New Chinese admission guidelines target Tibetan education system

Jun 01, 2022

Lhasa [Tibet], June 1 : The new Chinese circular regarding the admission guidelines for prospective students to universities in Tibet is discriminatory in nature as it targets the Tibetan education system.
The circular states how students seeking admission must state their 'political attitude and ideological morality' to get into universities, reported Tibet Press.
Moreover, it mentions how students should not be involved in religious movements and prefers students who are proficient in Marxist theory.
Beijing started occupying Tibet they have meticulously set up policies and methods in dismantling the Tibetan education system that was tied closely with the rich monastic system of education.
Earlier, the main push has been at targeting the primary level of education, by preventing Tibetans from attending such monastic institutes, but now their push to the highest level of the education system, the university level highlights the rigours and significance given to dismantling Tibetan education.
The ultimate goal is of making Tibetans devoid of their identity and their own language, reported Tibet Press.
The late prof Dawa Norbu mentions in the book 'The Road ahead' how he and many other young Tibetans during the early years of Chinese occupation were brought together and thought about Chinese culture, language and history through the Chinese lens.
Signifying indoctrination happening in Tibet. The CCP was successful to an extent here as more and more Tibetans started to learn the narratives being pushed but this also became a double-edged sword as Tibetans now knew how clearly, they were different from the Chinese as well, reported Tibet Press.
Since the onset of the occupation, Beijing has been in full propaganda mode referring to themselves as saviours and bringing Tibet back to the motherland (China) through liberation. They tactically viewed how this would be the best way to not only occupy Tibet territorial wise but also in terms of culture and assimilate Tibet into China eventually, reported Tibet Press.
With time, schools were set up with the goal being to not educate Tibetans but rather to brainwash them and make them adhere to Marxist thought, which later morphed into Mao's thought and is currently Xi Jinping thought.
They implemented a bilingual education policy in Tibet and other occupied regions (or minority regions as they call them). This policy enshrined in the Chinese constitution states how the minority region's language would be protected and preserved through such an educational policy.
Yet in implementation, it was the total opposite and was a charade just to promote and allow the deeper penetration of the Chinese language and narrative to these regions, reported Tibet Press.
There was a huge bias in this education system when implemented in Tibet. The textbooks used in schools themselves were different in Tibet compared to those in China, with the latter having child-centric images while the former had images of soldiers and authorities.
Likewise, the period slot allocation was and continues to be discriminatory with only one slot for the Tibetan language, and the remaining subjects being thought through Mandarin (Chinese Language).
With more than 78 per cent of Tibetans having to forcefully go through this government-run boarding school, where Mandarin and not Tibetan language is given priority. It illustrates the big state run-drive in controlling and manipulating the future Tibetans in motion, reported Tibet Press.
On top of this, even those Tibetans who complete higher studies are looked and viewed differently, creating an apartheid-like environment where Tibetans themselves are not able to get jobs and are segregated at many levels.