A folk tale dating back to the Song dynasty about seven-year-old Sima Guang, who broke a clay water tank in order to save a playmate who had accidentally fallen in and was about to drown, has long been a classic in Chinese textbooks and is among the most-told stories of all time.
But while the wit and composure the little boy demonstrated in the face of an emergency have inspired millions of Han Chinese primary school pupils, teachers in some Tibetan-populated areas have had a harder time getting the message across.
'Teachers there are often piled with questions such as what is a clay water tank and how come a boy could fall into it,' said Teng Xing , a professor from Minzu University of China who specialises in ethnic minority education.
A clay water tank is still a basic feature in many rural Han households.
'It's not difficult to find the same inspiring folk tale in the rich Tibetan culture that is relevant to their upbringing,' Teng said. 'However, so far we haven't done that.'
The lack of localised textbooks is one of the issues Teng and his team have pinpointed in education policies in ethnic minority areas.
He said education policies in ethnic minority areas had mainly served the purpose of training people to be part of the urbanisation and industrialisation process through centralised selection mechanisms such as the national college entrance exams (gaokao).
