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"We're learning Chinese songs"
Sep. 5th, 2007 04:43 pmWhy am I so sensitive about language acquisition?
A colleague-type person told me that she is sending her 2-year-old to a class where he learns Chinese songs, because she wants to give him a good grounding for bilingualism. Because 0-7 is the crucial age to language acquisition. So I ask, "oh, what kind of songs? C-pop or Communist?" And she balked. "Definitely not Communist. There were some songs that sound a little more miltarist, but we don't participate in those." And then we spent 10 minutes carefully talking around each other. I was trying to say "Communism isn't what you think it is." She was trying to say "Learning many languages will make my child multicultural." Then I tried to say "Knowing a language will only get you that far into understanding another culture. It takes academic study, too." And then she starts talking about the 0-7 thing. And then I try to talk about the struggle of keeping a secondary language when you don't have the environment for it.
I'm just frustrated at how frivolous it all seems. Yes, your child will be able to distinguish tones from this once-a-week Chinese song class. So what? Yes, your child can count from 1-10 in Chinese and Spanish, but not in English. Great.
Maybe I'm just sensitive about these things because I'm bicultural. Having both world views at the same time. I get frustrated by people who are so steadfastly planted in their own. "Look at this novel culture, isn't it quaint?" Always an Us and a Them, when it's so much more complicated. The suspicion regarding Communism was so immediate! And then saying, "You probably have a more natural suspicion about these things than I am." Um, no. No suspicions whatsoever, actually. I was inquiring from a cultural point of view. This is why I feel American when I'm in China and feel Chinese when I'm in America. The question is, how do we rattle the cage?
Thankfully, I generally hang with people with more fluid identities. A lot of my students are bicultural, too. They just don't know it, yet.
A colleague-type person told me that she is sending her 2-year-old to a class where he learns Chinese songs, because she wants to give him a good grounding for bilingualism. Because 0-7 is the crucial age to language acquisition. So I ask, "oh, what kind of songs? C-pop or Communist?" And she balked. "Definitely not Communist. There were some songs that sound a little more miltarist, but we don't participate in those." And then we spent 10 minutes carefully talking around each other. I was trying to say "Communism isn't what you think it is." She was trying to say "Learning many languages will make my child multicultural." Then I tried to say "Knowing a language will only get you that far into understanding another culture. It takes academic study, too." And then she starts talking about the 0-7 thing. And then I try to talk about the struggle of keeping a secondary language when you don't have the environment for it.
I'm just frustrated at how frivolous it all seems. Yes, your child will be able to distinguish tones from this once-a-week Chinese song class. So what? Yes, your child can count from 1-10 in Chinese and Spanish, but not in English. Great.
Maybe I'm just sensitive about these things because I'm bicultural. Having both world views at the same time. I get frustrated by people who are so steadfastly planted in their own. "Look at this novel culture, isn't it quaint?" Always an Us and a Them, when it's so much more complicated. The suspicion regarding Communism was so immediate! And then saying, "You probably have a more natural suspicion about these things than I am." Um, no. No suspicions whatsoever, actually. I was inquiring from a cultural point of view. This is why I feel American when I'm in China and feel Chinese when I'm in America. The question is, how do we rattle the cage?
Thankfully, I generally hang with people with more fluid identities. A lot of my students are bicultural, too. They just don't know it, yet.
