User:Fy1920/Confucius Classroom

Confucius Classroom (CC), affiliated with the Confucius Institutes (CI), is an initiative by Hanban with the stated mission to bring Chinese language teaching to local students in k-12 institutions free-of-charge. They have raised concerns about Chinese Communist Party influence on academic freedom among educators and policy makers worldwide.

The Confucius Classroom program partners with local secondary schools or school districts to provide teachers and instructional materials.

United Kingdom
Campaign groups raised concerns about Confucius Classrooms in the UK in 2015. Isabel Hilton, a broadcaster and writer whose own work was censored by the Confucius Institute, said: "State control undertaking in China in the teaching of culture means contestation is not really allowed. If this is happening in our schools where people are not familiar with the Chinese buying their way into our education system, we ought to ask serious questions about whether that's a good thing." Campaigning group Free Tibet claimed that lessons are limited by "terms effectively determined by a government that suppresses free speech inside its own borders and which is responsible for widespread human rights abuses." The group also raised concerns that money from the Chinese government had been accepted without "proper, democratic scrutiny."

United States
In one instance, the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District Board of Education encountered strong community opposition to establishing a Confucius Classroom at Cedarlane middle school in Hacienda Heights, which is "a heavily Hispanic community with a majority-Chinese school board." A San Gabriel Valley Tribune editorial compared this CI program as "tantamount of asking Hugo Chavez to send his cadres to teach little American kids economics." History teacher Jane Shults described criticisms of Confucius Classrooms as "jingoistic, xenophobic, not overly rational and it’s really shades of McCarthyism." One member of the Hacienda La Puente school board, Norman Hsu, said it wasn't worth pushing the issue, since, without California credentials, the teacher would not have been permitted to operate as a full-fledged instructor anyway. Another school board member, Jay Chen, characterized the Confucius Classroom scheme's opponents, "What they all share in common, besides not having any children in the district (many don’t even live in the district), are steadfast accusations that the school board is trying to promote Communism in the classroom." Chen concluded that xenophobic "Anti-Sinoism" was causing the Hacienda La Puente disagreements. University of Southern California public diplomacy professor Nicholas J. Cull said, "I’m sure this will become a standard dispute. People in America are very suspicious of ideas from the outside."

The Bibb County Public School District, which includes Macon, Georgia, mandated that Mandarin Chinese would become a required subject for every student, pre-K through 12th grade. Although the superintendent described the agreement for the Confucius Classroom to supply the Chinese language teachers as "a win-win for everyone," some parents were critical. A few feared a "Communist regime enacting its geopolitical agenda on their children", but most had practical concerns, such as whether local students would benefit more from learning Spanish than Chinese as a foreign language.

David Coleman (education) president of the College Board announced plans with Hanban to open Confucius Classrooms in 20 school districts across the U.S.