Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

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Children from China’s ethnic minorities face the dilemma common to ethnic minority children throughoutthe world: they often live on the geographic and socioeconomic margins of the dominant languagesociety. They frequently have only limited access to the national education system. When they do gainaccess to formal primary education, the medium of instruction is a language the children do not speakor understand.The PRC Constitution asserts the freedom of all nationalities to use and develop their languages,including the freedom to use the nationality languages as the media of instruction where conditionspermit. However, in many places, and for various reasons, the multilingual education implied in theConstitution has not been implemented (Kosonen 2005).Mother Tongue and Bilingual Education in ChinaMother tongue-based bilingual education has been implemented for some of the 56 recognizednationalities. However, multilingual education programmes can range from very weak to very strong,with many variations in between.A weak bilingual education programme uses the minority language only in the very early stage ofprimary education, usually one or two years at the most. The goal of weak programmes is to movethe children into the national language as soon as possible. These programmes are “weak” from thepoint of view of the mother language because they are not concerned with encouraging the childrento maintain their ethnic language. They are also weak from the national language point of view becausethe lack of time given to developing the learners’ mother tongue results in less effective learning in thesecond language.A strong bilingual education uses the minority learners’ mother tongue orally and in written form, alongwith the national language, all the way through the upper primary grades. This approach has the goal ofproducing children who are bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate in their mother tongue and the nationallanguage.Policies on Mother Tongue and Bilingual EducationIn China, as in many countries throughout the world, bilingual education 3 policies do not always matcheducational practice. During the past several years, the Government’s concern for and promotion ofits ethnic minority communities have been genuine, but its practice in terms of support for minoritylanguage education has been uncertain because of the national emphasis on Mandarin language3 It should be mentioned here that in Chinese there are several words that are translated as “bilingual education.”Not all of those terms include the idea of biliteracy—reading and writing in both languages—that is assumedwhen the term is used in this report.[ 75 ]
(Putonghua) in education. Nevertheless, ethnic minority communities in cooperation with concernedleaders in the academic and education fields have planned and implemented some interestingeducational experiments. The Kam/Mandarin Bilingual Education Pilot Project is one such experiment.Brief Profile of the Project Site© Ruth Geary Zaidang Village, Rongjiang County,Guizhou ProvinceThe Kam village of Zaidang lies in an upland valley inRongjiang County of southeastern Guizhou Province.The village is divided into two sections, lower and upper,separated by rice paddies.In spite of the relatively large number of Kam languagespeakers in China (approximately 1.6 million), theprospects of continued ethnic language maintenance arebecoming dimmer as opportunities arising from economicglobalization emerge within easy traveling distance fromZaidang. Zaidang villagers are among the many Kam ethnicpeople attracted to jobs with pay that is significantly higherthan any they can obtain through traditional occupationsin the village or in new occupations like teaching in theKam language. Most young and middle-aged adults fromZaidang are now working outside the village, mainly in thebooming urban economic areas of Zhejiang Province (Geary, 2006, personal communication). Strongsocial and economic forces are at work eroding much of the traditional Kam language and culture thatforms the foundation of Kam traditional society.Strategies and Implementation ProcessSelection of the Project SiteInterestingly, the Kam Pilot Project began with the idea of a Kam university. This idea belonged to Kamscholar Professor Long Yaohong of the Guizhou Institute of Nationalities and a representative at theannual People’s National Congress in Beijing. Professor Long was interested in establishing a universityto promote key aspects of Kam life and culture: for example, agriculture, forestry, music and textiles.Kam students at that time were not experiencing success in completing Chinese secondary schools and,therefore, not many were gaining entrance to universities. However, discussions about the educationalchallenges facing Kam children persuaded Professor Long to postpone the idea of a Kam university infavor of an experiment in bilingual education that would build on the foundation of the learners’ ownmother tongue (Geary and Pan, 2003).Like minority children elsewhere in China, Kam learners who succeed in passing through the Chinesemainstream school system “need to alienate themselves from their cultural heritage (their religion,language, and history, in particular) in order to be successful…” (Hansen, quoted in Geary and Pan, 2003,p. 277). Kam leaders are looking for a way to make their children successful in the Chinese educationsystem without having to give up their ethnic language and cultural heritage.[ 76 ]
