As a person who has done a good deal of research on ethnicity, language and education in mainland China, I think there are some things that I can contribute to the recent news on language protests among Tibetan students which might help people gain a more informed and nuanced view of the situation. I hope that you benefit from my tidbits.
Note: I tend to use the term minzu extensively when writing about ethnic situations in China. In short, minzu is a government-created category which does not correlate with either ethnicity nor nationality. Since it lacks an accurate English equivalent, I just use the term minzu untranslated. Further explanation available here, and a more academic treatment is available here.
P.R.C. is an incredibly linguistically diverse country. The highest number that I have seen myself states that China hosts over 200 distinct languages (Bruhn, Daniel. "Minority Language Policy in China, with Observations on the She Ethnic Group." May 20, 2008), and the linguistic challenge for minority minzu students can be immense. Students in minority areas often speak one (or sometimes more) minority minzu language(s), the local dialect of Chinese, the official Mandarin Chinese, and they also study English in school. In areas with more linguistic diversity (commonly in the southwest, but not unheard of in other areas) it is also normal for students to learn the languages of other nearby minzu. Taking in this linguistic challenge can be made even more difficult by the fact that the language seen by many people as the most important for the economic advancement of the students (Mandarin) is often one of the languages that is least used outside of the classroom. In minority areas it is common for a non-Mandarin Chinese language (commonly called dialects, or 方言) to be the lingua franca of the county or prefecture, or even for a non-Chinese minzu language to be used (Stevan Harrell’s book, Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China, touches on this in many ways). Present-day Mùlǐ County, for instance, hosts 18 ethnic groups—including Chinese, Tibetans, Yí, Nàxī, Miáo, Zhuàng, Bùyī and Lìsù, making for a highly linguistically and ethnically diverse location (Sangay, L. Education rights for Tibetans in Tibet and India, in Human rights: Positive policies in Asia and the Pacic Rim. J. D. Montgomery. Hollis: Hollis Publishing Company, 1998.). And do not doubt that Mandarin language ability is important for Chinese citizens to be successful. A Chinese citizen who speaks fluent Mongolian, Tibetan, Zhuang, or any other standard minority minzu language is going to be unable to get an education, and will have a difficult time getting a good job in a Chinese company. For a particularly personal and touching story on linguistic success and failure and the consequences for learning one’s traditional culture to the neglect of the majority han’s culture, see Bulag, Uradyn. "Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China." American Anthropologist 105, no. 4 (2003): 753.763
A standardized test is required to pass from elementary school to junior high school in China. This examination is composed of information chosen by the government as a part of the nation-wide education that all Chinese citizens are supposed to receive. This includes the ability to use the Mandarin language. Needless to say, taking a standardized test in a non-native language is very challenging, so without excellent skills in Mandarin a student is unlikely to be able to advance to the next level of schooling. Unfortunately, relatively few minority minzu students advance, and “of the Tibetan children who enroll in elementary school, less than 10% will go on to junior high school.” (Sangay, L. Education rights for Tibetans in Tibet and India, in Human rights: Positive policies in Asia and the Pacic Rim. J. D. Montgomery. Hollis: Hollis Publishing Company, 1998.) Another test is required to get into high school, and yet another for college. These successively harder examinations are a major reason, although by no means not the only reason, why so few minority minzu students advance academically.
