Abroad at home

Local private schools have long competed with public education and justified their hefty price tags by offering extras in the way of technology, activities and programs. Among these offerings are classes in languages such as Mandarin Chinese and Arabic that are increasingly considered to be more significant in geopolitics and business.

Even in the case of the Brunswick School, an all-boys school in Greenwich, Conn., that has been offering Mandarin for the past 10 years, more students are enrolling in the classes and at a younger age. (Brunswick offers Mandarin to grades K-12 and has five students in the AP class.)

The chance to enrich Brunswick”™s language curriculum was driven by both the school and its families, who are seeking an edge in a globally minded world, said Jaime González-Ocaña, teacher and chair of the school”™s Modern Languages Department.

Similarly, the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls school in Greenwich, introduced Mandarin and Arabic four years ago. Sacred Heart has a K-12 Mandarin program and this past spring saw its first student take the AP Chinese exam. Arabic is offered in grades 9-12.

Other schools like New Rochelle”™s all-boys Iona Preparatory School have initiated Mandarin programs this fall, after considering the move three years ago. (In another sign of the times, the high school”™s French program is being phased out due to lack of interest and demand.)

“We saw economic trends in Asia that indicated it would make sense to expose students (to Chinese), since China is the most populated country in the world with the second strongest economy,” said Kevin Kelton, chair of the Foreign Language Department at Iona. It was, he said, a challenge to find a certified Chinese-language teacher for the 20 students who have enrolled in the course. Seventeen are freshman, two are seniors taking Mandarin as an elective and one is a native speaker here from China in an exchange program. Next year, Mandarin II will be offered as the freshmen continue their studies.

These courses are open to everyone at Sacred Heart, Brunswick and Iona. Some students show an early interest in international relations, while the majority of middle-school children who are taking Arabic or Mandarin do so as a second language. But still, for others, the choice comes more out of a desire for cultural exposure.

“We believe that the addition of these languages to the curriculum will not only serve our students strategically but give them the opportunity to understand these cultures and critically assess the way they are sometimes portrayed in the media and popular culture,” said Kevin Donnelly, teacher and chair of the World Languages Department at Sacred Heart, formerly known as the Foreign Languages Department.

“The change in name reflects not so much the change in languages as in image,” he said. “That is, ”˜foreign”™ can often carry the connotation of ”˜alien,”™ ”˜other,”™ ”˜not from here”™ whereas ”˜world languages”™ suggests a sense of pertaining to us via our global existence.”

“The practical knowledge of a language is important for people to at least have on their résumé that they”™re fluent,” Ocaña said. “But from a program perspective, we find it very important to expose students to the outside world to become richer and play a bigger role in society as citizens.”

Ali Al-Maqtari has taught Arabic in Brunswick”™s upper and middle schools for five years, using the same curriculum and textbooks as colleges. In a small, intensive class, he”™s focused on preparing seniors to pass at least one year of college-level Arabic before entering a university. Almost 100 percent of the students who have taken his class, which was started in 2006, have used Arabic in college.

Another significant component to learning a language can be studying abroad. Brunswick is planning to create a mandatory summer study-abroad program for these languages within the next two years. Meanwhile, faculty at Sacred Heart encourage programs like the Middlebury College summer immersion camp as well as sister school exchanges with Taiwan and Egypt, although the “volatile political situation” will keep students from visiting Egypt this year, Donnelly said. And Iona is considering offering advanced language courses online next September, all in a move to make learning accessible to a new generation.