Solution 1: Implement Tibetan courses in schools
Doing so will be extremely easy for the Chinese government, as simple as allowing for an elective or language course that teaches in Tibetan. It is simple stubbornness that is keeping them from doing so. After all, if the Chinese government implements a language class, dissent among Tibetans would actually lessen by a lot.
Solution 2: Organizations outside of Tibet also play a role!
Organizations that strive to help Tibet should do more than collect and give money, they should also put effort into organizing education systems that aren't like the standard curriculum, and that work outside of normal school hours. This way, Tibetans who can't go to school will find it easier to participate in more flexible education systems. This education should also focus more on creative and independent thinking. This way, students will be able to learn how to create their own job opportunities, and expand beyond being financially, socially, and educationally dependent on the Chinese government and Chinese jobs.
Solution 3: Availability of technologies
In recent years, the use of the internet and cellphones has greatly helped Tibetans tell others outside of China about the situation inside of Tibet. The use of the internet has also given Tibetans better knowledge of how to respond to their living situation, such as a better understanding of medicine. However, China heavily censors the internet, so many things that the Tibetans are trying to tell others through the internet don't reach where they're supposed to. Most cellphones are also bugged, and as such, it is very hard for Tibetans inside Tibet to give news to people just outside of Tibet. This can be improved, however. As such, people outside of Tibet, normal people and big corporations alike, should push for better, unrestricted communication systems.
Artifact 1: Infographic
Artifact 2: Op ed
China’s way or the highway
Tibetans open their arms to change, whether they want to or not. Now they need to be given a chance to preserve their own culture-and it the Chinese government’s turn to open their arms and show some tolerance. If they do, when the next generation of tibetan children first enter the educational system, they won't have to choose between "China's way" or the "highway"'; they will have the freedom to create a new way for themselves.
In Tibet, some mothers send their children away on a dangerous exile to India, where chances are low that they will survive, and even lower that they will ever see their childhood home again if they do survive the arduous journey. This child has taken the “highway”, choosing exile to a place outside of Tibet, where he or she will be able to learn the Tibetan language.
Other children have chosen to stay in Tibet, where they’ll also have to face consequences; in Tibet, schools are not allowed to teach in Tibetan, and these children will most likely not know how to speak the language. A Buddhist lama from Tibet once told me, “The children in Tibet are forgetting how to speak their own language, to the point where they have trouble talking with their own parents.”
This loss of language comes with a loss in Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism. And there are few things in the world more tragic than a way of life that literally revolves around compassion itself falling into extinction.
As the Tibetan children who stay in Tibet grow up, more than 20% of them will leave school before fifth grade, and around 80% of them won’t have more than primary school education. Also keep in mind that over 30% of female children do not enter school. A variety of complicated reasons, including poverty and discrimination, make it that few Tibetans can actually go through with their education.
Where did all those dropouts go? Well, some of these Tibetans, unable to find jobs, resort to delinquency, an action that Chinese officials do little to prevent and even encourage. The actions taken by the Chinese government only reflects their narrow-mindedness; their actions are strikingly, and disturbingly, similar to mistakes that have been made too many times already in the past. Is the chinese government going to continue oppressing the people of Tibet until the Tibetan people and their culture are damaged beyond complete recovery? You would think that one of the world's most powerful nations, with all the resources and knowledge they want or need at their disposal, would know better than to do something so crude.
For the small percentage of students who do complete their education and do well in school, chances remain slim that they will find very good career opportunities available to them. Why? Because in schools, Tibetan children are ranked lower than Chinese students regardless of their performance, and workplaces simply prefer to hire Han Chinese people over Tibetans.
The Chinese government doesn't actually ban learning and speaking the Tibetan language; it’s just the simple truth that even if Tibetans learn their language, Chinese employers simply don't accept Tibetan speaking workers, and the discrimination recieved by Tibetan speaking people is immense. They will be unable to support themselves.
