade 12 program.

China’s economy is growing at a fast pace and we believe that we should be preparing our children to be well-positioned to take advantage of the business environment in the future. A quick search on the internet shows that direct investment by China into Canada increased from $54 million in 1991 to $1.3 billion in 2006 (“Initial Environmental Assessment (EA) of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protetion Agreement”, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, date website modified: July 3, 2008). The $1.3 billion figure represents a 39% increase from the previous year (“Canada-China Fact Sheet, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, date website modified: July 30, 2007). Similarly, Canadian foreign direct investment in China was $1.6 billion in 2006, representing a 16.3% increase from 2005 (idem). Generally, these trends were repeated in other primarily Mandarin-speaking countries such as Taiwan and Singapore. British Columbia and China have in excess of $10 billion annual in trade (Ministry of Education press release, June 22, 2008).

It is imperative that we prepare our children to be successful in a world where Mandarin is the most spoken language generally, and the second most spoken language in the business world. As a lawyer, TB has first-hand experience dealing with clients whose first language is Mandarin. While the transactions are conducted primarily in English, conference calls are often conducted in Mandarin with the presence of English translators and English legal documents are often translated into Chinese. She has certainly seen the advantage that her Mandarin-speaking colleagues have, when working on such transactions.

Clearly the provincial government supports the idea of attracting Chinese investment into British Columbia as well. Both Premier Gordon Campbell and Deputy Premier and Education Minister Shirley Bond have led delegations to China in the past few months in efforts to promote B.C. business, investment, trade and tourism. Part of Ms. Bond’s delegation focused on international education opportunities in British Columbia. We believe the corollary of having international students study in British Columbia is for local school boards to provide foreign language training to its students.

TB is living proof that Saturday morning Chinese school does not make a person fluent in another language. Born to Cantonese-speaking parents, TB had a “free second language”. However, an hour of Cantonese a week for several years did not result in a level of proficiency that allows her to use her Cantonese in a business context. We believe that a Mandarin bilingual education would provide our daughters with an environment to learn to read and speak both English and Mandarin fluently as both languages would be practiced daily.

We urge the North Vancouver School District to be a leader in British Columbia by implementing a Mandarin bilingual program. We wish to emphasize that we do not view a Mandarin bilingual program to be implemented in lieu of French immersion; but rather, it could be a further enhancement of the programs already offered by the North Vancouver School District. Indeed, in addition to English and Mandarin, we wish for our daughters to be able to speak other languages, including French and Spanish.

Thank you for your careful consideration of the attached proposal.

Letter # 7 from CS (parent of a 15-month old):

Dear Mr. Lewis,

We are a North Shore Caucasian family with one 15-month old son. We are English speaking parents, but have employed a Mandarin speaking babysitter to take care of our son since he was 5 months old. Currently our son speaks and understands as much Mandarin as he does English and his English skills are at par with all of his 1 ½ to 2 year old friends.

We represent a growing number of Canadian parents who see Mandarin as one of the most useful languages to gift our children with in preparation for what lies ahead.

The key to learning this language as successfully and easily as possible is to start young. Not only is this language extremely difficult for English speaking adults to understand and pronounce correctly, learning character takes years to grasp at a basic functional level, if not master.

We support the Mandarin for BC School’s proposal to the North Vancouver School District to establish a Mandarin-English bilingual program from Kindergarten to Grade 12. This program would give our son the opportunity to master both languages.

Our son is already enjoying friendships with English and Mandarin speaking children and through him, we are enjoying active participation in both language communities.

A Mandarin language initiative on the North Shore would be one more social bridge for a world in need of many.

Letter #8 from David:

Dear Ms Overgaard,

I am writing to show my support for BC Parents for Mandarin. They appear before VSB's Committee III this evening in hopes of convincing you on the need for an early start Mandarin program.

As you might know, this province and Vancouver share enviable ties with the Pacific Rim in terms of geography, history, culture, and business. It is not a coincidence BC has successfully positioned itself as Canada's "Pacific Gateway" and as proven during the recent Beijing Summer Olympics, the strong "brand recognition" Vancouver enjoys among Asian nations.

It is also true that we are not the first, nor will be the last, to recognize the importance of Asia, and specifically China, to the success of our future. Yet while few places enjoy the natural advantages we do, they are most certainly willing to work hard to make up shortcomings.

For example, Alberta (e.g. through the Calgary Board of Education) runs a number of language immersion programs that includes Mandarin – an interesting offering for a non-coastal province. Australia, a Pacific Rim country, has embarked on an ambitious Chinese Language Program to graduate 8,000 Mandarin speaking high school students by 2020. Yet the Australians are off to a poor start due to the tremendous difficulty their students face with learning Chinese essentially too late in life.

These examples show others understand completely the strategic importance of Mandarin, and their experience also reminds us of how critical it is to start children early. An early start makes absolute return-on-investment sense.

It is without doubt that a VSB Mandarin program will be costly, perhaps in trade-off of other things. You certainly have difficult decisions ahead. Yet, it is our hope you see the value of such a program, as we know also without doubt that basic fluency in languages are key determinants of future success.

Vancouver's advantage was recently proven when The Baron Group, one of Hong Kong's biggest international investment banks, set up its global head office here. They picked Vancouver not because we are a financial powerhouse matching the likes of New York, which was in fact the front runner. They chose us because of the potential for talent we offered, with the right mix of language skills, academic training, and world perspective.

This bit of success should not compel us to feel smug, but remind us that if Vancouver beat out New York, it is just as easy for Calgary or Melbourne to some day displace us. Either we remain competitive or we have but ourselves to blame. So I urge you to take the time to fully consider what BC Parents for Mandarin is asking the Board to invest in.

Thank you for your time.

David