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Michael Taylor

A national commission has been set up in the United States to strengthen the teaching of Asian studies in American schools.

  The National Commission on Asia in the Schools (NCAS), which met for the first time last month, is aimed at raising public awareness of the need for an improvement in the teaching of Asia-related subjects.

    NCAS will also discuss strategies to promote collaboration, quality content and the innovative use of technology to improve teaching and learning about Asia.

   The New York-based Asia Society said that an understanding of Asia was 'a necessity, not just a luxury for a chosen few'. According to the society, American students were 'disproportionally undereducated about Asia'. It also cited the relatively small number of Americans studying Asian languages.

  Research has shown that only about 9,000 American high school students took Chinese, compared with the 1.1 million who studied French.

  Although the number of American students studying abroad is increasing, most are doing so in Europe - reflecting the country's largely European roots.

   According to the Institute for International Education, 64 per cent of the Americans studying overseas in the 1997-98 academic year were taking courses in Europe. But there has been a sharp decline since 1985-86, when eight out of 10 students went to Europe to further their education.

  The number of American students in Latin America more than doubled during this period to 16 per cent. Africa registered a 20 per cent increase during the same period.

  Although China registered an impressive 30 per cent increase, there are still just 2,116 Americans studying in the world's most populous country. Ireland, with a population of 3.6 million, has 2,522 American students.

 'Just as Europe and the Western world have dominated the thinking of recent generations, the youth of tomorrow will need to turn their eyes on Asia and will encounter Asian cultures and economies everywhere,' Governor James Hunt, Jr, of North Carolina, said. 'For many American students today, it's as if Admiral Perry never sailed to Japan and President Nixon never went to China.'  Jasmine Tang Kar, a comparative American ethnic studies major from the University of Washington in Seattle, agreed.

   She said five foreign languages were offered at her high school in Knoxville, Tennessee - all of them European. Spending a year at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Ms Tang said it was essential for Americans to learn more about other cultures and languages.

 'For us to understand one another, I believe studying languages is a fundamental component,' she said. Another problem is that people are 'scared off' by the perceived difficulty of tackling Asian languages.

 'Most European languages are related to English, so it is easier to learn them,' Raiessa de'Wein, a management and international business major from the University of South Carolina, said.

  Ms de'Wein, who is also taking Chinese during her year-long stint at CUHK, has also studied Spanish, French and Latin.

 While agreeing that primary and secondary school curricula in the United States tended to be Eurocentric, Ms de'Wein thought that Asian studies - in cluding languages such as Chinese and Japanese - were becoming increasingly popular at the tertiary level.

 'American students may be getting bored with what they already know and are striving to expand their minds and experiences so international Asian studies, such as politics, government, culture and languages, appear to be of more interest to them,' Ms de'Wein said.

   James Fichter, an international relations major from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has studied French, Latin and Chinese. Despite a personal interest in learning Chinese, he could understand why many Americans might not find the language useful. 'Asian languages are irrelevant to most people's lives even more so than other foreign languages. Most Americans never need to use a language other than English, let alone Chinese,' he said.



Bid to strengthen teaching of Asian studies in US schools