Comment on Hello, non-Americans, do you have any Chinese language classes in your education system?
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 21 hours ago
It’s a good question and I’m not dismissing you! But
As an American who grew up at a religious school in the 90s, we absolutely did not
that in itself is such an American thing to say. First the unspoken assumption that everybody understands what you mean by “religious”. And if I looked around here where I live I’m sure I could find a christian (which btw does not mean the same as in the US) school that teaches chinese. And probably even the leaders of such schools have never considered to separate languages into “christian” and “non-christian”.
The second half of your question seems a bit paranoid. Are you implying that every Chinese language class is secretly funded by the PRC? Are you afraid that your country might switch to Chinese at some point? Do you have a problem with English not being the No. 1 langauage, globally? I’m no friend of China’s political system, but this seems excessive.
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Valid points, I appreciate that 🙏 Most of your question can be answered by the fact that I was high when I wrote the post and am just tired of using my filter in real life and I feel safe here on Lemmy.
And honestly, my specific Elementary school was very… unique. Looked them up a few months ago and they’re a few degrees of separation from Reformed Calvinists. Like, more than half of the faculty come from 2 small Evangelical universities in the middle of the Great Plains. They taught some usual stuff like math and spelling, but then there was also lots of time dedicated to studying the Bible, learned two different songs to memorize the order of the books, we had a “Bring your Priest to School Day,” yeah it was just a liiiiiiitle off.
I see your point in my (unintentional) divide into “christian/religios vs chinese” and nowadays I would never try to imply anything resembling that. Now that you mention it though, I do remember one day in 1st(?) grade where they had all the students come and listen to a sermon by a guest preacher (this was fairly common) and somehow the topic of ‘Chinese water torture’ came up? (I don’t remember anything more specific than that, I was very young, but I think a connection was made that shouldn’t have been)
As for the paranoia (besides the above annecdote), that was also unintentional. I wish I understood more about
non-Americanculture and as an avid lover of history, I know a lot of times influence is not merely who won which battle and was curious to see if anyone else had more tangible examples than just theories or video game-logic.Overall, the whole point of this was just to talk to somebody so thank you for that 🥰