-by TCHRD
Early this year, Chinese authorities quietly began enforcing an assimilationist education system in Tibetan primary schools in Ngaba (Ch: Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, in the Tibetan province of Amdo. The Model 2 education system has been introduced in primary and middle schools across Ngaba including the Tsaruma Tibetan primary school in Kakhog (Ch: Hongyuan) County.
A petition dated 20 April 2020 submitted by the Tibetans in Tsaruma to local Chinese authorities was widely shared and commented upon by Tibetan bloggers and other social media users.
A Tibetan teacher in Ngaba told TCHRD that the Model 2 education system was planned to be introduced in all schools in the spring of 2020. This system mandates the replacement of all Tibetan medium education systems with Chinese medium or Model 2. Under this system, all subjects including geography, history, chemistry, mathematics, etc. are taught in Chinese with the exception of an hour long class on Tibetan language.
“This [Model 2] educational method is a means to destroy the Tibetan language and culture. The enforcement of this policy has no basis in law or scientific reasoning; it is a decree imposed by a handful of autocratic leaders. At high-level meetings such as the Party Congress, the authorities always attempt to justify the Model 2 policy by exaggerating the low standards of education in Tibetan schools,” added the teacher.
The plan to introduce the Model 2 system in spring 2020 was temporarily abandoned when Chinese authorities faced widespread criticism from local Tibetans. A large number of Tibetan teachers, parents, students and educators in Ngaba engaged in online discussions and published open letters and petitions urging local Chinese authorities to scrap the plan.
Among the prominent critics of the policy was the well-known Tibetan writer and public intellectual Thupten Lodoe (Pseudonym: Sabuchey), 34, who wrote an open letter on the issue for which he would later be arrested. The letter was published online in April 2020, more than a year before his detention and subsequent imprisonment to a four years and six months term. Sabuchey’s letter exposes the Chinese Communist Party’s “sinicization” ideology of Han Chinese superiority, which views all non-Chinese peoples as barbarians and uncivilised, as he writes, “The Sinicization ideology underpins the foundation, trajectory and goals of the [Chinese] nation”. Click here to read more.