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By Tenzin Chokyi
DHARAMSALA, 5 April: A new Human Rights Watch report titled Start with the Youngest Children: China Uses Preschools to “Integrate” Tibetans says China’s “Children’s Speech Harmonisation Plan,” introduced in 2021 by the Ministry of Education, has effectively eliminated the remaining legal and policy space for minority-language education in early childhood schooling.
Released on 4 April, reveals that while China’s 1984 Regional National Autonomy Law formally guarantees “minority communities” the right to use their own languages in education, this framework has been progressively eroded over four decades through successive reforms that have expanded the use of Mandarin Chinese in schools at increasingly earlier stages.
According to Human Rights Watch, the 2021 directive marked a decisive shift by mandating the use of standard Mandarin Chinese as the language of inst...
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