China's National Minority Education

Culture, Schooling, and Development

Gerard A. Postiglione, Gerard A. Postiglione

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135606695
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This volume focuses on policies and practices in the education of China's national minorities with the purpose of assessing the goals and impact of state sponsored education for China's non-Han people's. The essays in the four sections of this book examine cultural challenges to state schooling, the extent of educational provision in minority areas, the perspectives of Tibetan and Uyghur minorities toward state education, along with providing case studies of four national minorities. The book makes the point that despite the authoritarian character of China's state schooling, diversity reigns.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

State Schooling and Ethnicity in China

Gerard A. Postiglione

Most countries in the world are multiethnic and thus face a similar educational challenge.¹ They must convince their citizens, as well as the global community, that state-sponsored schooling ensures equal opportunities for all ethnic groups, promotes the economic development of poor ethnic minority regions, permits ethnic groups to practice cultural autonomy and builds inter-ethnic unity.² Educational systems expand in reaction to a market of demands. Individuals and employers demand practical skills, social groups demand status culture, and the state demands national unity and social control.³ Representations of ethnic culture in school curricula are greatly affected by the market of demands. Within China, the market is heavily influenced by the state. Though the demand of ethnic minorities for schools to elevate the status of their culture within the national framework is ubiquitous, the actual content of schooling reflects the state’s view of ethnic inter-group processes. Hence, a great deal can be learned about the People’s Republic of China by studying how it schools its many ethnic groups, represents their heritage, socializes them into a national identity, structures their educational opportunities and links their schooling to economic development.

Social context is a profound determinant of the form and content of schooling and state schooling serves a conservative function by defining and reproducing a national culture that bolsters dominant social structures.⁴ China’s state schools conserve a particular brand of national culture (zhonghua minzu wenhua), and are supervised by an authoritarian state wary of outside cultural influences, especially from the West.⁵ State schooling is also charged with the responsibility to conserve ethnic cultures within a national context that places a premium on Han Chinese cultural capital.⁶

While many aspects of China’s ethnic minority education remain highly centralized, the national move to a market economy, administrative decentralization and local elections could begin to have a profound effect on ethnic minority schooling. Yet the notion of ethnic pluralism remains carefully proscribed, and multiethnic education is still a sensitive issue. Discussion of multiculturalism is found in academic discourse, but much less so in policy and practice.⁷ To what extent do schools in China create an atmosphere that has positive institutional norms toward diverse cultural groups within the nation state?⁸ To what degree do schools in China modify their total environment to make it more reflective of the ethnic diversity in the society? State policy accords importance to the special cultural characteristics of ethnic minority regions; however, not enough is known about actual practice to provide detailed answers to such questions.⁹ In-depth study of the schooling in particular ethnic communities is needed to measure the gap between the policy and practice of ethnic minority regional autonomy in education, and to understand the manner in which ethnic communities innovate in their adjustment to state schooling. With this purpose in mind, this volume aims at providing grounded field research, quantitative surveys, and thoughtful analysis regarding how the Chinese state in general, and Han China in particular, deals with the problem of ethnicity and schooling.

The Rise or Demise of Multiculturalism?

The chapters in this volume examine ethnic minority education in China and address issues that relate to culture, schooling, and development. The issues include the degree to which ethnic groups are drawn away from traditional religious institutions and toward modern schooling, the manner in which state schooling represents ethnic cultures, the effect of state schooling on the conservation of ethnic group languages, the scope of basic education across ethnic minority regions, the results of preferential policies to admit ethnic minorities to higher education and the results of state schooling’s attempt to ensure equal educational opportunities, reproduce national culture, and foster inter-ethnic unity. In general, chapters work toward addressing the question of what state schooling does to ethnicity and development. Taken together, the chapters of this book question claims that ethnic minority schools adequately represent ethnic minority culture. Furthermore, the authors operate on the assumption that a multicultural education can further improve understanding between Han Chinese and other ethnic groups, even to the extent that the latter will increase their participation in state schooling, thereby raising their potential to reap equal rewards in terms of social and economic development. The chapters are divided into three parts: cultural challenges to state schooling, educational disparities and case studies of ethnic minority schooling. The first part focuses on religion and language, both of which usually encapsulate the core of ethnic minority cultural heritage.

