Tibet Information Network News Update

TIN- London 6 May: The authorities in Tibet are to end the use of Tibetan as the sole language for education in primary schools and to introduce Chinese from the first year of schooling, according to an official announcement. The decision coincides with unconfirmed reports that the committee overseeing Tibetan language development has been closed down.

The announcement about the early introduction of Chinese in schools, which will be supported by many Tibetans for pragmatic reasons, also indicated that in some primary classes Chinese will replace Tibetan as the language of instruction.

The decision was described by a senior Party official as reversing part of a set of regulations on Tibetan language passed in 1987. The 1987 legislation promised to set up Tibetan-medium junior secondary schools in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) by 1993 and to have "most" university courses available in Tibetan shortly after the year 2,000, but these plans have not been implemented. The decision to begin bilingual education in primary schools implies that the 1987 policy may have been abandoned.

The change in primary education was announced on 17th April by Tenzin, a deputy secretary of the TAR Communist Party, during a meeting with the US Ambassador to China James Sasser, who was on a two day visit to the TAR.

The 1987 decision to "allow grade 1-3 boys and girls to be taught only in the Tibetan language will do no good to their children's growth", announced Tenzin, according to a Xinhua report. He described the 1987 policy as "impractical" and as "not in conformity with the reality of Tibet."

"Thus the regional government has reversed its decision made in 1987," Deputy Secretary Tenzin said. "As a result, both Tibetan and Chinese languages are being taught at school in the autonomous region," he told the US Ambassador. The report implies that some primary school teaching will now be carried out in Chinese.

"The US State Department would be concerned about such a ruling", a US Government spokesperson in Washington told TIN when asked about the report.

Until now Tibetan children have been taught in their own language from the age of six until they are 13, learning Chinese only from the age of nine. Those who go on to a middle school have to switch to Chinese medium for the rest of their school careers, other than in a few specialised Tibetan middle schools outside the TAR.

The mid-stream change in the language of instruction, a result of the non-implementation of the 1987 legislation, has led to widespread under-achievement among Tibetans in secondary and higher education.

Last year the Chinese authorities in Tibet unexpectedly ended four experimental classes in Tibetan-medium education in secondary schools. The Tibetan medium classes, which had been highly successful, were replaced with experimental classes in bilingual education in selected primary schools, where some classes are taught in Chinese and some in Tibetan.

The new announcement indicates that the bilingual experiment has become standard policy, so that education in primary schools in the TAR will now be carried out through Chinese as well as Tibetan.

In previous statements Deputy Secretary Tenzin, a former journalist and one of the few top leaders who is proficient in both Tibetan and Chinese, had supported the 1987 legislation which prioritised Tibetan language. Tenzin has responsibility for education and propaganda in the regional party committee, but may have been chosen to announce the change to deter him from distancing himself from any underlying policy shift.

Many Tibetans, including nationalists, accept the need to include Chinese from the first year of schooling because Tibetans now find it hard to get work or to progress in further education without proficiency in Chinese. But the description of the new decision as a policy reversal, plus references in the announcement to constitutional questions of law and local autonomy rights, suggests that the decision is part of a wider policy change on the language issue.

Language Committee "Closed Down" -

Since October 1995 the Tibet Communist Party is rumoured to have decided that the use of Tibetan language is linked to the pro-independence movement, overruling earlier arguments which held that Tibetan is essential for economic development and for the dissemination of government policies.

"The work relating to the Tibetan language is not only an issue of implementing policy, but is an important condition in leading the people on the road of prosperity through constructing Tibet's four modernisations, and it has great present and future significance," Tenzin told a meeting of the TAR Guiding Committee On Spoken and Written Tibetan in March 1993. "There was conclusive evidence that nothing could substitute the effect of using Tibetan language to raise educational quality and to improve the nationality's cultural level," he added.

The TAR Guiding Committee, set up to oversee implementation of the 1987 Regulations, was reported last week to have been disbanded late last year, according to an unofficial source. Senior staff on the Committee have been transferred to the Regional Translation Bureau, said the source.

Earlier reports had said only that the Committee had been downgraded from regional to county level. At least one regional level office - the TAR Agricultural Department - has closed down its translation section, according to a separate source, prompting concern that in the future some documents will be issued only in Chinese.

The "Regulations on the Study, Use and Development of the Tibetan Language" were passed by the TAR Congress in 1987 and promulgated in March 1989. The Regulations stipulated that by 1993 all new junior middle school students - those aged from 13 to 15 - should be taught in Tibetan; by 1997 most lessons in senior middle schools and technical secondary schools should be in Tibetan; and "after the year 2000" most lectures in tertiary institutions should "gradually" be in Tibetan, according to a Xinhua report in March 1989.

The Regulations also said that Tibetans must speak in Tibetan at important, large-scale meetings, that proficiency in Tibetan should be one of the qualifications for recruitment and promotion in government jobs, that by the end of 1990 all official communications should be written "primarily" in Tibetan, that all official seals, certificates and sign- boards must be written in both Tibetan and Chinese, and that the public should have the right to use Tibetan in judicial, procuratorial and police proceedings. Only the last two requirements have been implemented.

In July 1988 Tibetan was declared to be the official language of Tibet and in 1989 four experimental Tibetan-medium classes were established by the Panchen Lama in secondary schools in central Tibet. By 1995 the pass rate for students in the four experimental classes was twice that of Tibetan children learning in Chinese, and in the same year a report by the TAR Education Committee called for the gradual expansion of Tibetan medium education into rural secondary schools. The experimental project was dissolved in 1996 on the grounds that there was a general lack of teachers qualified to teach in Tibetan.

In his meeting with the US Ambassador, Deputy Secretary Tenzin noted that primary and middle schools in Tibet give lessons in the Tibetan language, and that official documents at all levels are written in both Tibetan and Chinese, as required by China's Law on Regional Autonomy of Ethnic Minorities. "The laws stipulate that China fully guarantees the rights of the ethnic minorities to inherit, use, and develop their own languages," he said.