Mandarin not going past school managements

CHANDIGARH: The Chinese economy is growing fast and the country is gaining quite a bit of attention as a production hub. However, working or dealing with the country is made harder by the fact that most people there are not very proficient with English or other languages used for international communication. In December last year, Central Board of Secondary Education had introduced Mandarin as a foreign language option.
However, city schools are not keen on teaching it. ''We have no plans of introducing this language in our school right now as there are no teachers available for the course in Chandigarh. Also, the CBSE is not making any provisions to tide over that. The Chinese are also realizing the importance of English and government there is making sure that whoever is in the field of trade, learns the language, so there is no urgency for us to introduce this as a subject,'' said chairman of Vivek High School, Sector 38, HS Mamik.
The language will be offered from Class VI. CBSE's regional officer RJ Khanderao said, ''We don't have any provisions to train teachers for this right now and we will see what we can do if a school comes to us and tells us it wants to introduce the language. They have to show us that they have the infrastructure to teach children. Then we might do something to help them out,'' he added.