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SCHOOLING IN TIBET
For almost 21n years it was not possible to get a confirmed and an accurate information on the education of Tibetan Children in occupied Tibet. In 1980, the third fact finding delegation led by Mrs. Pema Gyalpo, visited Tibet with the specific purpose to observe at first hand the extent and quality of educational opportunity for Tibetan children in Tibet. The delegation was able to visit 92 schools out of which 14 were training institutions in various parts of Tibet, 4 national minority schools in Beijing, Shenyang, Landua and Chengtu, attended by only a few Tibetans, and 2 primary schools in Beijing to have an idea of the schooling for the privileged in China itself.
In Tibet, the delegation was able to visit only 72 primary, middle and high schools. At that time the Chinese were claiming of having over 430 primary schools with 17000 students, 55 middle schools with 10000 students run by the state and 6000 schools started and run by the people with 200000 students. Apart form these, the Chinese also claimed to have 22 high schools with 2000 students and four colleges with more than 560 students all run by the state.
Mrs. Gyalpo, while confessing that all the schools that are supposed to exist , could not be visited, had to say " It was not possible for us to check these figures in any reliable or systematic way. We did find however, however, that wherever we went it was extremely difficult to arrange a visit to a school. We did not demand to see all the hundreds and thousands of schools. All that we requested was to see one or two schools in the places that we did visit.
Throughout Tibet, wherever we went the schools were on 'summer holiday'. In a country where the winters are long, bitterly cold and where , far from having heating systems, there are not even proper school buildings, where the children do not have enough to wear and where there is no transportation except for military trucks and long distance buses, I just could not understand why all the schools should be closed during the most useful summer months.
The school is closed for summer vacation, was the all encompassing excuses used from the moment we entered Tibet on June 10,1980 until we left 105 days later on September 23rd. Among the 70 primary, middle and high schools that we have visited, we found that there were 16 schools that did not teach Tibetan at all, and 8 schools that taught only after primary level. Most of the other schools in the villages are only up to the primary level and where Tibetans is supposed to be taught, it is only in name.
In Beijing the Chinese told us that during the past 20 years education had improved tremendously and that the number of schools had increased 300 times. They told us that before 1950 there were only 13 schools in Tibet. They forget that the thousands of monasteries they destroyed were all schools- very good schools.
While visiting the schools we were always given lot of figures about how many students and teachers there were, how much the government was spending and so on. After excluding the schools in Beijing, the special schools for Mongolians. the Muslim school in Lhasa and the four National Minority schools. I have tabulated the figures for the 85 schools and of these only 17660 were Tibetans, forming a very low 44%.
In the same way, from a total of 2979 teachers only 1024 were Tibetans. This means that almost 70% of the teachers are Chinese. These are the prepared official given to us and so we have much reason to worry about what the actual conditions are like.
"In most places, apart from giving us these figures, the Chinese were very reluctant to let us actually see the schools specifically for our visit....like a tent school that we are shown in which everything was brand new- from the tent to the children's clothes, the tables, mats and the blackboard. Even the grass was fresh and green inside the tent and in the classroom intricate Tibetan grammar was being taught to children who did not even know the alphabet... even the Chinese officials travelling with us were shocked."
The Chinese claims were palpable distortions of the truth and it is obvious that the Tibetans in exile will have to redouble their effort to educate the children.
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CHILDREN IN TIBET
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