Thanks for your explanation. What percentage of the kids in the Pinghe international section are native Mandarin speakers? The website says the emphasis is on teaching English, so I imagine the focus is on getting non-English speakers up to speed, while maintaining some level of Mandarin reading and writing. Is that fair to say? Are you happy with the amount of Chinese instruction? How does the level of Mandarin instruction compare to local schools?
I think our goals (placing the kids in a Mandarin-speaking environment for both play and academics) might be at odds with those of most Pinghe parents.
We have the same concern about harshness in local schools that you have. Perhaps one year of it will be bearable given the other benefits. Friends from both Taiwan and the mainland have told us their elementary teachers were “cruel” and “humiliating,” so I guess we’ve been warned.
Michael,
I think GoPlayer was just making clear to me, a newbie, that many “foreign” kids (at certain schools including Pinghe) are actually native Mandarin speakers (though this is not necessarily the case at other schools), whatever their passports might say.
