Is there any good way to find like an online class or something that could recreate that experience? I do not want to try to self-teach a language, that sounds awful lol

  • Pluto [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    I took a great Chinese class back when there were Confucius Institutes in my area.

    Then they shut them all down and, in a year, they were basically dead or dying (mostly dead a.k.a. gone from the scene).

    It’s… honestly kinda amazing what happened.

    And nobody really talks about it, it seems.

    • I think about it a lot. as a naive, younger early career academic, the institute was my conceptual escape hatch. their offers for studying in mainland China were incredible and I thought, like a dumbass, “well if things really go teats up here with Bernie, I can make a play.”

      it was insane how rapidly they were severed from every R1 campus in favor of massive DoD grants and the institutional silence in the wake continues to fill me with dread.