When Colby Porter began Mandarin classes in sixth grade in Syracuse, New York, he was studying alongside 20 of his peers. By his final year of high school, only two other students remained, and the school had fewer than 25 Mandarin learners in total.
Soon after he graduated in 2020, the programme was shut down entirely due to dwindling enrolments and budget cuts during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The situation at Porter’s school is not unusual in the United States and other countries in the Global…
