Cape Elizabeth is considering becoming the 10th school district in the state to offer Chinese as a language taught at the high school.

Students there would benefit greatly from the opportunity to study a language that’s spoken by one-fifth of the world’s population and in a country with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. More schools should follow the lead of districts that have already added Chinese as a course offering.

The Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone was the first to offer Chinese in 1995, followed by Westbrook High School in 1997. Other schools that now offer Chinese include Bangor High School, Erskine Academy in South China, Noble High School in Berwick, Washington Academy in East Machias, Fryeburg Academy, Piscataquis Community High School in Guilford, Waynflete School in Portland and John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor.

The move to bring Chinese to Cape is being supported by Jack Kennealy, a new School Board member; Jeff Shedd, the high school principal; and Angela Schipani, who chairs the high schools’s Foreign Language Department. They are organizing a committee of 15-20 parents, teachers and board members, who will discuss how a Chinese language program could be brought to the school.

While some might be concerned about the cost of adding such a program at a time when the school budget will be under pressure to meet the requirements of the state’s new school consolidation law, the benefits of adding Chinese far outweigh the costs. The school can also keep those costs down by taking advantage of a program offered by the Chinese Language Council International – also known as the Hanban. If a home could be found for a guest teacher, Cape Elizabeth could bring a Chinese language teacher here for the bargain expense of the $2,000 cost of a U.S. Visa.

Some might also be concerned that offering Chinese might come at the expense of another language or some other course offering. At a recent School Board meeting, Superintendent Alan Hawkins expressed some wariness about adding a language, although he was supportive of the idea. “Whenever you make additions, you have to look very carefully at the entire system. You only have so many hours in the day. We need to protect what we have and move on from there,” he said.

Hawkins’ desire to protect the curriculum offered at the high school is understandable. It would be nice if adding Chinese didn’t come at the expense of some other course. However, Chinese would seem to be much more important than many of the classic European languages offered in most schools – French, Italian and German.

Teaching all of those languages is still important, but many would argue there are other languages that will play a more important role in the world and in the United States in the future. In addition to Chinese, those include Arabic, Japanese and Russian.

In general, most U.S. schools don’t offer enough language options, and they don’t start teaching them early enough. Adding Chinese, the language spoken in what will eventually become the world’s largest economy, would be an improvement, and offering it now would give those students who take advantage of it a skill many of their peers won’t have.

Brendan Moran, editor