Tibetan monastery schools to introduce Chinese

For those who thought ESL was tough, Zee News India posted this story ...

Dharamsala, June 25: The Tibetan government-in-exile is introducing Chinese as an optional third language in its monastery schools in India, Bhutan and Nepal and has issued newspaper advertisements for "preferably male" teachers.

Acting on the suggestion of its temporal head the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan ministry for religious affairs and education has asked 225 monastery schools administered by it to include Chinese and other foreign languages like Russian and Japanese in the curricula, its secretary Dhondup said.

"The Dalai Lama says language is a student's ornament and they should learn as many language as possibile to keep up with the changing times," he said. The decision to introduce Chinese is significant given that even after 48 years, the Communist regime in China has not addressed the "free Tibet" issue and the community has somewhat reconciled it.

There are about 70 Tibetan children village residential schools associated to the CBSE, and 225 monastery schools in India, Bhutan and Nepal with nearly 20,000 students.

Dhondup said "since TCV are already burdened with a heavy CBSE syllabus, we have decided to spare them the added burden but have asked monastery schools to start teaching Chinese". The ministry of the Mcleodganj-based government-in-exile issued advertisements in Tibetan newspapers for "prefereably male" Chinese language teachers, he said adding 30 monastery schools had responded to the directive so far.

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