And the brain bone is connected to... anyone? anyone?

It's been a while since I surfed around some of the blogs. Oddly, a theme seems to be emerging.

* Adoptive mom Julia Sweeney thinks ethics and comparitive religion should be taught in public schools (which is an idea I quite like, and seems to have been popping up a bit lately).

* Meanwhile, linguist ex-pat John Bienecker (in one of his last blog entries before going all-Chinese, all the time, which my work computer unhelpfully displays as row after row of question marks interspersed with people's names and "IKEA" or "-ization" because I don't have the admin privileges to actually make this thing display Chinese characters) put up a thing about American public elementary schools increasingly teaching Mandarin.

He was talking about this article, but had an interesting take on it:

The days of arriving in China without a lick of Chinese (as I did) and being successful will soon be over (and China will, for the most part, be better off for it).

This made me look around (again!) at what programs I could find out there, and what ho! Here's a nice enough map of Chinese language school programs on AskAsia.org, but I don't think it's nearly exhaustive enough -- so if you know of any programs around you, send 'em in. And if you don't know of any programs around you, check it out. Might get a few good leads.

Language, I think, is probably the best thing we could give our Chinese-born kids.

On the other hand, actual English teachers in China (like Mlle VioletEclipse) are working hard to get their Chinese-born kids to, uh, play fantasy card games.

I know that he might not have had enough time, he might not have been able to convince his mom and dad that the lao wai lao shi actually told him to play a game, etc., etc., but I’m starting to think he just wasn't comfortable with a weird assignment. Young’s my focus right now, but my other classes often respond the same way to unusual requests. Write each word 5 times, yes, but write a story, blank stare.

Of all the homework to blow off.

Now I wonder if they make Magic in Chinese that I could get. I mean, forget flash cards....