As an Online Chinese School, at www.chinesesphere.com, we never debate about what to teach, simplified or traditional characters.  We teach them both for students who have the time and willingness to learn them.  I was born and raised in China during Cultural Revolution, and still manage to learn both forms of Chinese characters since I love to read ancient novels, all of them were written and published in Traditional Characters.

Many of our students from American and Europe prefer simplified version due to its simplicity, and ease to write.  Our teacher tries to point out the related traditional characters to our student so they are aware of characters’ origin and its artistically constructed form.  On the other hand, our students from Hong Kong and Japan, prefers to learn the traditional characters since that’s most of the textbook and print media uses.  We tend not to teach simplified characters to student learning in traditional format unless requested by students.

Learning Chinese Online has so much flexibility on what to learn, from whom to learn, and when to learn, it became a lesser issue of a debate in practice of what to learn and teach, simplified or traditional.  We still would like the interested party to read the debate to understand the issue in your own mind.  Enjoy learning with us, the best online Chinese school.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/