To further complicate matters , the P.R.C.’s minzu category of Tibetan encompasses multiple distinct (by self-identification) ethnic and linguistic groups. This is not unusual in China, as many minzu groups contain multiple languages and groups of people who consider themselves somehow different from other people in the same minzu group. In the Tibetan minzu, there are people who natively speak various Qiangic languages, such as Nàmùyì, Minyak (Mùyǎ), Ěrgōng, Ěrsū, rGyal-rong (Jiāróng), Prinmi (Púmǐ) and Guìqióng. Aside from languages, ethnic/cultural (definitions get tricky, so I am purposefully broad with the terms) identification of people in the Tibetan minzu is also diverse. “The Tibetans of Shuǐluò County alone can be further subdivided into a dialect related to the Tibetan dialect continuum on linguistic grounds): (1) Khams Tibetans (speaking a dialect belonging to Khams Tibetan group); (2) Prinmi Tibetans (speaking the Prinmi (Qiangic) language); (3) Xùmǐ Tibetans (Shǐxīng, Qiangic) and (4) Bùláng Tibetans (speaking the western dialect of the Ěrsū (Qiangic) language)” (Chirkova, Katia. "Between Tibetan and Chinese: Identity and language in Chinese South.West." Journal of South Asian Studies 30, no. 3 (2007): 405.417.) There are also people classified in the Tibetan minzu who disagree with this classification, such as the baima people. Reclassification as a different minzu is very difficult though, and creation of a new minzu is unheard of, and therefore practically impossible. I make this point because even if the local, provincial, or Chinese government decided to teach a large amount of school classes in the official Tibetan language, there would still be many people who would be left out. If 80% of the school’s students are native speakers of Tibetan language X, and the remaining 20% of the school’s students natively speak Tibetan languages Y, Z, W, and V, that is a microcosm of the language-focused struggle which seems to be going on at the moment. The extremity of the “people should be educated in their own language” view’s solution would likely be to have each distinct language group having it’s own school, but that involves massive segregation. Things get a little more complicated than Tibetan’s-who-want-to-preserve-their-culture versus Chinese-government-which-wants-to-standardize everything when you look a little deeper, eh?
And finally, to try and put things in perspective, the purpose of national education is to unify a country’s people in thought, and to give a common identity. The United States certainly does a far worse job than China in providing minority language learning materials. Japan barely even recognizes the ethnically non-Japanese people which live inside Japanese borders, and at least in the case of ethnically Korean people, it seems that Korean culture can be learned in public schools in China to a far greater extent than it can in Japan (Min, Pyong G. "A Comparison of the Korean Minorities in China and Japan." International Migration Review 26, no. 1 (1992): 4.21). Although the idealist in me is certainly not pleased by it, linguistic “flattening” (Friedman would be so proud of me!) is a norm of the globalized world. Ability to speak the Irish language (commonly called Gaelic) has been reduced greatly, and I suspect one of the reasons is that English is so much more useful nowadays. Flemish speakers in France want their children to learn French and leave Flemish behind, because skill with use of the French language is seen as a tool of social advancement, while skill with use of the Flemish language is seen as something which restrains social and economic progress. I bet that the small number of Iroquois people fluently speaking the Iroquois language in the United States is partially due to the greater usefulness of English in the U.S.. (note that the previous few sentences are full of untested assumptions. I think that these are logical and reasonable assumptions, but I have not researched the Flemish, Irish, or Iroquois language extensively, so if you have evidence to prove me wrong, please show it to me.) Similarly, minority minzu parents in China will sometimes push their child toward Mandarin so strongly that it involves a conscious decision to push their child away from their traditional minzu language. Minority minzu individuals often have very strong motivation to learn Mandarin and understand han culture. No non-han person in China is going to earn respect, a good salary, a good position and a good life in a han environment without understanding the han language and culture. The following analogy speaks concerning this idea: Dru Gladney met a Hui Hajji who spoke fluent Persian and Arabic, had lived in the Middle East for twelve years and was a master of Islamic Natural Sciences. Despite this, the Hui Hajji claimed that he “had no culture.” (1999d. "Making Muslims in China: Education, Islamicization, and Representation" In China's National Minority Education: Culture, State Schooling and Development. Gerard A. Postiglione, ed. New York: Garland Press. Pp 55-87.) (As a side note, I do consider it perfectly possible to earn respect of a community and to live a good life in a non-han environment. I have no doubt that many non-han people are able to be happy an enjoy themselves in an environment in which they have very little contact with han culture. I know of numerous foreigners living in China who do exactly this.) Parents often see Mandarin language skill as a vehicle for social and economic advancement, and adopting Chinese culture is often seen as one of the primary methods for advancing one’s socioeconomic status. (Bruhn, Daniel. "Minority Language Policy in China, with Observations on the She Ethnic Group." May 20, 2008.) Due to people’s desires for their children to live a better life, and the perception that the best way to a better life in through economic advancement, “There is almost certainly nothing that can be done to maintain ancient cultures intact and unchanged” (Time to reconsider the meaning of “autonomy”).
Note: If you are interested in reading of the papers or articles that I references here, just let me know via email and I can send them to you.
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