Figure 1.--This is a paintong made in the early 1970s during the Cultural Revolution depicting an idealozed country primary school. The five pink and green characters hanging at the right mean "Long live Chairman Mao". Note that some of the girls wear colorful ponk and green jackets. We are not sure how cmmon that was during the Cultural Revolution. Note the caps that all of the boys are wearing, even though they are inside their school class. We do not know who the artist was.

Radically minded Communist Party officials saw the "two-tiered system" of education adopted in China would produce an elite few highly trained academics with the great masses of the Chinese people having to settle for an inferior education, able at best to reach the specialized pplytechnical colleges. It was in Chinese universities that the Cultural Revolition was unleashed. Some saw the administrators of the comprehensive universities as the culprits, believing that they were perpetuating a self-serving system. A "big character poster"' critical of the university's administrators. The Peking poster and criticism was given extensive coverage in the national media. It proved to be the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Political criticism of university administrators rapidly spread to universities across China. Under Liu Shaoqi, the government's first formal reaction was to appoint "workteams" to look into the charges and to contain the increasingly disruptive agitation. Chairman Mao personally by mid-June 1966 intervened in the growing national movement. He overtly questioned Liu's handling of the Cultural Revolution and withdrew the workteams. Thr Revolutionary students saw this as support for their cause. They escalted their efforts in university campuses throughout China. Turmoil resulted ion Chinese campuses. University education virtually ceased. Major reforms were conducted in primary and secondary schools. Primary schools were cinducted throughout the country side as part of the clectivizatin program, but the academic program was significantly simplified with many importnt subjects being watered down or eliminated. The selection of new students when admissions were resumed ignored academic abilities and was based on political "virtue". Party officials classified youths worker, peasants, or military families as the most "virtuous". The Cultural Revolution was an enomously disruptive period for Chinese society and especially for the country's educational system. The educational infrastructure, especially the dtaff of competent university professors, was decimated as a result of the revolutional struggles and purges. They were denounced and humikliated. Many spent years in the country side engaged in agricultural work. Some died or suffered debiliating injiries. Students akso suffered as they persued the factional polutical infighting on campus. Course work was simplied or actually non-existent.

Background

HBC readers may want to look at the page on the Cultural Revolution to help put details about educational developents in context. One of China's most caotic periods of cahange occurred during the Cultural Revolutuion (1966-76). It is one of the most violent and tragic episodes in modern Chinese history. It was inspied by China's leader Mao Tse Tung and known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao thought that the Chinese people were losing their revolutionary zeal. He this conceived of a cutural revolution to destroy once and for all the culture of pre-Communist China. Major Chinese traditions such as respect for ones's elders and the value of scholarship in particular were attacked. Children were often forced to renounce their own parents. Mao sought to reinvigirate party cadre with a revolutionay commitment, to replace many in positions of rank and privilege who were no sufficently inspired, to punish the cadre for the criticisms that were lodged against Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward experiment, and to continue attacks against the intelligentia who he thought were not sufficently committed to the Revolution. Important leaders including Peng Zhen to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping who were not sufficently loyal to Mao suffered during the Cultural Revolution, now just as the intelligentia and those who hadn't embraced Mao's grand plan. Mao's power reached unprecedent levels during this period in a xenephobic and often irrational cult of personality, symbolized by a Little Red Book consisting of his quotations, ubiquitous buttons that bore his portrait, and statues virtually deifying him that were raised near any buildings of social significance throughout China. The attacks on people made during the Cultural Revolution were all done in Mao's name. Red Army style uniforms became very popualar for boys.

Two-Tiered System

Radically minded Communist Party officials saw the "two-tiered system" of education adopted in China would produce an elite few highly trained academics with the great masses of the Chinese people having to settle for an inferior education, able at best to reach the specialized pplytechnical colleges. [Surowski] For some it was a system which smacked too much like the old Confuscian system of educating a small elite.

