I was born, raised and educated in Inner Mongolia, as well as later teaching there, having been too accustomed to making decisions and judgements according to my first language – Mandarin, and due to my lack of basic terminology and excellent language competence to present new language clearly and efficiently in English or Mongolian, I used to adopt Mandarin to assist teaching English.

In most cases, Mandarin Chinese and English language teaching are examination-focused in formal education in Inner Mongolian of China, yet Mongolian education is excluded and merely used in daily life. Although I took it for granted that I should use Chinese as the medium of instruction, that could not be seen as sustainable development.

Admittedly, the Chinese language is the main language to learn for the sake of the development of economy and communication, and English as a bonus for future competition, while that does not represent that minority and non-minority students can be deprived of opportunities for language education equity.

Therefore the values and attitudes of communities instil in students and bring with them to school; at the same time, students’ view on education also has substantial impacts on schools and educators’ reaction. For example, the acceptance by students and parents of one linguistic model over another might provide some implications for policy makers and school leaders that the model they started was the correct one.

Thus the issue here is how these three languages should be employed as the medium of instruction to realize sustainability of languages. If it is Mongolian, how can students reach competence in Mandarin Chinese as the lingua franca in China, especially with the increasing of the full mark in Chinese literacy of College Entrance Examination (full mark 150 in the past /180 at present).

If it is Chinese, what actions should be taken to ensure that students learn by efficient and effective ways, while they do not need to compromise their culture and ethnic identities simultaneously? If it is English, how can I make myself understood and relieve the extra pressure on students from a third language. Since there is no entrance examination for Mongolian language, does that mean learning it makes no sense, and our societies might not need it in the long run?

If the current generation, the younger people, they do not speak Mongolian, they have slim chance to learn it though living in the terrain of a minority language, how can we imagine its prospect to the next generation in the future? It is beyond imagination that this rare language might be losing out one day.

Aligning with Stephen Sterling’s (2004, 2009; as cited in Nolet, 2016) three perspectives, I link them to my context where teachers might benefit from the goal and purpose associated with sustainability of languages which they are supposed to be achieved during the conversation program. Firstly, from an instrumental perspective, language equity often involves an urgency in Inner Mongolia, and education is viewed as a strategy for curing people’s ignorance and changing their worldview that create linguistic imbalance, not only to students, but to their parents and teachers.

Furthermore, in the intrinsic view I understand that the local Mongolians, especially who live in the urban area, have been exposed to the belief of learning Chinese for entering the mainstream society, acquiring English to meet the challenges and needs of globalization, but when it comes to study native language, the critical issue may be having them see what the difference is before and after learning minority language.

It is vital for the younger generation to recognize how encouraging they grow up in trilingual environment, inherently learn Mongolian as their mother tongue in order to maintain their identity, equipped themselves with three languages, Mongolian, Chinese and English instead of a heavier educational burden and responsibility.

Then something sustainability education is concerned with, a valuing of (indigenous) knowledge related to the past, nurturing a sustainability world view in the present as a means of safeguarding resources – including linguistic ones – for the future. It focuses on helping people to rethink what the inherent values created in their understanding the status of languages, be aware of the take-it-for-granted, determined and unequal at the moment, as well as try predicting what would happen if a nationality loses her own language, what the herdsmen living upon the grassland should do if no offspring is willing to acquire the skill of co-existing with this home land.

Based on the Whole School/Institution Approach, and echoing Orr’s (2004) appeal for a rethinking of education for teachers and educational institutions as role models focusing on taking responsibility of linking (local) environment knowledge with indoor classes, thinking about whether there exists language inequity or a balance of trilingualism in class. I could initiate a conversation in my school, instead of teacher training, with my colleagues and the head teachers about their attitudes towards the triple languages, discussing with each other about whether there was something omitted and forgotten in the general teaching practice in the light of our living reality- ethnic minority autonomous region in China.

The purpose of such reflection activity may mean a need to make changes to current practices because they should have paid enough attention to the nature of trilingual education; ultimately realize their transformation of beliefs and attitudes. This kind of conversation might be a conscious and developmental transformation that entails a present self-recognition coming to the surface, and further cultivates a new self who extends empathy to the well-being of other people, students, life and thus the natural environment.

Language teaching animated by local people and native culture, then, becomes more than just teaching a curricular subject or a tool for gaining higher marks, but in the true sense of conversation it becomes the means for being re-conscious of circumstance, others in our self-position.

More importantly, “[i]f we teachers are committed to transforming young lives, to offering hope where often there seems to be more, to helping students learn to believe in themselves, the best way is to begin with ourselves. By listening to our voices, by gleaming understanding from what is said and what is left unsaid…” (Wood, 2000: 445).

References:

Nolet, V. (2016) Educating for sustainability: principles and practice for teachers, New York: Routledge.

Orr, D. W. (2004) Earth in Mind － On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect, 10th Anniversary Edition, Washington DC: Island Press.

Wood, Diane R. (2000) Narrating Professional Development: Teachers’ Stories as Texts for Improving Practice, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 31(4), pp.426-448.