Friday, February 26, 2010
By Eric Zheng
Staff Writer
As the California’s economic situation becomes worse, Mira Costa and other schools will likely face state-wide cuts to education. Despite these possible cuts, the school’s Foreign Language Department should not be among the programs slashed. Rather, Costa’s administration should do everything possible to add new languages as soon as possible.
Currently, the foreign language options offered are Spanish, French and Latin. However, when compared to other districts and schools around the South Bay, Costa’s program falls short.
West Torrance High School offers Mandarin, Spanish, French, Japanese and Korean, while Palos Verdes High School offers Mandarin, Spanish, French, Japanese and Latin. The addition of a new language should be the top priority for school administrators in order to compete with other local high schools.
Gathering funds to add a new language in the near future would be a near miracle. However, the retirement of Mike Cook, Costa’s Latin teacher, may put the school in a different type of predicament. Finding a replacement Latin teacher would be difficult, and if no replacement is found administrators may be forced to consider new languages.
In such a situation, Mandarin should be the first language added. Nearly two billion people speak Mandarin worldwide in countries such as China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Fluency in Mandarin looks extremely impressive on college transcripts, allows students to seek job opportunities in many parts of Asia, and broadens their global perspective.
In recent times, there has been an emergence of Asian influence on global politics and economics. Allowing students the opportunity to study and be fluent in both English and Mandarin gives them numerous advantages that other languages cannot offer.
If no action is taken to add Mandarin, Costa’s administrators would risk its students falling behind in its langauge departments. Schools in Torrance have more comprehensive language departments.
Numerous students and parents have expressed interest in joining possible Mandarin classes. Therefore, classes will likely fill early. Unlike the experiment that the district tried two years ago with German, there will be a demand for these classes.
Though adding new classes may not be the wisest choice given the current budget issues, it is a decision that would undoubtedly benefit the future of the school district.
The necessary funds could possibly be channeled from other school projects, or the district could apply for a grant from the Foreign Language Assistance Program. Peninsula High School in Palos Verdes currently utilizes a FLAP grant through the Department of Education to operate a Chinese/Mandarin program.
Adding these new classes would be a difficult task, but the advantages it would provide for students would surely outweigh the possible short-term difficulties cause by it.
Maintaining the classes is possible as Peninsula High showed, and with all the factors taken into consideration, Mandarin is a worthwhile endeavor despite the poor economy and the risk.
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