The Confucius Institute at the University of Memphis is teaming up with local schools to host All Roads Lead to China, an intensive Chinese immersion summer camp for children ages 5 to 14.
The camps are spread out over a three-week period and located at various area schools. The first camp is from May 27 to 30 at Lausanne Collegiate School. Two other camps will be from June 2 to 6 at Hutchison School and Immaculate Conception Cathedral School. The final two camps will be from June 9 to 13 at Christ United Methodist Day School and Grace St. Luke's Episcopal School.
Students will participate in a number of activities intended to further understanding of Chinese language and culture. There will be demonstrations and classes in Chinese martial arts, tai chi, Chinese art, cooking and dancing, among other activities. The camp ties into a bridge program intended for high school students.
Riki Jackson, assistant director of the CIUM, believes this experience will help kids understand other cultures and give parents something educational to send their children to over the summer.
"We try to sneak a little education in," Jackson said. "We hope that we can give students a little piece of China through their culture."
The CIUM's method of teaching Chinese to young kids is based off of similar programs in China, where English has been successfully taught as a secondary language for decades, and Europe, where children typically begin learning languages very early in their school careers-as early as the age of five. On the other hand, in the United States foreign language instruction typically begins at the secondary level-9th grade and up-by which point it's difficult for students to get a handle on a new language. As a result, after leaving their language education, students may be able to recite the numbers and colors and seasons and other miscellaneous information they learned for their exams but they will have difficulty in conversation.
The U.S.' lack of emphasis on foreign language instruction doesn't sit well with Riki Jackson.
"I'm certainly patriotic and thankful for the many thousands of gifts we are given here in the United States, but we are significantly behind academically, specifically in foreign languages and mathematics," Jackson said. "The hope is if we can follow successful models and do that with funding support from our colleagues in Hanban (The Office of Chinese Language Council International) then we can have a piece of success with our students."
But the camp goes beyond something fun for kids to do over the summer. The program segues into a greater effort by the Confucius Institute to promote the Chinese language, giving students a head start in learning a language that, as China modernizes and becomes a superpower, could become the lingua franca of international business and politics in the near future.
"It's almost like extending an academic olive branch to say, here's an opportunity to move forward in a world that's creating positions we don't know about yet," Jackson said.
Over one billion people-or about a fifth of the world's population-speak some form of Chinese as their first language. Of those, about 960 million speak Mandarin, the dominant dialect of Chinese and 2.6 million people speak Chinese in the U.S. The Sinophone (or Chinese-speaking) world stretches as far as South America, Europe and Africa. Chinese is also one of the official languages of the United Nations.
Founded in 2007, the Confucius Institute at the U of M is the first Confucius Institute in Tennessee and the 24th in the nation. The Institute's mission is to promote a better understanding of Chinese culture and language and help form friendly bonds between China and the United States.
Depending on the school, prices for the camp vary from $125 to $200. There is a $50 scholarship assistance per camper based on financial need. Families interested in financial assistance can contact the CIUM office at 901-678-2595.
Those interested in the summer camp can visit memphis.edu/cium for more information.
