CityReads│Tibetan Class in 30 Years: Its Past, Now and Future
Tibetan Class in 30 Years:
Its Past, Present and Future
This study examines the origin and development of Tibet’s neidi schools and the perspectives of their graduates. We argue that the sustainability of the Tibet class over the longer term is less certain.
Postiglione, G. A., & Jiao, B. 2009. Tibet's relocated schooling: popularization reconsidered. Asian Survey, 49(5), 895-914.
Source:http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/123828/2/Content.pdf?origin=publication_detail
Some countries have removed indigenous children from their native communities and sent them to distant boarding schools such as the USA, Australia and Canada, where native children were sent and separated from their cultural heritage. And all those three countries have long discontinued this practice.
Thirty-five years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 20% of the children who graduated from primary schools in Tibet were sent to boarding schools in distant Chinese cities. This neidi schooling has continued for 30 years and remains popular not only with the Chinese government but also with most Tibetan parents and students.
Yet, little attention has been focused on the resilience of a policy that relocates the education of Tibetans to cities throughout China. The paper presents oral history data collected from graduates who experienced up to seven years of neidi schooling to bring a review of the origin, development, and prospects of neidi education for Tibet.
Origin and Development of
Tibet’s Relocated Education
It is generally accepted that neidi boarding schools are part of a long term strategy to build national unity and train talent for the economic development of Tibet and xinjiang Province. In 1907, a Manchu-Mongol high school was established in Beijing, and some children from Tibet were sent to study in the school’s Tibetan class. In 1909, Mongol and Tibetan elites set up a Colony School (Zhibian xuetang) in Beijing to access modern, rather than traditional, Chinese education for their children. This was a time when education in China became heavily influenced by Western ideas and students were being sent to Japan, America, and Europe. Although the Colony School was closed in 1912, the Nationalist government established a school in Beijing for Mongols and Tibetans in 1914 to"open up knowledge and enhance the culture of the Mongol and Tibetan peoples."In 1926, the school was closed; it moved to Nanjing the following year.
Communist Party Secretary Hu yaobang visited Tibet in 1980, the year of the First Tibet Work Forum in Beijing, Hu expressed his dismay, noted that education had not progressed well, and associated the previous 20 years of Beijing’s development efforts with throwing money into the Lhasa River. Hu pointed out that the amount of funding allocated to one school in Tibet was enough to establish two in China. In 1984, the State Council approved that mainland provinces and municipalities to establish schools and classes for Tibetans and for the TAR government to "select and recommend primary school graduates from ten to twelve years old. In 1985, 1,300 primary school graduates were sent to neidi China for junior secondary schooling.
The Beijing Tibet School, which became a complete secondary school with both junior and senior secondary levels, established its first class in 1987. In subsequent years, other cities established neidi schooling for Tibet. A 1993 government meeting called for continued long term support. The perceived success of the Tibet neidi schooling led to the establishment of similar schools in 2000, primarily for Uyghur students from Xinjiang.
Characteristic
Scale and Segregation
By the end of 2005, students from Tibet had attended neidi classes in 22 provinces and municipalities. By official estimates, they numbered 29,000 and would exceed 30,000 by 2008. About one-third of all neidi senior secondary school level graduates have been admitted to inland colleges and universities, and the proportion increases each year.
Some neidi schools catered only to students from Tibet, while others educated host-city students as well as those from Tibet. However, the latter schools conduct ethnically segregated education. Tibetan students study in separate classes, or sections of the campus. However, beginning in 1995, ethnic segregation eased slightly as the children of Tibet’s long serving Han cadres began to attend neidi schools.
Access：
Initially, neidi schooling was only open to Tibetans from the TAR who scored high enough on entrance examinations. This policy was later revised to mean that most students should be Tibetan, but some Menba, Luoba, and other official TAR minorities could also be recruited.
It remained as such until 1995, when the policy was changed to permit recruitment of students from Chinese cadre families in Tibet (jinzang ganbu zinu) in which either the father or mother have worked in the TAR over a long period of time. In 1995, 120 students were recruited from these cadre families, Cadre families can take advantage of the no-fee, free-board, superior urban facilities and teachers in the host neidi city, especially if they plan to remain in Tibet. However, when spread across all of the neidi junior secondary schools, the number of Han cadre children from Tibet was almost insignificant.
Cohorts：
From a chronological viewpoint, those in the early cohorts began with a preparatory year plus three years of junior secondary schooling. After that, a small number of graduates would be admitted to three years of senior secondary schooling, while most others continued their education in neidi vocational-technical classes for teacher training or skills training.
Later cohorts of neidi junior secondary school graduates were provided with more opportunities to study. For example, in 1994, there were 5,081 neidi junior secondary students, 2,041 students in neidi senior secondary specialized vocational schools, 1,062 students in neidi senior secondary teacher training schools, 866 in neidi regular senior secondary schools. A total of 563 were at neidi colleges and universities, mostly at three-year diploma programs.