Cultural Challenges to State Schooling: Religion and Language

Part One begins with religion because it pervades the culture of most of China’s minorities and they are generally more committed to it than the Han Chinese majority. Religion has traditionally been the main form of organized education outside of the family. As a challenge to state schooling, the government is more concerned about minority religions than about minority languages. Moreover, state schools must often compete with religious education for attendance rates, as well as financial contributions and support from families.

The main religions of China’s minorities are Islam, Buddhism and Lamaism, but others also have a following. Most of China’s minorities have a strong religious tradition. For some, like the Muslim Hui, religion is the main attribute of their identity as an ethnic minority. Members of the Hui, Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz, Tatar, Uzbek, Tajik, Dongxiang, Salar and Bonan groups are adherents of the Islamic faith. The Tibetan, Mongol, Yugur and Tu groups are adherents of Lamaism. The Dai, Bulang and Benglong are adherents of Hinayana Buddhism. Shamanism is practiced by Oroqen, Daur and Ewenki. The Drung, Nu, Wa, Jingpo and Gaoshan practice polytheism as well as totemism and ancestor worship. A small group of adherents to Christianity can be found among the Koreans, Miao, Lahu, and Yi.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, freedom of religion was guaranteed in the new constitution. During the early years of communist rule, Mao Zedong argued that religion should not be prohibited, only restricted. Religion was viewed as a historical product that could only be abolished under certain socioeconomic conditions. Thus, the practice of religion has come to be viewed as something that must be permitted to a certain extent. Also, religion shares certain social concerns with communism that permit mutual cooperation in some circumstances. For example, religious leaders have joined educators and officials in efforts to eradicate illiteracy.¹⁰ Nevertheless, only state-sponsored religious organizations are permitted; all others are severely suppressed. The official policy, however, is that government authorities are not to interfere in religious affairs of minorities unless affairs of the state are affected. Ethnic minority cadres are not supposed to be dismissed because they have religious beliefs, but rather be persuaded of the advantages of shedding their religious views, as cooperation between religious leaders and communists is still viewed as valuable.

Of all of the ways that the government has attempted to win back support lost during the Cultural Revolution, granting autonomy in the area of culture, especially religion, has been central. Nevertheless, religious autonomy in the context of a communist authoritarian government has been a matter of degree more than anything else. Ethnic minority religion has been increasingly tolerated, and even encouraged when it helps tourism, yet severely limited when it threatens national sovereignty.

Colin Mackerras, in Chapter Two, outlines the basic situation regarding the many religions of China’s minorities, with particular emphasis on Islam and Buddhism. He divides his analysis into pre- and post-1949 periods, and within the latter describes three phases regarding how religion survived after the communist revolution. His emphasis throughout is on how monasteries, mosques and churches, which predated state schooling, remain repositories of traditional culture and learning, continue to flourish in one form or another. In examining state schooling he makes clear that the “state school system generally adheres strictly to the principle of secularity” (page 39, this volume). For example, clerics do little inside of schools, and there are no religious representations, and students are prohibited from reading religious books or praying in schools. The few clergy that teach in schools usually teach language courses rather than religious material. Moreover, such clerics would have to dress in secular clothes while in school.

Mackerras also notes that state schooling has expanded at the same time that minorities are experiencing a religious revival. Thus, the question: is state schooling responsible for this religious resurgence? “It is possible that in some minority areas this religious revival is in part directly related to the secularization” (page 47, this volume). As signs of the religious revival, he points to the large number of Tibetan boys entering monasteries and Muslim boys reading the Koran in mosques. Moreover, while religion is still kept apart from secular education, state education and religious education are not positional, and sometimes graduates of state schools go on to mosques.

