Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

‘Rice feeds the body, songs feed the spirit.’ TheKam people consider singing as important aseating. From ancient times there has been atradition of elders teaching songs and childrenlearning them. At the outset of the bilingualeducation project in autumn of 2000, ZaidangPrimary School introduced Kam singing intothe curriculum. Children both studied thewriting system and learned how to sing. Today,whenever you wander through the village orinto someone’s home, you invariably hear thesound of children singing.© Long Yaohong Kam women singing in the drum towerInterim 5-Year Report,Jiasuo Primary School in Zaima XiangMr. Yang Shengqi, HeadmasterBefore their language was expressed in written form in 1958, the Kam had developed a strong oralliterature: myths, ancient songs, legends, folk tales, folk songs, long narrative poems, riddles, shuochang(which combines poetry and prose) and drama. Edmonson et al. (2000) provides a sample of a Kam songwith English translation (p. xvii):Dos yeecNgaemc sius keip wap pap jenc jemh.Dens lagx nyenc Gaeml lyangp dos kgal.Saemh xonc saemh map kgal menh dos.Soh emv jenc nyangt yungt angl hac.As wild flowers bloom on the mountainside,So the Kam in their hearts love to sing.From generation to generation they pass on this gift of song;So the melody in mountain, forest and brookside will ring.Edmondson, Somsonge and Zhou (2000)Introduction to the Kam-Chinese-Thai-English Dictionary (p. xvii)An appreciation of the rich depths of the Kam people’s cultural accomplishments underlies the bilingualeducation pilot project that is being implemented in a remote Kam village in Guizhou Province.Current Situation Relating to Ethnic Minorities in ChinaThe People’s Republic of China (PRC) lists 56 official nationalities, in which—as some scholars suggest—asmany as 200 different languages are spoken (Kosonen, 2005; Stites, 1999). Although the ethnic minoritiesmake up only 8 percent of the total population of China, the number of individual members of minoritycommunities approaches 100 million, a population larger than any country in Western Europe. 22 Germany, the largest country in Western Europe, has approximately 82 million people.[ 74 ]