Brits to teach Mandarin to Malaysian?

One British school has predicted that China will overtake the USA as the new superpower in this century, and is not sitting idly around, waiting for that to happen.

It has started Chinese lessons for all its students. They would be taught Mandarin once a week. There is also a move to introduce Mandarin in other British schools. The Brits are obviously recognising the financial, trade and diplomatic advantage for their students having a good command of Mandarin, the language of a future super trading and political power.

Now which country was it that changed the teaching of Science and Maths in Mandarin to English in many of its schools? And for the wrong reason too!

Currently our standards of Mandarin are second to none, but with each successive ill-considered educational policy on the Chinese medium schools, it would not be inconceivable if one day we would once again lament a lost standards, as we have done so with regards to our lost standards of the English language.

Many may not have realised that once, Penang was the English and Mandarin language centre for SE Asia, where it enjoyed, and indeed benefitted from, playing host to Thai and Indonesian students who came to study both English and Mandarin.

Maybe some years from now Malaysia can recruit Mandarin teachers from Britain, as it had for English teachers.