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Regional district wins Chinese language grant
(by Walt Brown - August 29, 2007)
The Pascack Regional School District, along with the River Vale District have been awarded $200,000 over the next three years from the United Stated Department of Education to inaugurate a program of teaching Chinese to students.
The amount of the grant must be matched by funds-in-kind, and will also involve the outlay of $24,000 to Grant-Ed, LLC, a company which will evaluate the success of the grant for the Education Department.
The districts will make arrangements for the program during this academic year, as class schedules for 2007-08 were in place before the grant was awarded. An Asian American, native-born Chinese linguist, New Jersey-certified as a teacher of Chinese, will be put on staff as a permanent substitute, and will be critical in the first year, planning stage.
‘We want our students to be prepared to work with China.’
Paul Cohen
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Paul Cohen, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum in the regional district, said he was extremely excited at the prospect of this new program. "We are doing this because the world is getting closer, and, as everyone is aware, there is massive interaction between the United States and China. We want our students to be prepared to work with China."
Cohen also provided statistical data to reinforce the need for such programs. "Every student in China, beginning in the third grade, is taught English. Right now, in the United States, 24,000 students are learning Chinese. But as I say this, 220 million Chinese are learning English. It’s a matter of culture and ideas; we will succeed far better in business because when more Americans can speak Chinese, they will have earned far greater respect. So in that sense, our goal is to start the teaching of a foreign language, in this case Chinese, at an early age."
The three-year pilot program, as envisioned, will involve a total outlay of $424,000, of which $200,000 will come from the U.S. Department of Education grant.
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