As such, Tibetans in China are stuck in between retaining their cultural values and figuring out how to support themselves, while not completely succeeding in both. If you get down to the heart of the problem, it's the simple fact that Tibetans can't learn their language in schools.
This problem is a simple and easy one to fix. One important point is that just because students can learn the Tibetan language in schools, it doesn't mean that they can't also teach in Chinese. As His Holiness Dalai Lama put it, “Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.” Most Tibetans have no qualms about learning Chinese, and even accept it as a positive thing to do. They simply want to have a chance to retain their traditions, which starts with being able to learn their language freely and easily.
What is it that keeps the Chinese government from simply implementing a Tibetan language class in schools around Tibet? Allowing Tibetans to preserve their own language and culture won’t actually have a negative on anybody. If the Chinese government was more lenient towards Tibetans, protests and unrest would actually decrease exponentially. There would be no need to quell uprisings with violence, no need for people, Tibetan and Han Chinese, to be killed or otherwise harmed in these uprisings. The one big thing stopping the Chinese government from doing so is their hard-line way of thinking.Tibetans open their arms to change, whether they want to or not. Now they need to be given a chance to preserve their own culture-and it the Chinese government’s turn to open their arms and show some tolerance. If they do, when the next generation of tibetan children first enter the educational system, they won't have to choose between "China's way" or the "highway"'; they will have the freedom to create a new way for themselves.
Artifact 3: Short Film
Reflection
(I didn't know if I should mention any names, so I didn't mention any names in the reflection.)
Over the course of the week, I got to hear a lot of presentations, and though I have mixed opinions on some of them, I think that I did actually learn a lot from the presentations, and was inspired in some cases. I think that the message on humanity I got from the presentations was about the contradictory nature of human beings. Many of the presentations, such as the on human trafficking and the on dog genocide, showed the human capacity to do horrific, absolutely horrible things that surpass common sense. However, humans also have the capacity just as great, to do wonderful things, as seen in some presentations. Tibet and Cambodia, for example, are both places where their whole culture revolves around compassion. This means that just as there are many problems in the world, there is the capacity and chance for humans to solve these problems. This contradictory nature is actually a good thing, since I believe that it comes from peoples' strong desires to do good. Even when someone is evil by the eyes of society, they most likely don't think that they are doing wrong, or feel guilt for what they are doing. It's just that when humans are driven by strong emotions, the line between evil and good becomes vague, because boundaries like good and evil come from a person's emotions and opinions to begin with. Since "evil" actually comes from the desire to do good, that means that all humans have the fundamental capacity to do good and be happy. In the end, I think that to be human is to strive to be happy, which often comes in the form of doing good, but what we do is often contradictory to our fundamental desire to to strong emotions.
Other stuff: What I learned and should learn
In terms of factual information, I didn't actually learn a lot. Most of the topics that were discussed, such as dog abuse, terrorism, global warming, and China's 1 child policy, were already more than familiar to me. However, I learned about some presentation methods. There were a few presentations where the presenter was very fluent, and managed to engage the audience very well. For example, the presentation on dog abuse really caught my attention, and many other peoples' attention, because the presenter was firm and sincere, and made good use of videos and information. As for what I should learn, I think that I should learn how to regulate my feelings before a presentation, since I was so nervous that some important messages I wanted to discuss didn't come out as strong as I wanted them to be. A lot of the presenters also had a perspective on their topic that I hadn't thought of before. In this respect, I want to become more open-minded so that I can see more of these perspectives.
Other Things:
Many of the presentations also inspired me greatly in that they made me think and stirred my emotions. This was really great. In some cases, I developed opinions that differed from the presenter's opinion, but that is still a good thing. For example, I disagreed with the main message of the presentation on paranormal science. The presentation ended with the message that people should believe, but only in things that are real. In my opinion, belief comes before reality. It is because people believe in something that it becomes real; this is why truth comes in many forms depending on the person. I think that in a way, this power of belief is a human's greatest power (compared to animals, we are physically inferior). To say that reality comes before belief would only limit people.
