Stanford Chinese School

Stanford Chinese School is a Chinese school that holds classes on Saturdays in the N building. It was founded in 1994 by Ma Liping on the Stanford University campus but moved to Gunn in 2001. The students occasionally leave Chinese vocabulary cards, 30 mm squares of card stock with a Chinese word printed on them, lying around.

Curriculum

Dr. Ma designed her own curriculum, which is made for "heritage Chinese speakers" (i.e. people who speak Chinese in the household), for the school. This is obvious because both the school and the curriculum's website are mainly in Chinese. Students read various texts both Chinese and western, including Chinese idioms, stories about Afanti, and "The Last Lesson" by Alphonse Daudet. This curriculum is also used in other schools including local afterschool Mustard Seed.

Another local afterschool, Acme (which is located at the Cubberly Community Center), uses a curriculum similar to this one, following the same basic structure of instructional texts and homework assigned weekly. However, the texts are rather shallower and more sanitized, talking mainly about occurrences like the first day of school, going to a bookstore, and going to the airport. Also, the curriculum may be described as communist Chinese propaganda, including texts glorifying Chinese Hong Kong while painting British Hong Kong in an unfavorable light, and a text about Mount Everest stating of its geographic location only that it is part of China.