An Anthropologcial Study Of The Impacts Of Wa-Han Bilingual Education Policy

Languages are not only an effective way to promote communication among different peoples, but also the carriers of different cultural heritages. The development and extinction of any language is a natural process. To prevent language extinction, many countries try to preserve the diversity of their languages and cultures. To achieve the goal, bilingual education has been proven to be one of the best ways. Ethnic groups and their usage of languages within China are much diversified. so the implication of Chinese bilingual education policy are much more complex. Therefore, the study of bilingual education policy based on the perspective of Wa-Han Bilingual Education is necessary.Based on cultural anthropology theories, this thesis focuses on the impacts of the implementation of Wa-Han Bilingual Education, research methods includes literature review, participant observation, in-depth interview, questionnaire survey and others. The thesis consists of seven parts:the first part is an intoruction; the second part reviews the history of Wa-Han Bilingual Education policy and its implementations; the third part is a ethnography description on language environment and cultural background of L village; the fourth part is a ethnography description on classroom teaching and daily langague usage in a primary school; the fifth part shows different attitudes of Wa-Han Bilingual Education from the perspectives of different local people; the sixth part is an anthropological analysis of the effect of Wa-Han Bilingual Education; the seventh part is the conclusion and policy suggestion.After investigating the effect of Wa-Han Bilingual Education,1 discovered that Wa-Han dual language education is used in L village and other elementary schools, and has played an important role in assisting students in learning Chinese; but Wa-Han Bilingual Education is in gradual decline, some changes have taken places, for instance, the Wa-Han Bilingual Education in primary school in Cangyuan put cultural heritage as the main target. This is not only affected by the social and cultural environment transformation, state policy toward ethnic minorities and its languages, shortage of Wa langague teaching staff and material resources, but also by the attitudes in terms of language and cultural consciousness of the planners and practitioners of Wa-Han Bilingual Education. To a large extent, the implementation of bilingual education policy is determined by local governments at all levels. Although Wa-Han Bilingual Education is changing, the thesis argues that it still has its value and significance. It is suggested that attention should be paid to Wa-Han Bilingual Education by local government and education departments, to safeguard and promote multiculturalism through legislation and preferential policies. so as to better preserve cultural diversity.