Striving for sustainability of Tibetan social-cultural identity: A critical proposal from a private school in China

• In Event: Highlighted session: Rethinking learning sites, communities, and what is educationally valuable in Amdo and Kham Tibetan regions

Proposal

Indigenous peoples worldwide face the question of how to adapt to the forces of globalization and modernization while maintaining and developing their cultures and acquiring an education that is valued in contemporary societies. In Northwest China, Tibetans have been educated for over 50 years using standardized, centralized curriculum based on ‘universal’ scientific knowledge with no inclusion of local environmental or cultural knowledges. For example, Tibetan students study the nationally standardized curriculum, translated into Tibetan, which, since it is not grounded in local experience, is difficult for teachers and students alike to understand. At the same time, parents sometimes resist such curricula that they perceive as culturally deracinating, which can become doubly alienating in that they introduce modern, urban knowledge via Chinese language, but do not enable Tibetan children to participate in much of contemporary Chinese society. Such curricular emphases can interfere with the transmission of Tibetan language, knowledge, and culture, such that many children leave school with minimal proficiency in Mandarin Chinese and literary Tibetan. Moreover, compulsory education in boarding schools away from their home villages can damage connections to customs, culture, and sociolinguistic interaction patterns. Many children are prepared by such an education neither to live in their home areas nor to leave them. But recent education policy and school curriculum reform was developed in Tibetan areas in China that may permit the development of curricula at the village level that addresses both economic and cultural concerns that Tibetans have.

This paper takes Culturally Relevant Education as the theoretical framework to examine the challenge of sustaining Tibetan social-cultural identity in China, asking: What are the perspectives of stakeholders in Tibetan village on the process of curricular reform that is based on traditional Tibetan cultural knowledge, including traditional spirituality?

Through participatory action research on the process of curricular development at a private school, we examine changes in curricular content, delivery, and teacher development. This involves, for example: participation in village meetings about issues like education that affect the village, classroom observations and participation in teacher workshops to understand their perspectives on education in the village, focus-group discussions on indigenous knowledge, and individual interviews with different types of students – including those who have failed the national college entrance exam, leaving them in an ambiguous place in the village. We then seek to understand stakeholders’ reflections on the inclusion of the ‘new’ local Tibetan curriculum and its effect on their children’s general development as well as their experience of learning the national curriculum. Finally, stakeholders will be asked to participate in a dialogue on the possibility of developing their own village school curriculum based on indigenous knowledge, customs, oral literacy, and the spiritual traditions in their environment.

Such government supported village-based education initiatives have only recently begun in China, particularly in minority areas, and little research has been conducted in these sites which promise to shed light on how ethnic minorities conceptualize the sustainability of indigenous knowledge alongside an expanding national school system. Through our approach to studying local education reform as a case of social movements, this paper will contribute to knowledge of implementation of recent policy initiatives in rural Tibetan society, highlighting the importance of a culturally relevant education responsive to the perspectives of students and their community.

Authors

• Jidme Gyaltsan, Ragya Nationalities Vocational School, Qinghai

• Jia Luo, Yunnan Normal University