Call off 'English fever' before it goes way too far
- Source: Global Times
- [00:51 November 20 2009]
- Comments
By Wang Dasan
Recently, the Chinese-owned Global Campus Management Group, which operates four private colleges in Sydney and Melbourne, went bankrupt.
The news attracted much attention in China, and triggered refl ections on the tide of studying abroad among Chinese students.
Statistics show that over 80 percent of current Chinese students abroad choose to study in English-speaking countries.
This "English fever" causes parents to blindly send their children abroad, but it has spread through the whole country.
In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, poor families strive to send children to at least one English support class, while rich families do their best to employ native English speakers as private language tutors.
English classes are always full. China has become the world's largest English language education market, generating billions of dollars of profits each year. However, most profits fall into those smooth-talking foreign educational agencies' pockets.
Why is this? The current education system and evaluation mechanisms have to bear the blame. O. ering foreign language courses in schools is surely necessary, but only offering and emphasizing English courses is a mistake. Moreover, English language ability is one of the most important criteria for evaluating professional titles, even including doctors of traditional Chinese medicine.
Worshiping English is actually worshiping the West. It is assuming that the West's technologies, languages, cultures, values and even lifestyles are better, and can bring individuals and countries more success.
Such a mentality comes from a feeling of low self-worth. China has recently made huge efforts in setting up Confucius Institutes in other countries to promote Chinese language and culture.
But in Beijing, host city of the 2008 Olympic Games, and Shanghai, host city of the 2010 World Expo, the slogan of "everyone learns English" is still being put forward.
People forget the old saying of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," forget that not every foreign guest is from English-speaking countries, and moreover, forget that English-speaking countries never encourage their people to learn Chinese or other languages if they hold Olympic Games or World Expo.
Paying too much attention to learning English will inevitably lead to an ignorance of Chinese. Over the past century, Chinese characters, being inherited for thousands of years as the hinge of Chinese people, has undergone many ups and downs – from classical©Chinese to vernacular Chinese, from traditional characters to simplified characters, and from square characters to Latinized pinyin. Now, it still faces the threat of a powerful English.
Saying "Hi" and "Bye" in English is popular among today's youth, but they perhaps cannot write fluent Chinese articles or neat characters. They are not shamed of their poor Chinese language ability, but are proud of speaking good English.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger said, "Language is the house of being." Without the nurture of Chinese language and culture, is Chinese still Chinese?
Learning your mother tongue is not only a right, but also a responsibility and obligation. Protecting French and resisting English is an important national policy of France, and Russia also adopts protecting Russian into its national security strategy.
Although most Japanese, even among the elite, could only stutter English, Japan still has developed into a strong power. Japan emphasized cultivating proficient English translators to familiarize themselves with the rest of the world, rather than pressuring everyone to learn English. China should learn from these countries' experiences.
Another German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, said that there is no understanding©of oneself or of another without language. As Chinese, of course we cannot understand the world without Chinese.
In fact, there is no need to be against learning English, but irrational English fever and the slogan of "everyone learns English" should be abandoned.
I hope that every Chinese person can be proud of his or her own language, and gives more dignity to his or her mother tongue.
The author is a Beijing-based scholar
