Thank you for that question.
There used to be more options, and they've been shrinking steadily every year. Tibetans could send kids to some Tibetan private schools, or the monasteries were running schools for secular education and these kinds of things. The Chinese government has cracked down on all of it.
When I say, “the choice to send them”, some parents some years ago would have had somewhat of a choice between a Tibetan-run school or this school where they're going to get a strong Chinese-language education. In the case when they made that decision for whatever reason, that's what I was talking about. It's that kind of regret.
The consequences really.... One thing that is very clear to us in our research is that for many of the Tibetans who want to resist or who try to resist, they've gotten much better at pressuring people before they even consider getting to the point of not sending.
What parents are doing now—which reminds me of the stories of the residential schools in Canada that I have heard—is moving to urban areas, because there are day schools there. They'll separate the family and move with the child or the children to the urban area so that the kids can go to a day school, or they will live with the four- and five-year-olds. We've heard of nomadic communities taking turns, family by family, going and living near the school—though they can't even see the kids—so that someone from that community is near those kids. They're living in their car all week long.
Those are the kinds of stories we're hearing now.