Many of you have heard me lamenting the complex situation of
Genevieve’s education in Taiwan, but others have asked how we got where we are
today. People have been sweet to assume
it’s not because we are $^&* crazy. Brace
yourselves, it’s been a long journey to get here, and therefore it’s a long
blog post!
When we lived in Shanghai from 2007-2009, Genevieve was 2-4
years old and she attended a local Chinese
preschool. We didn't send her to school to become a bilingual child, I just needed her to spend some time with other people during the day so we didn’t harm each other! J (Yes, it's true, I was not cut out to be a full-time stay at home mom.) But she loved the school and took the
language differences in stride, and after the first year she was speaking to our ayi
(helper) in Chinese. When we moved home
to Portland, we were determined that ALL our children would learn to speak a
different language, but it was especially important for G to continue her
Chinese because she had a headstart.
Why do we want all our kids to speak another language? We saw again and again when we lived in
Shanghai the amazing doors that additional languages opened…not just with those
who spoke English and Chinese, but with those who spoke French, Spanish,
German, etc. Multi-lingual people had access to so many more people and
experiences than we were privy to. Returning
to Portland from Shanghai, I had a vague recollection of a PEO sister of mine
whose children were learning to speak Chinese so I emailed her. Lots of contacts and information later, we
enrolled Genevieve in NWCA (Northwest Chinese Academy). At NWCA, she had all her instruction, every day, in Chinese. The only exception was English class.
OK, fast forward 4 years to 2013. At the age of 8, G has been speaking Chinese
for 6 years now. When the opportunity to
move to Taiwan came up, Joe and I were ecstatic about the chance for G to
continue her Chinese, knowing that she would advance her language and have a
cultural experience to boot. We
gleefully told ourselves that she would go to a local Taiwanese school and
conquer the world. :)
It was not until we
spoke with a friend who had been an expat in Taiwan that our balloon
deflated. She pointed out that Taiwan
still uses traditional characters, unlike mainland China which has converted to
using simplified characters. Um, OK? G has been
learning to read and write simplified characters for the last 6 years and at first, we didn’t grasp the enormity of traditional vs. simplified characters,
but a few conversations later it became clear:
G would be able to speak and understand the spoken language, but reading
and writing would be very different at the least, and extremely challenging at
the most. Some simplified characters are literally simplifications of traditional characters by way of removing some strokes, but most are not, they are actually different characters for the same word.
Simplified vs. traditional characters is a huge debate, the
likes of which I don’t even pretend to fully understand but if you're interested in an overview you could read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters
on wikipedia.
In our limited discussions
with people from both countries we found that Taiwanese people will tell you
that simplified characters have taken the heart and culture out of the
language. Mainland Chinese people will
tell you that simplified characters have made the language more accessible to
everyone and increased literacy. It’s
not a debate we wanted to enter, we just wanted to
figure out if G would be able to go to a local school!
While learning about traditional vs. simplified, the internal monologue (read whining) in my head went something like this: “Why on earth can’t they all read and write the same way? Our life would be so much simpler if they
did.” Because, you know, it’s all about
my family, nothing to do with hundreds of years of ideology around the language.
The research about what to do for G’s education in Taiwan began in earnest before we ever took our look-see trip to Taipei. We started by asking what the differences truly
are between traditional and simplified, but of course the answers actually meant nothing to us because we don't speak, read or write either language! We had nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference. So we were reliant on teachers, other expats, and Taiwanese co-workers to tell us
how hard this would be for G. Half the
people we talked to said she would be fine, she’d figure it out in a couple
months and be on her way. The other half
of the people grimaced and said it was going to be very difficult and maybe not
something we wanted to do to an 8 year old.
No definitive direction from that line of inquiry.
So when we arrived in Taipei for our look-see trip in April,
we not only looked for an apartment, we also visited all the school
possibilities for the kids. Here’s what
it came down to:
Taipei American School (TAS) – One of 3 international
schools in the area where we live (there is also a European school and a
Japanese school). If G attended here she
would be with her older sister, she would be getting a top-notch private school
education, but she would only get 35 minutes of Mandarin instruction per
day. We would also be able to speak
freely to her teachers without a language barrier, which is a big consideration
for us because G has focus issues and requires specific help in the
classroom. We could hire a tutor for her
Chinese, but she wouldn’t be able to maintain it at a level that would allow her to return to NWCA when we repatriate.
The bottom line @ TAS:
She would make no more progress on speaking Mandarin, but she would be
in a great school with an easy social situation and we could speak freely to
her teachers.
*Plus for the first time ever 2/3 of my children would be in
the same school and I would look like less of a crazy person! Not that how I’m perceived is a real priority,
but I’m always looking for ways to look a little less loony.
