You can probably chalk this story up to, "Well, at least he had good intentions."

This fall, my son Tyler will be heading to high school. First off, I’m happy to say that our high school is rated academically as one of the best in the country. In fact, one of the reasons we moved to our school district was because of the high school. I’m also proud that my son will be heading into high school with the kind of grades he’ll need to prosper.

The only problem is, Chinese is not listed as one of the available languages for students as part of the language requirement.

Of course, my wife and I are biased. We are both Chinese American. Also, we both have businesses that require us to travel to China frequently. We both speak Chinese. My wife speaks it because she was born and raised in Taiwan. I speak it well, so long as the conversation doesn’t go beyond the weather and ordering food at any Chinese restaurant.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about my son.

During my last trip to Shanghai, I took a walk around the hotel where I was staying and happened to venture past a middle school … a school filled with kids leaving to head back home. All of the kids were about the same age as Tyler. As they walked by me, I couldn’t help but notice that each and every one of them had a textbook with the word "English" written on the side of it.

We all know how China has become an economic powerhouse and I’m sure everyone has read various stories and reports that show Chinese students are excelling in all areas of education, but particularly in math and science.

Now that they’re also all required to learn English, it makes one wonder how our kids back at home are supposed to compete.

So, being the good parent that I am, I took it upon myself to write a letter to the principal at our high school and share my observation of the situation and convey in no uncertain terms that our kids need to learn Chinese as seriously as those Chinese kids were learning English.

In the letter, I told the principal what I saw in front of that school and why we needed to add Chinese to the curriculum. Because I knew the school currently offered both Spanish and French, I first mentioned that Spanish certainly made sense given our proximity to Mexico. And while I said I would never push to eliminate French from the curriculum, as it is a beautiful language, I did say that I wasn’t sure how imperative it was to prepare our kids for the inevitable onslaught upon the U.S. that is the French economic juggernaut.

Despite my little dig at the French, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call from the principal just a few days later.

The principal, who was certainly pleasant enough, thanked me for sending the letter and said he agreed with everything in it. He said he would mention my letter at the next curriculum meeting and suggest that the students would indeed be better served if a course in the Chinese language were added as a curriculum option.

Bingo, right? I mean, what more could you ask for than that? I asked him to do something, and he said he would work on it. Case closed, right?

The problem is, I have a tendency to oversell things past the point where I already received someone’s agreement. I’m fortunate that there are few dead horses in our neighborhood because I would be the one standing over them, dutifully beating them.

If I recall, the rest of the conversation went on with me saying something like:

Me: Well, thank you so much. I’m glad to hear that. In fact, I think we’d really better hurry up because at this pace, not only do they get better math and science scores, but their kids will probably speak English better than our kids too! Um … I … uh … I wouldn’t be surprised if their science classes haven’t already figured out that nuclear fusion thing. The other day I saw a Chinese student levitating and he figured out how to do it with just a ball of string, pantyhose, and a pair of chopsticks!

Principal: Umm … OK. I’ll get back to you on that.

All right, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. But if you don’t agree with me on the whole Chinese language thing, I can give you a quadrillion reasons why I’m right.