From Dislocated to Local: Policy Implications of “Educational Aid for Tibet”

ABSTRACT

Considered a major ethnic policy aimed at providing “intellectual aid for Tibet”, the interior Tibet schools have recruited more than 100,000 primary school graduates to undertake secondary education in China’s developed cities. This kind of dislocated schooling, although purportedly offering better pedagogy, has been criticised for jeopardising the local educational ecology in Tibet and disconnecting Tibetan students from their families and home communities. Some claim the downplaying of the Tibetan language and culture in these schools implies an assimilatory agenda. Yet the interior Tibet school system, with its primary goal of promoting national unity, has also cultivated a group of culturally and politically conscious Tibetan elites. In order to address these concerns, a localised version has emerged with the establishment of Tibetan schools in the regional capital of Lhasa and the importing of Han teachers from interior cities. Some have praised this new hybrid model, but my interviews with Tibetan teachers working in these schools reveal complicated uncertainties over this policy diversion. By comparing the aid politics of the two different models of dislocated minority education, this article highlights the importance of integrating indigenous voices into the policy process, especially if the state wants to sustain its educational programs for Tibetan students.

KEYWORDS:

• Interior Tibet schools
• local interior Tibet schools
• educational aid for Tibet
• social institutionalism
• ethnicity
• China
• Tibet

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Michael Barr, Yangbin Chen, David Hundt, James Leibold, Anne Platt, Lin Yi, Zhenjie Yuan and the external reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions at different stages in the writing of this article.

Notes

1. In this article, I adopt my informants’ words and use “Tibet” and “the TAR” interchangeably because they often refer to Tibet as the TAR.

2. Over the years, many incremental changes have occurred. In 2002, a sancha policy was implemented in ordinary interior Tibetan schools. Sancha means that a small percentage of excellent Tibetan students are placed in classes with local Han students, rather than in Tibetan classes.

3. This is different from the sent-down “educated” youth (zhiqing), who left the cities willingly or under coercion to live and work in the countryside. The majority of them had received elementary to high school education.

4. The Eighteenth Army Corps of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army went to Tibet in 1951 and was the main force in the so-called “peaceful liberation of Tibet”. It was regrouped into the “Tibet Military District” in 1952 and remained in Tibet thereafter to participate in local social development.

5. This means that these aid-Tibet cadres have not contributed to Tibet, but rather have taken advantage of Tibet for job promotion, an improved income, their children’s education, and so on.

6. This refers to a popular phenomenon whereby many aid-Tibet cadres choose to go to Tibet in the summer (when the weather is good, neither hot nor cold) and leave in the winter (when the weather is very cold). This sentiment reflects Tibetans’ resentment of Han cadres for what they consider their selfish attitude.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Sciences Foundation, China (Project Number 15CSH039).