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Bilingual education in China’s ethnic minority regions can serve as a test case of the ability of governments to maintain linguistic pluralism in the face of rapid social change and the spread of standard national languages. In pursuit of its policy of multilingualism, since the late 1970s China has conducted ambitious programs of bilingual education for many of its 55 officially recognized shaoshu minzu, or ‘minority nationalities,’ including the Nuosu, a subgroup of the Yi minzu or ‘nationality.’ Interviews, questionnaires, and class observations in 17 elementary and secondary schools in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southwestern Sichuan assessed the success or failure of bilingual education in the Standard Chinese (‘Mandarin’) and Nuosu languages. While there was still widespread support for the concept of bilingual education, results did not match expectations: few students in bilingual programs left school with functional literacy in the Nuosu language. We attribute this problem to two kinds of factors: structurally, bilingual education has failed to adapt to changing linguistic landscapes in Liangshan; and practically, programs have suffered from inadequate teacher training, outdated textbooks, and omission of Nuosu language from entrance examinations. We propose reforms that would bring bilingual education up to date for contemporary society.
