Tibet/ Tibetan autonomous region (TAR)

བོད་རང་སྐྱོང་ལྗོངས།

 

Tibet is in the southeast of China and its capital city is Lhasa. The central government considers this large minority group very important, and attaches more importance to bilingual education in this region. I want to explore what bilingual education looks like in Tibetan autonomous region (TAR), so I conducted an interview with one of me college classmates from Tibet. During the interview, my classmate told me he only spoke Tibetan before he went to primary school, and he began to learn how to write Tibetan from the first grade of primary school. He also told me that they began to learn Mandarin as a second language in the third or fourth grade. Therefore, we can see that his mother tongue is Tibetan and the medium of instruction is Tibetan when they are in primary school. In the higher grades of primary school students begin to also learn Chinese. But he told me there is not a consensus on which grade to start Chinese courses, which is partly why students’ Chinese proficiency varies a lot when they graduate from primary school. In middle school, the language of instruction switches to Chinese， just like French-immersion programs in Quebec. The sudden switch causes confusion and difficulties for minority students. My friend told me it took him a long time to get used to this teaching mode. However, when students are confused about the teaching content teachers will explain in Tibetan. Chinese has been paid much attention in the bilingual education in Tibet since many Tibetan students began to learn Chinese as their second language in primary school. However, my friend indicated that Han students do not need to learn Tibetan. In the end, he also mentioned that bilingual education in Tibet is confronted with unbalanced development. In some remote villages, especially in the southern parts of Tibet, bilingual education is not as glorious as we expected.

 

Also, by reviewing literature, some phenomenon of bilingual education in Tibet are worth noticing.

As we mentioned in the history part, during the Cultural Revolution, minority languages and cultures were under attack. After the turmoil, the government spent a lot of money rebuilding monasteries that were destroyed or damaged during the Cultural Revolution, while the number of monks also increased significantly. Eventually, the old autocracy and senior monks with strong links to traditional Tibetan culture regained high status in Tibetan society and once again exerted strong influence over political discourse. (Ma, 2013) They advocated for the strengthening of Tibetan language study and traditional Buddhist culture, and their efforts led to adjustments in school language instruction during the late 1980s. Correspondingly, the curriculum design in primary school was changed and students now had to learn Mandarin in the fourth grade. However, there is always debate on the curriculum design and when to start Mandarin course.

 

Because of the dispute on when to learn Chinese in primary school, Tibetan primary school students’ Chinese proficiency varies a lot. But recently, the percentage of education that junior-middle and high school students receive in Chinese increased to 80 and 89.4 percent respectively (Ma, 2013). The language gap between primary and middle schools remains an important factor, as students’ lack of proficiency in Chinese may cause high dropouts rates in junior secondary school, which decreases the learning potential of many students (Postiglione, 2008).

 

Many Tibetan parents’ ideas towards bilingual education have changed now. Some of them refuse to send their children to the Tibetan schools; instead, they prefer to send their children to schools where Mandarin is the main instructional language. Among the reasons they gave, these parents included the limitation of the Tibetan language in work, business and learning modern science and technology (Ma, 2013).

 

“Inland Tibetan Classes” (Ma, 2013) is another interesting phenomenon, and this kind of class is very attractive to Tibetan families. The desire to learn Putonghua and attend an “Inland Tibetan Class” has become an important factor motivating many Tibetan parents to send their children to Putonghua teaching schools at the primary level.

 

This debate over instructional language in school and parents’ decisions on preferred school types reflect the different perceptions that exist within Tibetan society. Some Tibetan elites pay more attention to preserving their cultural traditions and insist on Tibetan language teaching in schools, whereas many ordinary Tibetans prefer Mandarin because it seems much more useful in getting more opportunities in jobs and education. Another phenomenon which is often discussed by Tibetans is that “most high-ranking Tibetan officials emphasize the importance of the Tibetan language in government meetings despite the fact that they send their own children to Han schools in nearby Chengdu, Sichuan Province” (Ma, 2013, pp. 8).

 

To sum up, even though bilingualism promotes Chinese as well as minority languages, the focus always tend to be on Chinese in that Chinese is the only official and legitimated language. Being able to speak Chinese gives people priority and advantages when finding jobs. We may find that bilingual education in Tibet seems to be unidirectional in that only minorities adjust to the majority by learning Mandarin, but there is no learning of minority languages on the part of the Han majority. In fact, bilingual education should be bidirectional. By learning Tibetan, people of Han nationality may better understand Tibetan language and culture and help Tibetans to maintain their heritage language and culture.