Nearly half the students in a Chinese Immersion Program in St. Louis are African American, reports the National Journal .
Parents who are electing to stay in the city rather than escape to the suburbs say they appreciate their children getting a multi-cultural education.
“Being a little African-American girl and going up to Asian people, speaking Chinese—it blows their minds,” says Jessica Clark, who sends her child Jaclyn to the Immersion Program. “I went to a city school, a predominantly black city school. So everybody ate the same thing, we all had the same kind of hair, everything was the same,” she says.
The Chinese Immersion Program is in its third year. One of its goals is to help desegregate St. Louis Public Schools. It’s mission is to promote “intercultural dialogue.”
You can read about the effectiveness of this program in the National Journal .
