Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Date: 18 Sep 2011 By: Kalsang Wangdu Comment: 7 Introduction In October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed establishment of the Peoples Republic of China, and a year later Peoples Liberation Army occupied Tibet. Since then, Tibetans became a part of Chinas 55 ethnic minorities. In Tibet, mass modern education started after the Chinese takeover. However, education in Tibet suffered tremendous setbacks during 1960s and 1970s due to the continued Tibetan resistance against Chinas rule and the excesses during Maos Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). For example, Tibetan language was put into the category of what was being conceived as four olds, and was temporarily banned in schools (Tournadre, 2003). Even after the post-1980 revival, education in Tibet continues to problematic as reflected in the October 2010 Tibetan students protests against the Chinese government plan to change medium of instruction into Mandarin in Qinghai Tibetan areas where instruction is being carried out in Tibetan language in some of the secondary schools. Against these backdrops, this paper analyzes and unpacks one of the least studied aspects of education in Tibet the establishment of secondary classes and schools for Tibetan students in Han-majority provinces since 1985, and its impact on Tibetan students from a social justice education perspective.
Education in Tibet and nation-building project Tibet is one of the most backward regions of China in terms of economic condition and level of educational attainment. In order to uplift the state of education and more so with the aim to legitimize it rule (Wang & Zhou, 2003), the Chinese government adopted many affirmative actions called as preferential policies (Ch. Youhui zhengce) and spent a huge amount of
money, especially after the 1980s. These preferential policies included sanbao or the three guarantees policy of providing free food, clothing and lodging for children at school starting from 1984; inland secondary classes and schools for Tibetan primary graduates called neidi xizang ban policy in 1985; bilingual education (although it remain largely rhetorical); ethnic minority teacher training, etc. There is no denying the fact that Tibet experienced substantial economic and educational developments in the last few decades. But the growth and development has seldom benefited the ethnic Tibetan people. Andrew M. Fischer (2005) calls it exclusionary growth, and resulted in further alienation of the Tibetans in Tibet. Opportunities presented by the modernization in Tibet are being availed by millions of Chinese migrants, and Tibetans found themselves increasingly left out from the exploits. Due to historical conflict between the Chinese state and Tibetan since takeover in 1950s, and the perceived threat of separation, Catriona Bass (2005) argues that the primary goal of education for Tibetans, as for all Chinas minority nationalities, has been to encourage patriotism towards China and to foster a sense of nationhood. Thus the Chinese government uses school curriculum to create and recreate Tibetan ethnicity through a highly selective rendering of elements of Tibetan culture, history and religion to reposition it in the Chinese national context (Bass, 2005). Despite the constitutional provisions, there is a lack of political will to pursue genuine bilingual education rooted in Tibetan language and a more culturally relevant curriculum. While in the Han provinces, due to the recent economic upsurge and the loss of CCPs ideological fervor, the ideological content of the curriculum may have diminished; but in troubled ethnic regions like Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, because of historical conflicts and distinct cultural forces, a particular blend of patriotic and ideological education is likely to continue in the future. Thus the dislocated Tibetan secondary education should be seen largely in the context of nation building project. Making Tibetans in China dislocated secondary education One of the important elements of nation-building project in Tibetan education has been the sending of Tibetan students to Han-dominated provinces. In 1985, the Chinese government started a practice of sending a large number of Tibetan primary school graduates to inland secondary classes and schools (Ch. neidi xizang ban) in 19 provinces outside Tibetan regions under the banner of intellectual aid scheme (Ch. zhili yuanzang). From 1985 to 2001, around 23,560 Tibetan primary school graduates attended these inland schools (Postiglione et al., 2004). It is estimated that around one third of Tibet Autonomous Regions students who enter secondary education attend these inland classes and schools (Bass, 2005), and one can assume that it comprises a high percentage of Tibets top ranking primary graduates. The government discourses dwell heavily on the success of this policy and commend the benevolence of the Central government and the inland provinces (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000; China Tibet Information Center, 2010). As a result, this practice was later extended to other ethnic minority like Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang in 2000. It is indeed quite a spectacle that the inland provinces would be brought in to provide educational aids to Tibetan students. Student cohorts who are selected for the inland Tibetan schools generally attend seven years of secondary schooling comprising one year of preparatory class to brush up their Chinese