ShiDong Elementary School – This is the local elementary
school and has a small percentage of foreign students enrolled. It is one of only two public schools in Taipei with a CSL (Chinese as a
Second Language) program. If she
attended here she would speak Chinese all day (school is 8:00-4:00!) and so her
Chinese would progress by leaps and bounds.
But she would need a tutor every day to help her with homework and
learning the traditional characters. She
would also need an English tutor because we don’t want her 2 years behind in
grammar, writing, sentence composition, etc when we return to the States. And we would not be able to communicate
easily with her teacher, it would require assistance from a friend/tutor/bilingual
person. Conversations with Taiwanese co-workers and friends split evenly on how
her social situation would be: half said
the Taiwanese kids would be interested in her because she’s a foreigner and would
want to be friends, the other half said she would be bullied and ostracized as
a foreigner and would likely not have any friends. (I even read a blog that detailed this experience for one ex-pat family in Taiwan.)
The bottom line @ ShiDong:
It would be the most work for G (and for
us), and we were unsure of the social situation. The payoff?
She would continue speaking the Chinese that she loves, and she could
come out of the situation knowing simplified AND traditional characters and
have more versatility than we ever imagined.
She could also return to NWCA for fifth grade. She might also learn to cope with her focus issues in new and creative
ways.
As you can tell, our visits to schools in Taipei did nothing to clarify which
school we should put G into. We made
lists of pros and cons, we talked endlessly about the “right” thing to do for
her, we tried to separate our dreams of language acquisition for our kids from
the needs of our child, and we talked to absolutely everybody we could think of
who might have some advice or insight on this.
By the way, a big thank you to all of you who were subjected to our agonizing
over this situation… you listened attentively and made lovely sympathetic
noises. I know most of you were thinking
“just hurry up and make a decision already so you can shut up about this,” and
we truly appreciate that you didn’t say that out loud. J
For weeks and weeks we didn’t know what we were going to do,
but we did choose an apartment that was in the ShiDong school district so that
option stayed open to us. And then we
came to our senses and decided to include G in the conversation.
In some ways 8 years old is very young, and in some ways
it’s more than old enough to be included in decisions about how you spend your
days. We sat down with her and laid out
all our thoughts about both schools in the most unbiased way we could. It
was a hard conversation because the child has the attention span of a gnat, but
we got through it.
Her first reaction was that she would like to be in school
with her sister at TAS because she could help her with making friends with all the
Mandarin speakers. She has such a sweet heart. (We had told her that the
instruction at TAS was all in English, but most of the kids were speaking
Mandarin in the hallway when we were there, so she wanted to help Livi adjust to that.)
But her second reaction was more thoughtful. She said that the most important thing to her
is that she be able to return to NWCA and all her friends at NWCA when we move
back. She gave a little decisive nod and
said she wanted to go to the local school if that meant she could keep up with
her Chinese. We re-explained all the
extra tutors that would be required, pointed out that her days would essentially
be from 8:00-6:00, and that she would have to work very hard just to keep
up. She asked to think about it a
little, and the next morning she told us, “I want to keep speaking Chinese, and
I want to go back to my friends at NWCA, so I think I better go to ShiDong.”
And there you have it, a decision was made. We wanted to stand up and cheer for her
bravery and courage, but we knew if we made too big of a deal about how amazing
and challenging this would be, she might be intimidated and back out of her
decision. We were in AWE of what she was
willing to do, and we loved that she had found her own motivation apart from
ours…her friends. So we smiled and said
we thought she’d made a good choice and I set about finding a tutor in Portland
to introduce her to traditional characters over the summer.
And honestly, I totally panicked. My mind was a constant whirl of doubts and worries. What if she could hack it academically, but
the kids were mean to her? What if she
couldn’t figure out traditional characters and learned nothing? What if her teacher was pissed he/she got
stuck with a foreign student? What if
they wouldn’t let her sit at the front of the classroom where she needs to be? What if she was miserable at school but
she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us? What
if we were putting too much responsibility on her sweet little head and
shoulders? What if she would be totally and completely
scarred and screwed up by this experience for the rest of her life??? Well, on that last one, as it turns out, we
did that to her anyway by nicknaming her Gigi and then moving her to a country
where that word is slang for penis, but that’s another story.
At the end of the day, all these worries were mine and
Joe’s, not Genevieve’s. And rightfully
so; we are parents and it’s our job to look at this from every angle and
consider as much as we can the consequences for the situations we put our kids
in. But Oh. My. God. it added stress to
moving to a new country.
So we moved to Taipei knowing that Genevieve would attend
ShiDong Elementary School. And we knew it would be as scary for us as it
was for her, yet we did our grown-up best not to let her know that we were completely FREAKED
OUT for her. :)
