Adding Chinese language instruction at a handful of Delaware public schools isn’t merely an effort to beef up the curriculum. It’s also part of the state’s economic development strategy.
“Language learning plays a role in being economically competitive and can have an impact on Delaware’s economic competitiveness in the world,” said Gregory Fulkerson, education associate for world languages at the state Department of Education.
Delaware has been accelerating its trade relationships with China. Delaware exporters shipped $361 million in goods to China last year, up 21 percent from 2009 and up 217 percent from 2005, said Felicia Pullam, communications officer for Gov. Jack Markell.
In addition to increasing its exports to China, Delaware is to convince Chinese investors to do business here, Pullam said.
Chinese business leaders “have seen how difficult it is for international companies to learn how to operate in the Chinese market,” so they realize they could face similar challenges in setting up shop overseas, she said. “They’re looking for locations where people will help them understand what the market will be like, how to engage the community, what the expectations of government will be.”
In that respect, she said, Delaware’s ability to bring government and business leaders to the table, so important in attracting businesses to relocate from other states, should be an advantage in attracting Chinese business as well.
If Delaware’s students develop a greater knowledge of Chinese language, business and culture, that helps “make sure that Delaware students are able to compete in the world” and could also benefit the state as it builds new links to Chinese business and government, Pullam said.
“Adding Chinese as a language option exposes students to a part of the world that they may not have thought about, but it’s a part of the world that’s increasingly important to our economic success,” Pullam said.
Fulkerson, whose position involves developing links between Delaware schools and those in other countries, pointed out the Chinese are working even harder to develop similar linkages. “We talk about it. The Chinese are doing it,” he said.
“The Chinese want their kids to be learning English at very high levels, and they want it now,” he said. “We [the United States] need to shape up. The Chinese are learning English whether we help them or not. If we’re smart, we do it together.”
As a step toward working together, Fulkerson, three other Department of Education officials and five representatives of the Red Clay Consolidated School District, including the principals of Alexis I. du Pont High School and Conrad Schools of Science, recently spent eight days in China on a trip sponsored by Hanban and the College Board.
Mark T. Pruitt Jr., the Conrad principal, said he found “far more similarities than differences” between Chinese and American schools, but some of those differences are quite significant.
Class sizes in China are much larger — with as many as 60 students in a chemistry class — and so are the school buildings, with one high school he visited serving about 5,000 students, Pruitt said.
In that setting, there’s not much in the way of small-group instruction, Fulkerson said. “In Chinese classrooms, a small group is 10.”
With numbers so large, there’s a big difference between China and the United States when the bell rings to signal the end of class. Here, the students move; in China, the students stay put, and the teachers move from room to room, Pruitt said.
Kevin Palladinetti, the Alexis I. du Pont principal, said American teachers are more dynamic than those he observed in China, but teachers, and perhaps the education system as a whole, are held in higher esteem in China. “When Chinese students talk about their teachers, they speak with a kind of reverence that is oftentimes overlooked here,” he said.
Fulkerson said Chinese education officials are trying to make their schools “more student-focused, more ‘the American way.’”
Although there are no plans now to send Delaware teachers on exchanges to Chinese schools, Fulkerson believes having school officials in both countries work together is a win-win proposition.
“Two superpowers can work together. They don’t always need to be in competition,” he said. “If we make collaborative efforts, kids in both countries will have the competencies they need to work with each other.”
