This recent CNN report on Chinese-learning in the US is 真可笑 (zhēn kĕ xiào), or very ridiculous and laughable. Yes, it's good that CNN is realizing Mandarin education is a growing trend, but the network could have gotten a better informed news team.
Apparently the Bush administration wants kids to learn "little-known languages such as Arabic and Chinese", so they grow up to forge better foreign relations. ("Little known" only to people that don't know Chinese is spoken by a fifth of the world's population.) The reporter also thinks you need to learn 500 characters to read a newspaper; the reality is closer to 3,000 or 4,000 characters. And being a sensationalistic network, they had to relate kids studying Chinese to "securing a nation in a post-9/11 world".
