Click Here: Silencing a Kindergarten
In a small classroom in western China, children once learned to sing and count in the language of their ancestors — Uyghur. Then the doors were locked, and founder Abduweli Ayup went from teacher to enemy of the state.
We’re pleased to share powerful reporting from our friends at the show Click Here, from Recorded Future News and PRX. They tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. Over the past year, they’ve been documenting the digital – and cultural – erasure of Uyghurs in China.
As part of that series, they follow one man who set out to preserve his culture the old fashioned way: by opening kindergartens that celebrated the Uyghur language. And then, almost overnight, those doors were locked. And the school’s founder went from teacher… to enemy of the nation. Sean Powers reported the story and Dina Temple-Raston Dina, the host of the Click Here, brings it to us.
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Teachlab is a program of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT, Justin Reich, Director. This episode produced by Jesse Dukes. Thanks to Sean Powers and Arielle Nissenblatt for arranging our collaboration with Click Here.
