Appendix 2: Petitions - 1. Petition by Teachers and Students, Rebkong, Qinghai

Comments by the head of the Education Department were published in full in Chinese and Tibetan, helping us to understand the students’ demands.] With regard to the Education Department submitting in the “Qinghai plan” that Chinese will be primary and Tibetan will be subsidiary, with Chinese as the language of instruction and Chinese language extended to pre-school, and disregarding the normal requ. [...] Does the government have a responsibility to respect and protect the national language as the language of instruction or the subsidiary language? But Wang Yubo emphasizes setting the target as, “upholding teaching in the national language and text as the primary while at the same time studying well the nationality language and text, and making the national language the language of instruction,” an. [...] And so it was recently in the first such demonstration on September 19 in Longwu Town in Huangnan Prefecture, that aside from the three language syllabuses of Tibetan, Chinese and English at two high schools, in the remainder of the non-language syllabuses, in Tongren County Nationality Middle School the vast majority of courses use Tibetan as the language of instruction, and the Huangnan Prefectu. [...] How is this to be explained? Furthermore, the two CHINA'S “BILINGUAL EDUCATION” POLICY IN TIBET 136 prefectures of Huangnan and Hainan have over the long term both used Tibetan as the language of instruction for the majority of bilingual teaching, and the three prefectures of Haibei, Haixi and Yushu have used Tibet curricula (or for elective courses), and the popularization and quality of bilingua. [...] [Having long considered the issue of bilingual education], we consider that the choice of a language of instruction in a school must “be decided in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the masses and the local language environment” (“Some suggestions on strengthening nationality education work” [issued by the National Education Committee and State Ethnic Affairs Commission, 1992]), and no.