Spies subsidize Chinese summer camp

The new approach in the U.S. intelligence community seems to be – let’s get them started early, real early. Plans for a ROTC-style program for college students with spy aspirations were announced recently, and now there’s news of the National Security Agency (NSA) sponsoring a summer camp for high schoolers to start studying the Chinese language and learning about the Chinese culture.

For some time now, U.S. spy agencies have lamented their relative lack of expertise in the languages that matter most in today’s world of espionage: Arabic and Chinese. Besides the languages, of course, successful infiltration and spying relies on an intimate knowledge of the unwritten customs and rules of behavior of cultures that are extremely different to that of the U.S.

In the two-week summer camp that was hosted by Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, sixty local high school students spent their mornings getting a thorough introduction to Mandarin and their afternoons immersed in China culture study. We’re not sure how much that lesson on making dumplings is going to help when they’re undercover in Beijing 20 years from now, but who knows?

Most of the attendees said they were there because of an interest in Chinese and Asian culture (not to mention the low attendance fee of $50, thank-you NSA), but there was student who seemed to understand the bigger picture. According to the Charlotte Observer, Bailey Winecoff, who’s going to be a high school sophomore this fall, said of China, “They’re a rising power, and I want to get a head start.”

For decades, the standard foreign language options for high school students in the U.S. have been Spanish and French. They’re easier for many reasons, the most obvious being that they use the same alphabet as does English.

Instruction of second languages start relatively late in the U.S. public school system – by the time kids are half-way through middle school, they’re already past their best language-learning years. So perhaps the NSA is on the right track. Catch them early – maybe next summer it’ll be Arabic camps for elementary schoolers who like the movie Spy Kids?

Pics courtesy of oregonlive.com and hudastore.com