China's ethnic minority kids caught in language trap

BULUNKOU, China, Dec 7: Wearing an NBA sweatshirt and a Mickey Mouse cap, 13-year-old Mingbayi Abdubaki plays beside the mountainous highway to Pakistan with a battery-powered earth digger he built himself from scrap.

The Chinese teenager hopes to design real machines when he grows up, but if you believe his headmaster, he cannot understand a word of classes at his state-funded school.

Ethnically Kyrgyz, he speaks barely enough Chinese to stammer out his name and age. But under a campaign to make the language of Beijing the language of education nationwide, he is supposed to be studying only in Mandarin.

Officials say the change aims to give minority kids chances in a country dominated by Han Chinese and their language, but critics counter that it undermines their cultural identity.

And some children, caught between two languages at home and school, risk being educated properly in neither.

Headmaster Baierdibayi, who uses only one name and speaks heavily accented, broken Chinese, is in charge of around 460 students at the school in the stark but spectacular mountains that link China's northwestern Xinjiang region to central Asia.

''Our classes are taught in Mandarin,'' he said, under the watchful eye of an official, before conceding that some struggle.

''It is a little difficult for the children. The teachers are all Kyrgyz and can use that language if they need.'' Privately, fellow villagers say most classes are taught in Kyrgyz, the shared native language of instructors and students.

But as Beijing pushes to bring more Han Chinese teachers to Xinjiang -- where it fears agitation by members of the largest minority group, the Uighurs, for a separate state -- that is true for fewer and fewer ethnic-minority schools.

''Before 2002 we only had separate schools for minorities, but in 7 or 8 years it will all be in Chinese apart from a few hours a week of their own culture,'' said Dilixiati, a senior official in the Kyrgyz autonomous prefecture that includes Bulunkou.

DROPOUTS?

Abdubaki's father and mother are barely literate herders so the fact that he even attends school is impressive.

But education experts warn that an abrupt shift to a new language risks leaving the most vulnerable students behind.

''If they haven't been exposed to Chinese language before they start at school, they are in a disadvantaged position,'' said Kate Wedgwood, China country director at Save the Children, which works to improve bilingual education in several minority areas.

''They struggle to keep up in all the subjects because they are being taught in a second language, so there is an increased chance of failure and of the children dropping out.'' Studies show children probably need at least four years of education in their mother tongue to succeed at school, she said. But ethnic tensions have made the language of education a politically charged issue, complicating her efforts to promote the use of Chinese only as a second language initially.

''What we try to do is to get governments to appreciate that this is not a threat to national unity -- children everywhere learn best in their mother tongue,'' Wedgwood added.

Critics of Beijing, however, say the bilingual programme is expressly designed to tackle national security worries.

''All language policies in China have both an overt and covert aim. The overt side is to reinforce Chinese language, the covert is minority acculturation and assimilation,'' said Nicholas Bequelin, an expert on China's Muslims at Human Rights Watch.

Leaders publicly dismiss Uighur and other minority languages as backward, justifying their exclusion with arguments that range from patronising to racist, he added.

Discrimination takes root early. At a leading middle school, touted as a showcase of ethnic unity but where barely 10 percent of students seen by journalists were non-Han, a Han Chinese teenager shrugged off the lack of different faces.

''This is a top school, so the ethnic minorities find it hard to get the marks to get a place,'' he said.

CULTURE OR FUTURE?

Many non-Han parents, while keen to send their children to Chinese-language schools, also resent what they see as a painful choice between an economic future and cultural traditions.

Wolfing down roast mutton in a dimly lit restaurant in the remote desert oasis of Hotan, a successful businessman who asks to be known only as Ali says that he has sent one of his two daughters to a Uighur-language school and one to a Mandarin one.

''I would prefer them both to study our language, to stay in touch with their culture, but without Chinese you have no future,'' he said with a mournful shrug.

''I hope this way each can make up for what the other lacks.'' But even those parents who sacrifice their children's cultural links for a chance of a richer future may find that a shared language does not mean shared opportunities.

''Some of the most vocal people complaining about Chinese rule in Xinjiang are precisely the people who are educated and have Chinese skills but cannot get jobs,'' Bequelin said.

''A more profound problem is institutionalised discrimination.

The fact that many don't speak good Chinese is just a convenient way to explain why they have an inferior position in society.''

REUTERS