Anti-Poverty Movement through Education: A Comparative Study of American Indians and “Zhi Guo” Minority Nationality Groups in Yunnan Province

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: The challenges of approaching a sustainable minority education

Proposal

The complexity of overlapped minorities’ social context towards uncertain future tendency of culture, identity including language around the world. This paper aims to identify and compare two minorities’ common and different situations from US and China to gain the insight for their desired social-cultural development. The “Zhi Guo” ethnic groups in Yunnan Province are members of the 56 ethnic groups in China, and before 1949, remain in the social form of the primitive society. Although modern education system has been established, ‘Zhi Guo’ in the difficult living conditions with the lack of developmental ability, mother-tongue ability is the major factor. Recently, the lagging economy and education holding them as a deep poverty and the anti-poverty task is arduous（Zheng，Mao，etc.，2017; Nie, 2017）.
In March 2016, the government of Yunnan issued the policy "Yunnan Province's Poverty Alleviation Campaign for ‘Zhi Guo’ Ehinic Groups (2016-2020) ", which decided to use five years to remove poverty. Among six anti-poverty movement, the education-related projects ranked first, which including a series of measures to popularize the country's common language, implement free education, and strengthen rural school construction. More than half of the five-year plan passed by now，our research intends to focus on the implement of the project of“popularizing the country's common language”in Yunnan’s “Zhi Guo” ethinc groups. Through field research and document analysis, this study plans to explore what’s the effect of the“popularizing the country's common language” project, and to check out if the movement promotes educational development and community progress.
During the research process, we will conduct some limited comparative studies on the language education status of Yunnan “Zhi Guo” ethnic groups and the American Indians. Although there are huge differences in history, culture and ideology, American Indians and Yunnan “Zhi Guo” ethnic groups have similarly experienced the tremendous changes as a minority in the mainstream social culture. The same is true in the process of declaring war on poverty, both of which focus on education, especially on language education (Jon Reihner and Jeanne Eder, 1989). There has been enough research on the issue of anti-poverty and bilingual education for Indians (David. H. DeJong, 1993). For a long time, it has been difficult for Indians to get rid of the high illiteracy rate and poverty. The problem of Indian education is complicated. This is partly related to the unclear education sovereignty and their historical resistance to assimilation. But now the new trend of self-determination has emerged. (Robert Cooper and Jack Gregory, 1976; Thomas Clarkin, 2001)) These situations will provide a comparison for us to consider the education of ethnic minorities in Yunnan.
The main work of this research are:
1. Through field investigations, to figure out the specific measures for the implementation of the project of “popularizing the country's common language”.
2.To explore the changes in the usages of language in school teaching, and the daily life of school, family and community since the project has been implemented. (through questionnaires and interviews for 6 students, 6 teachers and 6 parents)
3.Through interviewing, to collect changes in students’ academic performance, and to survey the responses of teachers, students and parent to the project. All of these is to test whether the project contributes to the improvement of education quality and community progress to a certain extent, or, if there is some problem in it.
4.Through literature research, to explore the success and failure of Indian education, especially bilingual education and anti-poverty projects by education, and to find out the commonality and difference between Yunnan and the USA.
This research wants to discuss:
1.Does education, especially by mainstream language education, have an actual effect on anti-poverty?
2.In modern society, how to balance the function of government and minority autonomy? How to understand the contradiction and unity of Multiple education and education modernity.

Key words: Anti-Poverty; Language education; “Zhi Guo” ethnic groups; American Indians

Reference:
Zheng, W. & Mao, Z. (2017). Ding Meijun. Investigation on Skills Training for Farmers in “Straight” Ethnic Areas of Yunnan[J].Vocational and Technical Education,2017（36）.
Nie, Q. (2017). The Construction of Educational Support Service System for “The Directly-entering-socialism Ethnic Groups” in a View of Inclusive Education[J]. Journal of Adult Education of Hebei University, 2017(2).
Reyhner, J. & Eder, J. (1989). A History of Indian Education[M]. Billings, MT: Eastern Montana College,1989.

Author

• Yao Chen, Yunnan Normal University