Tibetans look to HK for lessons in how to tackle language issues

Decades of grappling with the medium-of-instruction issue took Hong Kong on a long and tortuous road to where we are today. It is agreed that policy is to be driven by how best to improve learning, rather than by the job market.

It is unsurprising that in our 90 per cent Chinese society, most students learn best though the Chinese medium. Current policy is supposed to ensure the highest quality Chinese-medium instruction that schools can offer.

Meanwhile, schools are also supposed to strengthen their capacity to deliver English-language instruction to meet Hong Kong's world city aspirations.

Although new teacher benchmarking and student language assessment practices have met with some opposition, many consider this a worthwhile trade-off for quality learning.

The jury may still be out on the success or failure of Hong Kong's MOI policy, but it is futile to argue with the logic that learning quality takes priority and that most students will learn best through their native language.

LikeHong Kong, Tibet has been facing an MOI dilemma.

Though Chinese is the national language, 90 plus per cent of the region is Tibetan and only a small sector of the population use Chinese in daily life. Yet all Tibet's junior secondary schools declare Chinese as the medium of instruction.

This is somewhat like Hong Kong before 1997, when 90 per cent of the secondary schools declared themselves as English-medium schools.

While most of Hong Kong was urban and developed, most of Tibet is rural, nomadic and still relatively poor.

Consider Nyerong, for example, a nomadic area in northern Tibet where families move from winter to summer pastures to herd their yaks and sheep. The harsh weather (as low as minus 34 degrees Celsius in winter) necessitates that yak dung be used to heat classrooms most of the year.

Schooling with China's national curriculum began in a monastery in the 1960s, after which a community school was established. The low enrolment rate of 2 per cent rose to 11 per cent in 1980.

Today, six-year universal education has been achieved, authorities say, with Tibetan-medium primary school instruction; an amazing feat for such a poor remote nomadic community. This was accomplished by implementing the 'three guarantees' (fees, food, clothes), which means there are no school fees and children are provided with some food and clothing.

Second, financial support from the government is matched by China's Shenhua Company, a state-owned coal enterprise, and smaller funding comes from individual and religious donations.

Third, 60 to 70 per cent of the teachers in Nyerong come from other parts of the country and received their secondary education at boarding schools in urban China.

Fourth, all village schools (except two) were eliminated and merged into seven township primary schools. There is also a primary and a junior secondary school in the county seat.

Fifth, household heads have to put school before having their children tend livestock.

Sixth, many township schools are well resourced, with satellite dishes for distance education, paved basketball courts, classrooms that are safely constructed, a library and lit classrooms.

In these township schools, all teaching is in the Tibetan medium, except for Chinese classes that begin in primary one and English classes that begin in primary three. After primary six, all instruction switches to Chinese medium, regardless of student capability, and despite the dearth of teachers who are Chinese subject specialists.

As in pre-handover Hong Kong, some subject specialists who can speak Chinese are assigned to teach Chinese-language classes.

Nyerong's 99.9 per cent Tibetan school population gets few, if any, opportunities to speak Chinese in their communities, and few will ever leave Nyerong. Needless to say, the challenge is retention. Students drop out when the language switch to Chinese becomes impossible for them to handle.

Can Tibet learn from the experience of Hong Kong? In fact, the Tibetan regions of neighbouring Qinghai province have strengthened their Tibetan-medium junior secondary schools.

Leaders from Qinghai visited the University of Hong Kong and the Education and Manpower Bureau to learn how Hong Kong schools deliver instruction in two official but completely different languages.

Many Qinghai Tibetan students have the option of Tibetan-medium secondary schooling, with science textbooks in the Tibetan language and teachers specially trained to teach science subjects in Tibetan.

Hong Kong's experience may offer Nyerong an option. For junior secondary students capable of learning efficiently in Chinese, let them learn in Chinese. For the others, have them learn through Tibetan-medium instruction, but strengthen capacity in Chinese-language classes.

Yet, like Hong Kong parents, an increasing number of Tibetans want Chinese-medium instruction for their children, even though they may learn better in Tibetan, because the economy is changing and the job market widens for those who can work using the Chinese language.

Gerard Postiglione is professor of education at the University of Hong Kong.