下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
In the vast rural areas in China, there exist five autonomous regions, 30 autonomous prefectures and 117 autonomous counties. There are 56 officially recognized ethnic groups living in these regions. Alongside the Han population, which constitutes approximately 91.6% of the total population, the other ethnic groups have a total population around 106 million and are diverse in terms of history, culture and language (Adamson & Feng,2014). Not only facing challenges that other rural schools and teachers have, such as insu ficient financial investment, shortage of competent teachers or lack of professional support, schools and teachers in multiethnic regions have also been encountered with particular complications such as multilingualism and multiethnic culture.
According to the statistics of 2001, nearly a third of the multiethnic regions were officially defined as poverty-stricken areas (Yang, 2005). Many schools in multiethnic regions, therefore, lack basic resources. Without access to modern facilities and qualified teachers, most of ethnic students are usually found to be poorer performers than their Han peers (Hu, 2007; Jiang et al., 2007; Tsung, 2009) and their dropout rate is usually high (Adamson & Feng, 2014). Besides economic and geographical factors, some scholars believe that educational failure for many ethnic students often arises from the inappropriate use of languages in education (Adamson & Feng, 2014). In addition to their mother tongue (language used by a specific ethnic group), ethnic students in primary school need to learn another two diferent languages: Standard Chinese ( pu tong hua ) [ 普通话 ] and English, both are linguistically-distant from their mother tongue in terms of pronunciation, written form, vocabulary and syntax. Under these circumstances,ethnic students tend to have a high drop-out rate, while those who stay in school often perform worse than their Han peers (Adamson & Feng, 2014; Hu, 2007; Tsung, 2010).
The ethnic groups usually inhabit in some geographically remote regions. Far from Confucius culture centers, the ethnic groups have developed unique ethnic cultures,costumes, traditions, religions or ideology of their own. These indigenous cultures and ideology, mingling with particular local socioeconomic situation, have a great impact on formal school education. Taking Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwestern China as an example, thanks to the tropical climate, fertile land, large scale deforestation and fueled by favorite agricultural policies, local farmers have been growing rubber trees, banana trees and various tropical plants on an unprecedented scale. The tropical economic plants yield not only abundant produce but large seasonal cash income. However, cash income usually would not be advisably deposited in banks or used to enlarge the production, instead most of the income as a custom would go for excessive or conspicuous consumption, with only a meager part spent on education.
The Dai people believe in Theravāda Buddhism and pursue harmony with nature.Influenced by such a religious ideology, most Dai parents maintain a naturalistic belief in educating their children. They consider that children should grow up in a natural environment and should not be forced to learn anything that they would not like. If the child hates going to school, for example, the parents would have a more tolerable attitude towards their children. Nevertheless, if the child demonstrates capability and interest in learning at school, they would be willing to provide their children with available financial and mental support. The unique regional socioeconomic situation and the particular ethnic culture exert significant influence on school education.