Throughout its occupation of Tibet, much of Chinese government policy has been aimed – directly or indirectly – at the forced assimilation of the Tibetan people into the ‘motherland’. The Chinese-dominated education system in Tibet, offers young Tibetans little, if any, opportunity to learn about their country’s ancient history or unique culture.

Tibetan parents face a Hobson’s choice: China’s way or the highway.

Parents who want their children to have any chance of competing against Han Chinese migrants for educational and employment opportunities know that they must become fluent in Chinese. This means that any delay in starting their children’s Chinese language education will hold them back in later years. If you can only speak Tibetan in Tibet, you have no future.

For those parents who desperately want their children to grow up proud of their own identity, the ‘highway’ is the only option – going with or sending their children on the dangerous journey into exile to India where they can be educated in Tibetan and allowed to practise their religion without restriction. The journey, over the Himalayas, takes many weeks with the constant threat of injury or capture by Chinese border guards.

Tsering Dorje, a Tibetan now living in exile in India, who taught in primary and middle schools in Tibet for many years, has very real concerns about the survival of the Tibetan language in Tibet as a result of Chinese government policies.

He says: “Sometimes I tried to point out to Tibetan parents who sent their children to Chinese language classes that there was a growing imbalance between the number of local Tibetan teachers and non-Tibetan teachers. If all parents gave up on Tibetan-language teaching and sent their children to Chinese schools, I told them, we would risk losing our mother tongue forever. This would be a terrible tragedy. Not only would an ancient language vanish, so too would the obligation of the Chinese authorities to protect the minority rights of the Tibetan people. What limited autonomy we had as Tibetans would be written out of the constitution.

“Put simply: we would no longer be Tibetans.”

Half the Tibetans escaping over the Himalayas are minors who cite lack of educational opportunities in Tibet as the main reason for leaving their homeland. Secondary education is predominantly taught in Chinese which results in a large number of Tibetans not able to speak or write Tibetan. Even those who study in Chinese are struggling to compete with the Chinese students at university exams and job openings resulting in widespread unemployment among Tibetans. Despite claims of development in Tibet, educational levels remain very low with over 54% illiteracy rate according to UN data (TAR).

More on education in Tibet

Chinese has replaced Tibetan as the official language.
Young Tibetans are being re-educated about their cultural past, with references to the history of Tibet before the Chinese occupation being omitted. The education given to Chinese children in Tibet is far superior to that available to Tibetans. Tibetan language and culture are treated as a handicap, and few Tibetans graduate to secondary school. Those that do face little choice of employment unless they speak fluent Chinese. Tibetans are sidelined in the Chinese language dominated workforce because of the lack of appropriate access to education, not enough schools and the sheer expense means many Tibetans do not attend schools.

A major problem Tibetans face is that secondary education is taught exclusively in Mandarin and entrance exams to universities are in Chinese. Therefore Tibetans are in a highly disadvantaged position to get further education than their Chinese class mates which in turn perpetuates poverty among Tibetans. There are more and more Tibetan parents sending their children to Chinese language primary schools. Those children often end up not being able to read or write or even speak Tibetan. While China claims massive investment in Tibet the level of education of Tibetans remains extremely low.

Illiteracy among Tibetans aged 15 or above is 47.44% according to China’s 2000 Population Census and is estimated at 54.8% by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). According to the UNDP, education in the TAR is the worst among all of the 31 Chinese provinces. According to surveys conducted by Chinese and Norwegian research centres, 59% of Tibetans in regions outside the Tibetan Autonomous region (TAR) cannot read or write in any language.

In a 2006 interview, Tibetan educationists , Dr. Ngawang Phuntsog, Associate Professor of Education, California State University, said, "The medium of instruction in Tibetan schools in Tibet is [predominantly] Chinese, rather than Tibetan which should be the case. In fact Tibetan is not used at all after standard three. Worse, school curriculum in Tibet is set in such a way that it is not related to the Tibetan culture and identity. As a result, Tibetan students lose interest in learning the standardised subject, and many drop out of school from an early age.”
DIIR, 2007 Tibet: A Human Development and Environment Report