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What Porter proposes is good--but for the wrong reasons. The value of learning a foreign language should be self-evident and has little to do with preparing Americans to decide if the USA should go to war with China in the future, as Porter has said elsewhere.

For all the so-called, in the words of Porter, "authoritarian governments," many of which the US has supported, China has been a good deal more restrained than most, and certainly better behaved and less violent than our own, so the point here is the framework that describes Porter's motivation.

I know! How about learning another language for the inherent rewards one gets? You know, that whole business that Charlemagne talked about when he said having a second language is like have another soul. Sounds more interesting and real than the evil, Chinese specter looming over our heads.

There are precious few programs in Chinese for adults in the Portland area, and what I've seen, they are either ineffective and/or expensive. If PCC were to start a program of Chinese modeled after some of the other modern languages it teaches which emphasize speaking, then that would be a step in the right direction.

As for the written language, Chinese would require 3-4 times as long as a modern european language for native English speakers, so spoken facility is about the best you can expect after only two years. Still, a properly crafted class could produce surprisingly good results.

Good luck on trying to find funding for such a program since all I hear are complaints about foreign languages as recently I was on Trimet, and when the the recorded voice was announcing information about the bus stop in Spanish, one of the passengers griped bitterly about that recording.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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