The growing English school business in China has a new player: Disney. Disney-owned schools that aim to teach English to Chinese children are opening throughout China. Oddly, Disney is going overboard to refute the obvious: that the schools will propagate Disney brand awareness among millions of children in a formerly closed marketplace.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Disney chairman Andy Mooney as insisting that "We never saw this as an effort to teach the Disney brand and Disney characters. We set out to teach Chinese kids English."
And yet, as the article also points out, the "schools" not only use a Disney-filled curriculum, but feature "stores" that "sell" (via "magic tokens" earned by children for good behavior) Disney products to children that are otherwise unavailable in tightly media-restricted China. And apparently, when it comes to language learning, children are introduced to very little English, in fact, as few as four new words per week (you know, like, "mermaid," "fairy godmother," "lightyear" and "beast").
It seems pretty obvious to me that Disney is trying to sneak into the Chinese media world through a back door and the corporation doth protest altogether too much that this is not the case.
However you feel about Disney or media in China, for that matter, it seems a shame that kids whose parents are paying for English lessons are perhaps getting princess lessons instead.
image: Disney, via www.online.wsj.com