language, three years of junior secondary education, and three years of senior secondary education (Postiglione, 2009). Expenses are borne jointly by the TAR and the respective provinces, and facilities in these schools are much better than those in Tibet. But the prospect of availing free and better educational facilities comes at a heavy cost erosion of native language and culture. Analysis Tibets remoteness, lack of infrastructure, and difficulties in getting qualified teachers are important factors in justifying inland secondary schools for Tibetan. However, the official documents rather explicitly state that the establishment of inland secondary schools for Tibetan is not only a political task but also a strategic decision. Documents like Rules for the implementation of inland Tibet classes/schools management issued in 1994 stipulated that the inland Tibetan secondary schools: should develop qualified secondary graduates for Tibet, who are supposed to support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, love socialism, persevere in state unification, persist in ethnic unity, dedicate themselves to the socialist cause (as cited in Zhu, 2007. p. 98). Thus the physical dislocation is itself an important aspect for achieving this political objective of education. Attempt at assimilation, if not indoctrination, is by and large clear from the curriculum of the inland Tibetan secondary schools. The presence of Tibetan culture in inland schools both manifest and hidden curriculum is rather symbolic. For example, in a week, out of 34-43 periods Tibetan students attend depending upon their grade level, only 4-5 periods cover Tibetan language and rest of the curriculum is identical to mainstream Chinese schools (Zhu, 2007). These students are also subjected to ideological or moral education classes and co-curricular activities which comprises of themes relating to unification of the state, loving the Communist Party, and emphasis that Tibet is inseparable part of China. Similarly, by rule these students, aged between 12-14 years at the time of selection, are not allowed to return to Tibet even during summer or winter vacation until they complete four-years of junior secondary school and three years of senior secondary school. By virtue of their isolation, they cannot attend any religious activities or pray at monasteries (Postiglione et al., 2004). The overall effect on identity formation is difficult to say, as in many cases dislocation often heightens ethnic consciousness. However, by the time they return to Tibet after seven years of isolation, these secondary graduates are generally bereft of their culture. Around half of them become teachers in Tibet (Postiglione, 2009), and thus possibly help in perpetuating the current state of education that gives primacy to the Mandarin Chinese and Han culture. Thus inland Tibetan schools policy must be seen in the light of what Foucault (cited in AbuLughod, 2002) called as technologies of citizenship that seeks to constitute and regulate citizens by rendering life governable, and entail power relations that are both voluntary and coercive. For the Chinese communist state, this Han-hegemonic education for minorities is an important apparatus for engendering new modes of subjectivity and a sinicized Tibetan
self. An interesting parallel to this can be seen other colonial conditions. When British first introduced modern education in India in 1830s, Lord Macaulay in his famous Minute declared that the education system is intended to produce a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect, and that this class will assist the English in ruling over the vast tract of the Indian sub-continent. The segregated inland secondary schools for Tibetans can be understood from the perspective of reproduction theory. Writing from a Marxist perspective, Michael W. Apple (2004) argues in his book Ideology and Curriculum that education is a political act, and to highlight latent ideological and political nature of education, he rephrased Spencers famous question of what into whose knowledge is of most worth? (p. xix). He stressed the relationality between knowledge and power in the society. In a similar vein, Bourdieu (1990) developed the concept of cultural capital that is the prior linguistic and social competencies over middle class culture and argues that the school education is all about cultural reproduction of the existing social order. Schools play a primary role in the selection, distribution and perpetuation of the cultural capital of the dominant groups, and the reproduction is achieved through formal corpus of school knowledge compiled in both manifest and hidden curriculum. According to Apple (2004), schools create and recreate forms of consciousness or commonsense that enables social control without dominant groups having resort to overt mechanisms of domination. The cultural capital of the dominant group and the internalization of hegemony by both oppressor and the oppressed result in the employment of categories which blame the victim, the child, rather than the school or society which has laid the conditions for failure. Conclusion Despite the good facilities, increase in literacy rate and greater scope for high-status employment after graduation, the states hyper-political agenda and the oversight of ethnic language and culture has put the Tibetan students in general and inland Tibetan secondary school students in