Teaching of Chinese language

I met someone recently who come from a family with a strong background in Chinese education. He spoke strongly against the new method of teaching Chinese using Pinyin. The students focused too much in Pinyin and did not pay sufficient attention to the Chinese writing. He said that this approach would destroy the Chinese language and culture. According to him, this view is shared by many Chinese language teachers.

He further remarked, "Just because some elites have children who are not able to cope with Chinese, they are now changing the system to suit their own purpose!" This is a strong statement, but I sense that there is probably some grounds for this belief. To avoid this type of feeling, it is best that these types of issues should be openly discussed. It is bad for decisions to be taken by a few elites, making the other people feeling left out.