More-recent cohorts include more students who skipped the neidi junior secondary preparatory year because primary education in Tibet had improved. The latest cohorts also include more students who completed their junior secondary schooling in Tibet and then went directly to neidi senior secondary schools. And an increasing number are admitted to four-year bachelor’s degree programs.
Language，Curriculum and Teachers
Though the Policy explicitly required that the teaching be mainly in the Tibetan language, the emphasis on Tibetan has rapidly decreased. With instruction delivered by qualified teachers recruited from the host city, most holding a bachelor’s degree or more. Few if any have visited Tibet.
The textbooks generally did not contain knowledge about Tibet. While all neidi schools follow the national curriculum, many teachers believe this to be unsuitable for Tibetans.
Campus Environment：
Neidi schooling also means a highly disciplined academic environment with heavy stress placed on political socialization and ideology. Religious practices are prohibited. However, schools carry representations of Tibetan culture. Such as architecture , sculptures, song and dance and dresses.
Campuses are self-enclosed, and students seldom leave the grounds. But off-campus interactions with local Chinese appear to intensify the students’ sense of their Tibetan identity.
Interpreting Neidi Schooling：
Before, During and After
BeforeThe traditional value of deference to parents still weighs heavily on most Tibetan children, and the final decision about attending relocated secondary schools rests with their parents. Nevertheless, the general willingness of children to attend these schools may also have some effect on parents’ considerations about sending them.
Tibetan secondary schools are located in the Tibet county seats, so in terms of lost household labor capacity and the cost for school fees and school accommodations, many family heads see little difference between sending a child away to board at a distant county school in Tibet or a neidi school in China. Some parents have come to view it as a safer bet than local county seat secondary schools for improving future life options.
Parents from rural and semi-nomadic areas have become concerned about their child’s experience in Tibet’s county level junior secondary schools, where dropout rates and opportunities to stray into trouble are higher. Although Tibet’s junior secondary schools continue to improve, they are still inferior to neidi schooling both in facilities and quality of instruction. Moreover, rural schools in Tibet might not provide their children with useful knowledge and skills for non-farm labor jobs, and the main reason being that neidi schools lead to non-farm/non-pastoral jobs and possibly cadre status.
As the neidi school policy moved toward its second decade, and the academic reputations of particular neidi schools rose in prominence, competition among neidi schools for TAR students grew. Exhibitions for parents were arranged in Lhasa. An increasing number of parents tried to gain admission for their children to the more prestigious schools, either through obtaining a higher examination score or via a self-paying arrangement. However, most families could not afford to send their children away to a neidi school unless the financial burden was carried by the government.
Initial adjustment brought its share of difficulties. The neidi school students not only have to adapt the difference in food and climate, but also the homesickness and emotional problems as well as language barrier. And the local dialect is also a big problem for them to understand in class.
Students were usually confined to the school grounds, except for a few hours of chaperoned shopping on Sundays. The school compensated for the educational disadvantages of confinement by organized outings to other schools, cultural events in the host city. Religious items were not permitted in school. The perspective conveyed at neidi schools was one that recognized religion as part of Tibetan cultural tradition but also a potential stumbling block to modernization and development.
It appears that the wide variety of interactions and experiences that Tibetan students had with other Chinese people actually strengthened their identity as Tibetans. Neidi graduates might comment that they "did not know a great deal about Tibetan history and culture," a statement that can also be viewed as a key component of their ethnic consciousness and identity construction. Some students believe their Tibetan language ability had been weakened but some also deem that neidi schooling provided a more liberal environment and boarder prespective.
Noted that although thousands of Tibetans have graduated from the neidi schools since 1985, none have been hired as teachers at those schools. That placed the neidi policy in question.
Many graduates said they wanted to go back home because they were taught to serve Tibet, to attend aging parents. And graduates also mentioned that they would be less competitive if they tried to remain in neidi to work. Graduation from a neidi school generally provides a path to stable employment in Tibet. Though the fenpei system has been gradually phased out and the unemployment rate of college students rise.
And it takes time to adjust even back to Tibet, such as the contradiction with local traditional conservation ideas, and the attitude about tradition culture.
Generally, the experience of studying in a neidi school and living in a neidi city reinforced their Tibetan cultural identity and made them want to work for their homeland. While on other hand, they found that neidi education left them with deficient Tibetan language skills and cultural knowledge.
Conclusion
Many graduates said they wanted to go back home because they were taught to serve Tibet, to attend aging parents. And graduates also mentioned that they would be less competitive if they tried to remain in neidi to work. Graduation from a neidi school generally provides a path to stable employment in Tibet. Though the fenpei system has been gradually phased out and the unemployment rate of college students rise.
And it takes time to adjust even back to Tibet, such as the contradiction with local traditional conservation ideas, and the attitude about tradition culture.
Generally, the experience of studying in a neidi school and living in a neidi city reinforced their Tibetan cultural identity and made them want to work for their homeland. While on other hand, they found that neidi education left them with deficient Tibetan language skills and cultural knowledge.
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