The expansion of state schooling is having a profound affect on ethnicity, even to the extent that schools actually make and remake ethnic nationalities. In Chapter Three, Dru Gladney critically examines these processes in his study of Chinese Muslims, and notes how religious education and state education do very different things. In fact, state schooling runs counter to religious teaching, so China’s Muslims must initiate a process of negotiation to deal with conflicting sets of norms. Furthermore, Han Chinese often view minority cultures as backward and their religious education as being of little value, as Gladney illustrates with the case of the Hui Hajji he met in China who said he “had no culture,” though he had lived for 12 years in the Middle East, and was fluent in Persian and Arabic and was a master of Islamic Natural Sciences.

What is state schooling doing to ethnic minority culture? From Gladney’s perspective, representations of ethnic minority culture are unbalanced. “For most Han Chinese, who have never darkened the door of a mosque and learn little about Islam in public schools, this representation in the ‘public sphere’ is their only exposure to knowledge about Islam in China or Muslim identities” (page 64, this volume). Muslims in China have a very different representation of themselves than that given to them by mainstream culture. Moreover, they are not only members of an ethnic minority but members of a long religious and scholarly tradition that has contributed to Chinese culture and society. Yet, in some cases, state schooling actually marginalizes Muslim minorities. Because many score lower in state schooling, they also become represented as failures.

The Chinese Muslim experience in state education is not monolithic. Even though the Hui do not excel in school measures of achievement, the Tatars and Uzbeks do extremely well. Other Muslims approach the national average as a group. Gladney attributes this either to assimilating to mainstream culture and not rejecting the images represented by the state, or more likely, viewing schooling as merely a tool and resisting the images of their ethnicity represented there. As Chinese Muslims move up the school ladder, they will come to exert an influence on the images and representations that the state assigns to their culture.

Education for Muslims, in sum, seems to result in parallel streams, one in which the state represents Muslim culture and the other in which Muslims represent their own culture. This will not change as long as state education does not incorporate more information about Muslim life. As Gladney states: “The lack of nationality content and Muslim world history may be forcing Muslims interested in their people’s history to go to the mosque rather than the public schools and libraries for such ‘religious’ knowledge” (page 78, this volume).

A second major challenge relating to ethnic minority culture and schooling is language. With the exception of the Hui and Manchu who use the Chinese language (Hanyü), all of China’s minorities have their own language, with some minority groups having more than one. Most of the languages belong to the Sino-Tibetan and Altaic families, while some belong to the South Asian, Austronesian and Indo-European families. Before 1949, only 20 minorities had their own written language. Those in most common use were Mongol, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak, Korean, Xibe, Dai, Uzbek, Kirgiz, Tatar and Russian. Others included Yi, Miao, Naxi, Jingpo, Lisu, Lahu and Wa. Since 1949, the communist government helped to derive a written script for nine national minorities formerly without one. Still, many minorities are without a written script. While most of the Manchu have long since abandoned their script and now use the Han language, others groups such as the Jingpo speak a variety of different languages, some of which are totally unlike each other. Other groups are trilingual, speaking their native tongue, the language of the nationality in closest proximity and Chinese.

Since the beginning of the Four Modernization period, national minority languages have been increasingly emphasized. Nevertheless, there is a strong call for Chinese as the main medium of instruction. This is being justified by pointing out that there are few scientific materials published in national minority languages, therefore, the Han Chinese language, which is “international,” should be the main education language and medium of instruction. According to one Chinese scholar, this is further supported by “the Chinese language craze that is sweeping the world.”¹¹ The case of Xinjiang, with a 62 percent minority population, is illustrative. The Uygur, Kazak, Mongol, Kirgiz, Xibe and Russian groups have their own written language, while the Hui and the Manchu use the Han language system. Moreover, certain groups have dual or multiple languages, such as the Uygurs, Kazaks and Xibe, some of whom use each other’s language as well as their own. And some groups who do not have a written language may take school examinations in the language of another ethnic minority.

As a result of the many languages in use, students from different ethnic minorities attend different schools; thus, ethnic segregation is common. This trend has many educators very concerned, and in turn has led to a call for school desegregation. As one educator, almost echoing the 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision in the United States, stated: “My understanding i...