Creating a Forum to discuss the importance of bilingual education - teaching in Tibetan with supplimental Chinese language courses.
Editing, printing and distibuting Tibetan language texts for primary school students.
Supporting a much-needed opportunity to study teaching methodology, lessong planning and the principals of child-centered education.

(Table of Contents for Rebkong County Primer Textbook)

Project Summary: Tibetan students not only lack classroom facilities, school supplies and well-trained teachers; they also lack education materials written in their native Tibetan language. Tibetan Healing Fund is working with local education bureaus, school principals and teachers to create Tibetan language texts to be used in primary and middle schools. These books are children’s supplemental reading texts written in Tibetan. Content of the books is based on both Tibet-wide folklore as well as regionally specific information such as geography, local customs, culture and art, biographies of well-known scholars, life skills, and significant historical events and sites.

The Tibetan Heritage Primers are the first time anything of this nature has been complied for the Tibetan community and its children. Tibetan Heritage Primer Textbooks will be distributed and available to 196 Tibetan primary schools and 26,929 children in three different counties!

Project Goals:
Provide primary school students with Tibetan language primers;
Introduce Tibetan children to Tibetan heritage both local and across the plateau;
Increase knowledge of folk customs, local heroes, archeology, history and mythology;
Introduce a new form of Tibetan literature using oral language as a baseline.

Project Need and Beneficiaries: Most primary schools teach in Chinese although village children speak Tibetan at home. Therefore, when the child begins school they are confronted not only with new content, but content taught in a language they do not understand. (It is important to note that the Chinese and Tibetan languages are as different as English and Chinese.) In addition, few Tibetan language textbooks exist; therefore, if a school decides to teach courses in Tibetan they will often use written translations of Chinese texts, generally inadequate numbers of copies for all the students.

Tibetan Healing Fund is promoting the initial use of the mother tongue (Tibetan) as the primary language of teaching with additional course work in Chinese. The amount of Chinese course work will increase as the students advance through the school grades until they finish sixth grade equally competent in Tibetan and Chinese.

Project Activities: Primary school teachers have researched Tibetan heritage to create a comprehensive text for rural school children. Each book will contain information about famous people and places in Tibet’s long history, significant events, mythology, folklore and customs.

Each of the three counties will have a separate book with content specific to that region. For example, one teacher interviewed farmers about customs and practices around planting crops. He learned there are traditional songs that women sing as they plant their crops that serve to remind them how to sow a particular crop and how to care for it for optimal harvest. In another county, a teacher interviewed villagers about wedding customs and was surprised to learn that each village had its own customs.

Long-term Impact: The Tibetan Heritage Primer will become a standard text for Tibetan school students, serving not only as reading material but as a means to motivate and inspire young Tibetans toward further education.