I have strong doubts that Chinese will ever become the lingua franca of business. It has language features that make it difficult for us Westerners to learn (mainly, tones that carry semantic meaning)... I think that Chinese people will be more motivated to learn English instead.
Also, who's to say China's economy won't crash and burn in the next 50 years? Forcing Mandarin on everyone is putting all your eggs in one basket. Learning a foreign language is a difficult thing, and one good way to keep motivated is to be truly interested in the culture of the country whose language you're studying. I'm all for mandatory foreign language education, but I think people should be able to choose a language they care about. They shouldn't have to take Chinese because it might be a big deal in the future. Learning any foreign language can open doors, not just Chinese. Take it from me, an American living in Japan.
But I agree that it's not a given that China will be the superpower, and even if gets there, it's not clear that Mandarin will immediately become that important.
Sure, you've got user manuals in multiple languages, but for chip specification, pin diagrams or anything really, I am unable to find manuals in a non-English language. I believe, the same thing applies to other Engineering fields too. Sure, you've got formulae that's universal. Say, you're a Mechanical Engineer working on some modeling-simulation software, you'd be hard pressed to find a non-English version.
And seeing that most of the world is embracing technology, even in the smallest capacity, I feel English isn't going anywhere.
Over the past 150 years this past generation is the only one not to suffer some horrific war, genocide or starvation. China has a revolt somewhere almost daily, it has none of the institutions we are pretty sure are necessary to managing power (independent judiciary, enforceable contracts etc) and has worrying signs of becoming a mafia state, with none of the benefits of one guy in charge ala Putin .
So basically there are a huge number of ways it can go wrong, very little to hold it together except the fear that if we don't keep on this course it will be a lot worse.
Chinese people are learning English, they are already better at it than the Japanese. But again, huge population, many of the powerful guys don't feel like learning or speaking English for face reasons.
Totally agree with you on language choice, learned Japanese in the 90s, never went anywhere with it. Mandarin has been much more rewarding. Take it from me, an American living in china.
Much like you, I studied another language before I found one that worked for me. I studied German, before I committed to Japanese. I had fun studying it, but I was never excited enough to the point where I wanted to move to Germany. Learning a language is a very difficult process (especially Chinese for English speakers) and having the freedom to choose to take a different language is what allowed me to find one that I was truly passionate about.
I believe that Chinese will continue to remain important, but forcing kids into it might dissuade them from finding a foreign language they truly enjoy. That's all I wanted to say.
That's a qualitative difference with significant ramifications. Their economy can and probably will crash, more than once, as most tend to do. But demographics is destiny.
Now I hear people saying things like, 'yeah we went through this already with Japan, and the US is still the largest economy'. But that's generally just a knee-jerk response that doesn't take population differences into account.
It's not just Japan, it happened with the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan (and other Asian countries with fast growing economies), The EU, and now China. If you haven't read it before there's an old Krugman article that's relevant.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/b8268ffe-7572-11db-aea1-0000779e2...
When I was a kid in the 90s we were all terrified of the talk that we'd have to go to school on Saturdays to keep up with the Japanese. When my parent's were in school they were worried about the Soviet Union and their unstoppable command economy.
People have been predicting the end of US dominance since the beginning of US dominance. It will happen at some point, it's inevitable. Obviously the fact that China has more people than the US means that eventually, all other things being equal, they will have a larger economy.
However, they cannot keep up anywhere near the growth rate they've enjoyed over the past decade, which means it will take significantly longer for their economy to overtake ours than is popularly perceived.
In the time span we're talking about, who knows what may happen--what new technologies may be developed. That many extra people may prove to be less of an advantage with the increases in automation we'll see over the next 50 years.
My point is that history shows that basing our future decisions solely on what seems "inevitable" today, is folly.
In summary, don't worry about learning Chinese because you'll have to know it to transact with our new overlords in 2050--come the middle of the century, you might realize it wasn't necessary after all.
Learn Chinese because you want to learn it, because you find it interesting, or learn Spanish, or German, or Japanese for the same reason.
But yes I don't think Mandarin is a good candidate for a global language. It is probably the most difficult language on this planet. Seriously, even the Chinese themseleves have trouble with it. I am Chinese and the last time I wrote long paragraphs of Chinese characters was at the College Extrance Exam (and whenever I mention this to friends everyone agrees). So if you ask me to write some less commonly used words I can only tell you I forgot - I have seen this happen many times to everyone. And the idioms - very hard for westerners without learning all the Classics and History, which are in Classical Chinese - think about Latin.
Chinese is beautiful though. Personally I think we probably have the most exquisite poems - the ancient Chinese spent more times on them than any other art forms or scientific researches. It was the highest among the high arts.
Reading and writing is another matter, I'm almost fluent in conversation, but I can only write conversationally (e.g., SMS), Im basically illiterate otherwise.
Idioms are also a pain, but you don't need all of that to be functional, argue with taxi drivers, and impress at business meetings.
To help speakers of non-tonal languages understand how difficult it is to differentiate between tones, after you get used to hearing them - it is as apparent as the differences between "rebel" as in "to rebel" and "rebel" as in "He's a rebel."
So hearing is not as difficult as might you think. However, in line with what cageface said, I think it is easier to hear the difference, than to reproduce it yourself.
However, this superintendent really seems stuck on this "China as the future of the world" idea. It seems a bit short sighted to base policies solely on extrapolated trends.
If this were 1995, he'd be insisting that student's learn Japanese or they'd be suffering in a future economy dominated by Japan.
From personal experience, the majority of students just aren't going to get as much use from Mandarin as they would from Spanish. Furthermore, Mandarin is much harder for native English speakers to learn than Spanish--It takes much more instruction and practice to get to an equivalent level of competence.