One school/two systems: An ethnographic case study of a Mongol high school in China

The end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution ushered in a new era in China. The Chinese government abandoned the previous assimilative ethnic policy and adopted a pluralist policy and a multicultural education policy to promote cultural diversity. However, if the pluralist ethnic policy and the multicultural education policy are put in the wider social context, or related to other official ideologies, contradictions emerge. These contradictions may affect the policy implementation and result in ethnic inequality, a consequence that is in direct conflict with the objectives of the policy statement itself.; Based on these broad assumptions, this study attempts to evaluate how the multicultural education policy is translated into practice at the school level and how the dominant Chinese culture is legitimized in the implementation process.; This research is an ethnographic case study of a Mongol high school in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China. A variety of methods for data collection for a qualitative inquiry in a natural setting are used. These methods include: interviews, participant observation, curriculum evaluation, document review, and artifact collection. A revised version of five criteria for ideal multicultural schools is used for the evaluation of the policy implementation with a focus on the curricular processes.; The study includes a historical review of Mongol education in Inner Mongolia to show how succeeding Chinese governments have used education as a means of control of Mongols since the Manchu conquest. The study is situated within theories of ethnic conflict control in order to see how the Chinese government currently uses multicultural education policy as a means to control potential ethnic conflict.; The findings of this study indicate that the official multicultural education policy is distorted when put into practice and its implementation results in various forms of ethnic hegemony, which serve the purpose of controlling ethnic conflicts and maintaining social stability.; The significance of this study is to contribute to research on multicultural education at the school level in a non-English-speaking country and stimulate further qualitative and quantitative research on the same theme as a follow-up to this study.