Some Ga. Schools Make Mandarin Mandatory by Adam Ragusea


Public schools in Macon, Ga., and surrounding Bibb County have a lot of problems. Most of the 25,000 students are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced lunch, and about half don't graduate.

Bibb County's Haitian-born superintendent Romain Dallemand came into the job last year with a bag of changes he calls "The Macon Miracle." There are now longer schools days, year-round instruction, and one mandate nobody saw coming: Mandarin Chinese for every student, pre-K through 12th grade.

"Students who are in elementary school today, by 2050 they'll be at the pinnacle of their career," Dallemand says. "They will live in a world where China and India will have 50 percent of the world GDP. They will live in a world where, if they cannot function successfully in the Asian culture, they will pay a heavy price."

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Why Brokers Study Chinese   Sept. 7, 2012

....... While other major foreign buying groups in New York — the Brazilians, the Russians and other Europeans — all require some cultural understanding for brokers to be successful, no group has posed more of a challenge than the Chinese, brokers say.

The old way of doing business is no longer enough, Ms. Field said. “We as Americans always expected anyone to adapt to our business style, and they did,” she said. “That is no longer true with the Chinese. There are too many of them, they have too much power. We truly must adapt to their style of business in order to do deals.” ....Read more