In case you missed it, the Sunday New York Times ran a little-noticed but strangely brilliant piece on China's preparations for the big Olympic games--much of which involve a cartoon monkey named "Mocky":

Mocky is the poster monkey for the drive to have 35 percent of the population conversant in English by the Olympics. He originated in a textbook series called "Bingo!," used throughout Asia if not always beloved...

The textbooks are similar to those the students use to study Chinese. There are no proficiency levels, so the best students slide toward "average" competency. The questions ask students to repeat rather than analyze, evaluate or create. Isolated words are stressed over complete sentences, and students often cannot relate to the terms.

In fifth grade, children are introduced to the future tense. When I asked students to create their own sentences, they translated lessons from their Chinese classes. For a year, I heard student after student repeat: "Beijing will host the best Olympics. Chinese culture will attract the world deeply. We will win."

Mike Meyer, the author, lives just south of Tiananmen Square and has been teaching elementary school since 2005:

On the first day, I found blackboards decorated with chalked Olympic mascots, the five-colored rings and verses in Chinese:

The Olympics will be held in 2008
Our civic virtue must be great!
Spitting everywhere is really terrible
Littering trash is also unbearable
To get a "thumbs up" from foreign guests
Beijing's environment depends on us!

Sadly, some of Mocky's messages about China's greatness don't seem to be getting through. "When Mocky explores careers," Meyer writes, "he considers becoming a farmer, a doctor, a nurse, a pilot or a dancer...But when I asked my students about their aspirations, the first boy yelled, 'When I grow up, I want to be a foreigner!'"

Before we chuckle, however, one need look no further than the Department of Homeland Security--and its new official document, "Terminology to Define Terrorists"--for similar goofiness. Bret Stephens has the details in today's Wall Street Journal.