particular at receiving end. It can be argued that there is a burden of acting-Chinese on Tibetan students, as they have to learn everything Chinese to be qualified as good citizens of the country and avail social and economic success. John Ogbu (2004), in his seminal studies on education of African-American students, has described this burden as Acting white. In the case of inland Tibetan secondary school students, ethnic segregation and impact integration has resulted in loss of native language and heritage (Postiglione, 2009). The cultural, political and economic discourses surrounding contemporary China played significant role in constructing minority education as means of teaching primarily about national integration, citizenship, and values. However, mainstream approaches to teaching about citizenship have served to reproduce a stratified and inequitable racial and language hierarchy and a narrow mono-cultural model of what it means to be Chinese (Hong, 2010). Educators have recognized the importance of native language and culturally relevant curriculum on the academic achievements of the student. Furthering socio-cultural perspectives on curriculum and learning, Oakes and Lipton (2007) postulated that the knowledge is constructed in a multiple ways, and that knowledge becomes meaningful in context of childs life. They argue that students are not blank slates and come to school with funds of knowledge and cultural competencies (p.198). The childs community and local
milieu form the primary social context in which learning takes place, and in which knowledge acquires its meaning. Neito (2010) also argues that there is a complimentary relationship between culture, language and learning, and suggests that culturally responsive education, based on using students cultures can serve as anathema to cultural discontinuities. Thus there is a dire need to reorient the curriculum of Tibetan schools, including inland Tibetan secondary schools to make it more meaningful to the Tibetan students. One of the central issues in the government discourse on minority education (and particularly about inland Tibetan schools) is national unity and stability. Chinese educational policies and practices in Tibet are deeply influenced by the circumstances of historical conflict between the two parties since the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1950. Education is the states primary apparatus for fostering national integration, and therefore to counter ethnic Tibetan nationalism, the Chinese government slams down hard on unique Tibetan identities such as its language and religion. This has resulted in exclusion and marginalization of Tibetan culture (such as religion and language) and even maligning them in the school curriculum as backward. Bass (2005) wrote, in contrast to the veneration given to Chinese historical figures in the textbooks, Tibetan cultural and historical figures are largely ridiculed, condemned or presented as quasi-folkloric characters (pp. 440-441). Yet to the governments dismay, it hasnt diminished the ethnic nationalism, but rather increased alienation and sense of exclusion. It is quite evident from the Tibetan and Uyghur experiences that the segregation, cultural exclusion, ideological education and mainstreaming seldom results in national integration. On the contrary, it has led to protest and unrest that threaten the national unity. Massive uprisings in Tibet and Uyghur regions in 2008 and 2009 respectively, and Tibetan students protests in 2010 are cases in point. The current version of bilingual education can at best be described as subtractive bilingualism when learning a second language means losing the first (Nieto, 2010). In the long run, a more culturally relevant education could in fact bring the minorities closer to the Chinese nation and promote unity in diversity. Thus, a genuine bilingual education rooted in minority language and culture could be the true panacea for Chinas minority educational problem. The success story of Chungba School in Lithang county (eastern Tibet), established by a Tibetan NGO based in United States, shows this possibility. The Chungba School became one of the first schools in the county to adopt Tibetan language as the main medium of instruction while teaching Chinese and English as second and third languages and also adopted community-based approach to education. The school topped Lithang county exam, even outdoing Chinese students in Chinese language exam (Machik, 2008). This shows that Chinas ethnic groups can preserve their culture and language while at the same time acquire equivalent proficiency in the national language Mandarin Chinese. There are ample evidences to show that the ethnic minorities fully recognize the importance of learning Mandarin Chinese (Anaytulla, 2008; Nima, 2008; Ojijed, 2010). Thus even in a system of a bilingual education rooted primarily in minority language, the Mandarin Chinese will naturally gain high place, almost at par with the first language due to economic and demographic reasons. So, the fears of minority groups not being conversant in Mandarin Chinese can be kept at bay. Consequently, a bilingual education
rooted in minority language and more culturally relevant education seems the best option for both the government and its ethnic minorities. The inland Tibetan secondary schools can truly serve Tibetan students as well as the state only if the facility provided by the state is complimented by more a culturally relevant curriculum.