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Mother Tongue-basedLiteracy Program
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Mother Tongue-based Literacy Progra
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ContentsAcronymsviPartI 1Mother Ton
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AcronymsIndiaZSSTLCPLPCEIPCLGZSSSRC
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PartI
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Mother TongueLiteracy Programmesin
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Entrenchment of the common (majorit
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Table 1: Linguistic Contexts of the
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It may be noted that there is no re
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“If we stop using our language, i
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their normal lives and communicatio
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the project ensured that community
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Also, it was important to identify
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conservation. Tharu traditional pra
Page 31 and 32: In Thailand, participation in schoo
Page 33 and 34: would there be projects to cover al
Page 35 and 36: © UNESCO/D. Riewpituk
Page 37 and 38: BackgroundBangladesh is a delta lan
Page 39 and 40: As a consequence, literacy rates am
Page 41 and 42: Orthography DevelopmentDuring early
Page 43 and 44: and discussion in the plenary, age-
Page 45 and 46: qualifications in the tribal commun
Page 47 and 48: Before opening the school, the rese
Page 49 and 50: Networking with Other Organizations
Page 51 and 52: A small baseline study was conducte
Page 53 and 54: parents of the children studying in
Page 55 and 56: Awareness Creation and Opinion Form
Page 57 and 58: Table 2: At-a-Glance Status of MT S
Page 59 and 60: Tasks for National and Internationa
Page 61 and 62: © POEYS
Page 63 and 64: BackgroundCurrent Situation of Mino
Page 65 and 66: of instruction, but the Bunong chil
Page 67 and 68: Process and Cost of Developing and
Page 69 and 70: vocabulary, containing only sounds
Page 71 and 72: Impact of the ProjectImpact on Educ
Page 73 and 74: NetworkingThe MoEYS and UNESCO have
Page 75 and 76: Komly Boek: Bilingual NFE TeacherMy
Page 77 and 78: © Norman Geary
Page 79 and 80: BackgroundThe Kam 1 of south centra
Page 81: ‘Rice feeds the body, songs feed
Page 85 and 86: do anything else with Chinese. Now
Page 87 and 88: eading material in their own langua
Page 89 and 90: Kam Children SingThe singing classe
Page 91 and 92: Thus, the book-fees for a child to
Page 93 and 94: advisers to the Project since its b
Page 95 and 96: Capacity to Learn the National Lang
Page 97 and 98: they were persuaded of its value (t
Page 99 and 100: detached from the village and diffe
Page 101 and 102: © State Resource Centre Assam
Page 103 and 104: BackgroundIndia is home to a large
Page 105 and 106: In the case of adult literacy, we h
Page 107 and 108: Curriculum and Learning Materials D
Page 109 and 110: About 70 volunteer teachers were en
Page 111 and 112: The majority of the learners have c
Page 113 and 114: the regional language and finally t
Page 115 and 116: [ 108 ]© BP-PLSP
Page 117 and 118: In attempting to meet one of the go
Page 119 and 120: Indonesian Policies on Mother Tongu
Page 121 and 122: Nature and LivelihoodCommunity peop
Page 123 and 124: No. Material Time1. The Policy of S
Page 125 and 126: Networking with CommunityMembers, G
Page 127 and 128: BP-PLSP Region II has distributed a
Page 129 and 130: Impact of theProgrammeThe KFBI prog
Page 131 and 132: Phase II. Learning activities inclu
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After learning some skills, learner
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© BASE
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© BASEBackground‘If we stop usin
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een forced into bonded labor. Cultu
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cows, bulls, sheep, and goats) kept
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Most of the NFE programmes implemen
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The Key Word Approach was used whil
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how to read and write which helps t
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In short, the Tharu mother tongue l
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© ONFEC
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In 2006, Thailand celebrated an aus
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Minister of Education Chaturong Cha
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All of the NPKOM teachers have asso
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simple sentence structures and much
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Teaching Plan: Bridging to the Nati
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Impact of the ProjectImpact on Educ
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een minimal, as books developed by
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Annexes
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Annex 2: ReferencesMother Tongue Li
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Lindholm-Leary, K. 2001. Dual Langu
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