Bilingual Education in Chinese Minority Ethnic Groups

Practices of local government

 Although most Chinese government officials have realized the importance of bilingual education for minority ethnic groups), there are still some discrepancies between how bilingual education is thought of and how it is enacted. Such discrepancies are due to a poor awareness of the essence of bilingual education. The essence of bilingual education includes attention to minority languages and the integration of minority people into mainstream culture. To be more specific, in the local government, some Han officials’ prejudice and backward ideas hinder the development of bilingual education and the enactment of official policy. Some people hold the opinion that the goal of bilingual education is to help people to be proficient in Mandarin. Some government officials regard Han language and culture as civilized, while they interpret minority languages and cultures as uncivilized (Nima, 2001). Furthermore, some people think that learning Mandarin may degenerate the social function of minority languages and that bilingual education should focus on minority languages. Actually, these views are partial and extreme, and we can see that government officials’ understanding of bilingual education lacks depth and is not comprehensive.