Learning Chinese in Danish schools

Danish directors and teachers from about 100 senior high schools came together in Aalborg, Denmark, to discuss the feasiblity of opening Chinese language courses. The problems are immense, as a study in Australia showed.
Australian language students receive some 500 hours of instruction. But the Foreign Service Institute in Washington DC estimates that it takes a native English speaker approximately 2,200 hours to become proficient in Chinese compared with 600 hours for French.
The standard of Chinese as a Second Language requires mastery of some 500 characters, which in China is Grade 1 primary. This does compete with the basic Chinese standard of 2,000 characters or more.
ScanAsia.com reported Carsten Boyer Thoegersen, head of Department China Task Force under the Danish Foreign Ministry, as saying, "The next generation need(s) to have the ability to communicate and compete."