Educational Criticism (May 1966)

It was in Chinese universities that the Cultural Revolition was unleashed. Some saw the administrators of the comprehensive universities as the culprits, believing that they were perpetuating a self-serving syytem. Nie Yuanzi, the party secretary of the philosophy department at Peking University, and six other colleagues, on May 25, 1966 hung a "big character poster"' critical of the university's administrators. The Peking poster and criticism was given extensive coverage in the national media. It proved to be the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. [Surowski]

Work Teams (June 1966)

Political criticism of university administrators rapidly spread to universities across China. Under Liu Shaoqi, the government's first formal reaction was to appoint "workteams" to look into the charges and to contain the increasingly disruptive agitation. The various workteams infact reacted differently to the situation on the universities to which they were sent. Some of the work teams supported the Revolutionary students. Others sided with and attempted to protect the administrators. [Surowski]

Mao Intervenes (June-August, 1966)

Chairman Mao personally by mid-June 1966 intervened in the growing national movement. He overtly questioned Liu's handling of the Cultural Revolution and withdrew the workteams. Thr Revolutionary students saw this as support for their cause. They escalted their efforts in university campuses throughout China. Party officials on August 8, 1966, at the eleventh plenum of the eight Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, degined the scope and strategy of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. A key issue was education. Officials charged that Chinese education had been coopted by bourgeois intellectuals and demanded that a new system more closely based on Mao's teachings be created. [Surowski]

Campus Turmoil (1966-70)

Universties

The result was turmoil on Chinese university campuses for 3 years. The campuses were controlled in by a seies of non-academic forces, including Red Guard students, soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, and finally workers and peasants. Extreme factualism among these groups often brought about a complete cessation of classes. [Surowski] It was not only the universitity administrators that were affected. Competent professors found it difficult, if not dangerous to teach. Many were denounced by theit students.

Primary schools

The operation of Chinese primary schools were less affected than the other levels of education. Primary schools accross China reopened during Fall 1967 without serious incudent. The length of primary study was shortened to 5 years, in some cases only 4 years. [Surowski]

Secondary schools

Secondary studies (both junior and senior) were also shortened. This varied, but the 6 year secondary program vefore the Cultural Revolution was shortened to as little as 3 years. The curriculum was also reassessed and redesigned on amore practical basis. Classes in history, geography or literature were discarded. In a departure from Soviet-inspired efforts to focus on scence and tevhnology, critical science classes in physics and chemistry were replaced with classes in industrial skills. [Surowski]

Educational Reform (1970-74)

Changes in Chinese schools and universities were directed by the Communist Party Central Committee (or various sub-committees). The suspect Ministry of Education essentially ceased finctioning from 1967 through 1974. The key schools which had theoretically been established to cater to academically talented children were abolished. Children were enrolled in primary and secondary schools based on where they lived. University entrance examinations were stopped in June 1966 as result of the campus disorders. As a result, few Chinese universities admitted any until the early 1970s. [Surowski]

Political Virture

The selection of new students when admissions were resumed ignored academic abilities and was based on political "virtue". Party officials classified youths worker, peasants, or military families as the most "virtuous". The result was the label "worker-peasant-soldier student" ( gong-nong-bing xueyuan ) for the students who managed to enter colleges and universities during the early 1970s. Students from more advantaged families could be "reclassified" through reeducation in a rural area or factory after completing their junior or senior secondary school. [Surowski]

Assessment

The Cultural Revolution was an enomously disruptive period for Chinese society and especially for the country's educational system. The educational infrastructure, especially the dtaff of competent university professors, was decimated as a result of the revolutional struggles and purges. They were denounced and humikliated. Many spent years in the country side engaged in agricultural work. Some died or suffered debiliating injiries. Students akso suffered as they persued the factional polutical infighting on campus. Course work was simplied or actually non-existent. One actual achievement was the expansion of the primary education system to most of the school age population--including children in the countryside. This was achieved as part of the agricultural collectivization program. Many "commune schools" were establisghed by the collectives rather than outside government agencies. Academic standards, even in primary school, however, declined. [Surowski]

Schoolwear

Sources

David B. Surowski, "History of the Educational System of China: An essay commissioned by Projects for International Education Research," undated essay accessed August 29, 2002.

Created: August 29, 2002
Last updated: September 5, 2002