Learning to Be Chinese.(schools in Tibet)(Brief Article)

If you are looking for Tibet's best and brightest, don't bother looking in Lhasa. The top scorers of the province's junior-high and high-school entrance exams--between 1,300 and 1,600 students each year--are now regularly shipped to study in China's central and eastern cities. The first Tibetan boarding school opened its doors in 1985 and was deemed such a success that about 40 more have followed. Young Uighurs from the far-western province of Xinjiang started attending similar schools in 2000. Critics worry that these minority academies are really only trying to teach one lesson: how to become a good Chinese citizen. Others, including some of the Tibetan pupils, see the schools as a chance to obtain the language and life skills necessary to succeed in a country where Han Chinese dominate business and government.

One of the prices of admission is living in a near citadel of learning. Students endure a tough regimen and the teachers are taskmasters. Rising from bed at 6:30 a.m., they have classes until the late afternoon, followed by hours of homework. Even free time is not so free: on weeknights, administrators require students to watch the 7 o'clock national news, with its heavy dose of government propaganda. And many schools enforce curfews on the weekends, if the students can leave campus at all. The school for Uighurs in Shanghai resembles a high-security fortress, according to one matriculant's uncle, who tried to see his nephew without success. "It's impossible to visit the students," says Ahmet, a Uighur graduate student, who refused to give his surname. School administrators claim to keep their charges under lock and key for their own safety, say students.

What's most controversial about the schools is not their strictness, or even what they teach, but what they don't teach. All classes are conducted in Mandarin, except for a 45-minute Tibetan-language class that meets once a week. Students say modern history and religion are taboo subjects, and attention to Tibetan ...