Three Tibetan students sing at a middle school in Jinan. (File photo/Chinanews.com)
Urbanization and the increasing amount of the school day spent speaking Putonghua has left the Tibetan language in a precarious situation. Many Tibetan parents have found that their kids are not learning how to speak their mother tongue. In an effort to reverse this trend, some Tibetan activists have taken action, opening Tibetan language schools, proposing policy changes to legislators and making public appeals asking Tibetans to work to preserve their heritage. The central government has previously pledged to respect and safeguard the right of ethnic groups to education in their own languages.
Headmaster Gengpai Nuobu is quite busy these days. While public schools are kicking off their winter vacation, he is trying to enroll as many students as he can for his private school committed to teaching the Tibetan language.
Located in downtown Xining, capital city of Northwest China's Qinghai Province, the Gesang Cultural Education School was established early last year.
"With urbanization and the spread of Putonghua, it's sad that the young generation's mastery of their mother tongue is degenerating, especially in big cities and areas bordering Han communities," 29-year-old Gengpai told the Global Times.
As many professionals, workers, farmers and herdsmen go to settle in cities, their children live far from regions where only the Tibetan language is used. Their opportunities to speak Tibetan are shrinking, he explained.
"Most people in Xining speak Putonghua. Tibetan parents are happy to see their kids speak Putonghua well, but not happy to see them losing their ability to speak, read and write Tibetan," said Gengpai.
Official statistics show that Xining has a 2.29 million permanent residents, 74.1 percent of whom are Han, 16.3 percent are Hui and 5.5 percent or 125,900 are Tibetans.
"Many parents here complained that there was nowhere to study Tibetan language," Gengpai noted, adding that bilingual education has been promoted in Tibetan areas but not in the city of Xining.
Jiacuo, 40, a Tibetan who teaches Chinese at a high school in Xining, echoed this sentiment to the Global Times. "I send my kid to Gengpai's school as the public schools in the city don't teach Tibetan," he said. "I want him to learn more about Tibetan culture."
While in the past many schools in Tibetan areas taught all courses in Tibetan, increasingly schools - especially in urban areas - are using Putonghua as the primary language of instruction, with Tibetan being used only in classes where the Tibetan language is the topic of the class, if it is taught at all.
Some argue that this is driven in part by a rational choice by the Tibetan people - their education and employment opportunities are limited if they cannot speak Putonghua fluently.
On the other hand many worry that this trend will undermine the transmission of Tibetan culture to young Tibetans.
Waning fluency
"You can't work or study without knowing Putonghua. Now in most Tibetan areas, it's OK if you cannot speak Tibetan, but it is hard to find a job if you can't speak Putonghua," said Zhuoma Qunzong, a history teacher at a middle school in Duilongdeqing district in Lhasa, the Tibet Autonomous Region.
At her school, which has more than 1,500 students, there are 140 teachers, 101 of whom are Tibetan. But only Tibetan language classes are taught in Tibetan.
"To be a teacher, a good mastery of Putonghua is required, even for a teacher who teaches Tibetan," she told the Global Times.
She said that the extra-curricular classes the students usually take and most books they read are in Putonghua.
Zhuoma's findings are echoed by a survey conducted by Sichuan Normal University master degree candidate Jiang Yanhua. According to her 2008 survey of Linzhou county middle school in Lhasa, 80 percent of Tibetan students believed that Chinese is more important than Tibetan.
A Niu, headmaster of Puli Tibetan School in Deqin county, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, which was dedicated to teaching Tibetan, said that the school has started to teach Putonghua.
"Without knowing Putonghua, we would not able to communicate with the outside, let alone find a job," A Niu told the Global Times in a recent interview via telephone. In an attempt to eliminate illiteracy, he founded the school in 1997 to provide free education for poor Tibetans.
Now with about 60 students aged between 4 and 20, the school also offers vocational classes in painting, sculpture and pottery.
However, as the proportion of the school day spent speaking Tibetan gets smaller, children's ability to use Tibetan is waning.
Zeren Dengzhu, an archival researcher and historian in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Region in Sichuan has found that many primary school pupils' Tibetan reading and writing skills are poor.
Ethnic minority languages, as well as various dialects across the country, are losing their ground. "Opportunities to use Putonghua are becoming greater," he noted.
"Standardizing the language facilitates communication and promote national integration, but a civilization should be a diversified one. Tibetan culture is a significant component of Chinese civilization," Zeren argued, adding that Tibetans should be able to speak their mother tongue.
On Tuesday, Zeren posted a letter online, calling for a Tibetan public school to open in Xining for the more than 30,000 Tibetan children living there.
