Giving Compass' Take:

• South China Morning Post reports on how Mandarin bilingual-immersion programs have grown in popularity across the U.S., even in places where most students have few, if any, cultural ties to China.

• What are the benefits to bilingual-immersion programs in general? How does it increase awareness and appreciation for different cultures?

• Mandarin may help our students prepare for the future as well. Here's more on the developing strength of philanthropy and innovation between China and the U.S.

Jiahang Li was not prepared for what awaited him at an American kindergarten in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2012.

The Peking University graduate was doing a doctorate in education at the University of Maryland and visiting the public school to see the state’s pioneering Chinese-English dual language immersion program in action.

Li was surprised when then the children greeted him in perfectly accented Mandarin.

“It was a totally eye-opening experience to see these five and six-year-olds have a conversation with an adult in a different language that is so different from their native one,” said Li, who is now associate director of the Confucius Institute at Michigan State University.

Li was witnessing the results of a grass-roots trend in American primary education: language immersion programs in which children spend at least half of each school day taking their regular classes, like maths, science or physical education, entirely in Mandarin.

Despite anti-China rhetoric and wariness, these immersion programs have flourished in recent years, expanding from a handful of schools in the 1990s to some 300 programs running across the nation this year. The numbers continue to climb steadily, driven not by federal funding but by parents and administrators pushing for Mandarin immersion in their public schools.

Read the full article about the grassroots movement to immerse kids in Mandarin by Simone McCarthy at South China Morning Post.