Outside Curriculum of Ethnic Minorities in Rural and Northwestern China

• In Event: Outside Curriculum—Necessary for Public Education: Dreaming Possibilities, Starting With China

Abstract

These presenters are professors who live in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, which lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east with the Northern Silk Road along the Yellow River passing through Southern Gansu. The Gansu Province is populated by 54 of China’s 55 ethnic minority groups. The university is in Lanzhou, a city located about 1500 km west of Beijing. The university was formed during the Japanese invasion of Beijing during World War II, and many faculty members from Beijing Normal moved west to Lanzhou to start Northwest Normal University. Some returned to Beijing Normal after the war and others remained to sustain and develop Northwest Normal University. Gansu province is long and narrow geographically, and many of the students are from diverse rural ethnic minority cultures with unique linguistic and cultural practices. A centralized standardized curriculum cannot reach students from such a diverse range of backgrounds, orientations, and concerns. That is a major challenge for professors who want to facilitate education in schools in the rural areas, in diverse urban populations, and with those from many ethnic minority groups who come to the university to become teachers. Each of these teacher candidates has unique cultural and linguistic backgrounds, practices, concerns, and orientations. A central dilemma is how to provide education that is beneficial to all, a problem accentuated by educational authorities who establish curriculum without knowing needs and interests of minority groups and cater to the interests of the corporate state. Minority populations are rarely involved in educational or curricular decision-making about what is worthwhile. A key question that this presenter will bring to the table focuses on the need to centralize or decentralize curriculum decisions. If they are decentralized, there is more opening to build on perspectives students gain from their outside curriculum. If it is centralized it is possible that students’ outlooks could become more cosmopolitan.

The presenters will advance consideration of benefits and costs of involving members of ethnic minority groups in deliberations about what is worthwhile, the basic curriculum question. Clearly, discussion will flow around matters of whose knowledge counts, who benefits, who is harmed, who decides, and who should decide basic curriculum matters, as Michael Apple (1979; 1999) has urged curriculum workers to keep in mind? Could outside curriculum be relevant to these ethnic minority students and teachers in ways that Paulo Freire (1970; 1998) has advocated in Brazil and throughout many parts of the world? Should we harken to the caveats of Joao Paraskeva (2011; 2015) to beware of epistemicide and the value of itinerant curriculum theory? Clearly, these are questions that could be addressed in discussions at this session.

Authors

• Mingren Zhao, Faculty of Education, Northwest Normal University

• Zelin Li, Northwestern Normal University

• Ye Zhou, Northwestern Normal University, Lanzhou, China