Letter: Mandarin Should Be Added to the SMS Curriculum

A group of Scarsdale parents, advocating for the inclusion of Mandarin instruction in the Middle School, wrote this letter and submitted it to Scarsdale10583 for publication. The letter comments on the results of a recent series of surveys on world language instruction and the Scarsdale School Administration's decisions based on those results. See details of the survey here. The names of the authors of the letter are shown at the end of the piece:

The Mandarin for Middle School Initiative Team (MMSIT) wants to thank the Scarsdale School Administration for running a total of four World Language Surveys in October. Two of them, the K-5th grade parents and the fifth grade parents' surveys, were to gauge community interest in foreign language expansion in the Middle School. The other two surveys, one for parents of K-11th and one for 6-11th grade students, were to solicit feedback on current foreign language offerings. We are grateful for the administration's time and efforts.

As Assistant Superintendent Ms. Lynne Shain stated at Monday's Board of Education meeting, the administration's objectives were to determine what the Scarsdale community thought about expanding foreign language offerings in the Middle School beyond the existing two Romance languages and to identify in which additional language the community was most interested.

The administration met its objectives, because the community answered. Out of those parents who responded to the K-5 parents' survey, an overwhelming 69% stated that it was important or very important to add languages to the existing Middle School curriculum. In the other surveys, those who wanted the language program expanded were also the majority.

56% of the parents in the K-5 survey chose Mandarin as the number 1 choice to be added to the Middle School curriculum, with much smaller percentages choosing other languages such as Arabic, Cantonese, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, or Urdu. When parents were asked what language their child would take in the 6th grade, in both the K-5 survey and the fifth grade parent survey, Spanish and Mandarin ranked as the top two choices, with French as the third.

Given these district-administered survey results, it is very disappointing that the school administration is recommending that "based on the low response rates to the surveys, the majority of the parents and students are satisfied with the current world language offerings at the middle school and high school." The administration is recommending that the middle school program not be expanded to include Mandarin.

We were pleased that a number of school board members asked good probing questions of the administration. Answers are certainly needed. We offer an alternative interpretation of the survey results and urge the Board of Education and current administration to reconsider their recommendation.

There are two significant problems with the administration's analysis. First, the survey response reasoning is tantamount to saying that because voter turnout is low in most US elections, that the electorate is satisfied with those elected officials. There are many reasons that people do not vote: disaffection, apathy, exhaustion from work, etc. Equally, there are many reasons why Scarsdale parents did not answer the survey. They may not have received it. Maybe it is in their spam folder. It is possible that they are inundated with emails or overwhelmed with work. Perhaps multiple means of communications should have been used to insure that parents knew about the survey. Yet, is it anyone's right or responsibility to ascribe thoughts and views to those who did not respond to the survey? The school administration did not prove that those who did not respond to the survey are satisfied with the Scarsdale language program as it exists presently.

Secondly, it is not accurate to say that the response rate to the administration's language survey was low. The administration did not provide a benchmark against which it determined what 'low response' means. In fact, the language survey response was far higher than voter turnout for the Scarsdale school budget. For the 2012-2013 budget, only 725 Scarsdalians turned out to vote; that is only 6.2% of the over 11,700 eligible Scarsdale voters. For the 2014-2015 budget, turnout was 8 ½%. Even in the very heated 2013-2014 budget vote when 3,222 voters turned up to vote, they represented only 27½% of the eligible voters.

Even with that lower voter turnout, the voice and will of the people pertaining to the budget are accepted. Why then, when the middle school language surveys received far higher turnouts of 39% for the K-5 parents and 54% for fifth grade parents is the voice of the Scarsdale community disregarded? President Obama and the White House have declared learning Mandarin a national priority, yet the Scarsdale administration is recommending that it is not a priority in Scarsdale.

Additionally, in the interest of transparency, it is important for the Scarsdale public to know why parents with foreign language experience were not included in the survey committee. Scarsdalians have the right to know the foreign language experience and expertise of the committee convened. Do any of them speak foreign languages fluently, particularly a non-Romance one? We find it very unusual that professionals who would speak a foreign language would not understand the importance of having native instructors and to have different levels of foreign languages taught based on the students' language expertise. Currently, for languages in the elementary and middle schools, students of every type of fluency level are thrown together, doing a disservice to all of them.

We are also concerned that the administration is emphasizing that some parents already pay for private Mandarin classes. Is the administration implying that if many parents pay for an activity, it does not need to be part of the curriculum? Parents pay for Mandarin privately because their tax dollars are not being used to fund Mandarin in elementary or middle school. Also, the current instruction in the High School is not meeting their needs.

Claire He, a Scarsdale resident and the deputy principal of the Huaxia Greater New York Sunday Chinese School, commented that while her school would not want to lose students in the future once the district offers Mandarin in more grades, she is supporting the Mandarin initiative as a Scarsdale resident because it is the right thing to do for the community, and it will benefit many students without Asian heritage to get exposure to the language and the culture.

Scarsdale parents often pay privately for sports, art and music lessons. Does that mean that those classes should not be part of the Scarsdale curriculum? As a community, we accept all of those courses in the curriculum, irrespective of our personal priorities, because we want to provide the next generation with a well-rounded curriculum. With the very limited Romance language program that exists in the elementary and middle schools, we are not fulfilling our role as a community to prepare our children to be competitive internationally in the future.

The administration also cited the significant dropout rate of Mandarin students in high school as evidence against the value of Mandarin instruction. On the contrary, we see this as strong support that Mandarin classes need to start earlier. High school students are under pressure to have a good GPA in preparation for college admission. It is very challenging to start a new language during those years. The ideal time to start would be as early as possible. During middle school years, children have the luxury to explore new interests and try new things. Once they have a foundation in middle school, they will no doubt do much better in high school.
The community has spoken loudly and clearly that it wants Mandarin added to the Middle School language program. Mandarin is an important part of a world-class education. Scarsdale, with its tradition of forward thinking and commitment to education, must continue its education excellence by including Mandarin in the Middle School curriculum. We hope the Board and the Administration will come back to the table to reassess the issue and reach a better conclusion.

Leo Cha, Eric Cheng, Rocco D'Agostino, Claire He, Thomas Kendall, Brice Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Laura Liu, Yadong Liu, Zhendi Shi, Joanne