Chinas Cultural Revolution: Reforms in the Education System

mainland Chinas ethnic variety Reforms in the precept transcriptionThe period of the Cultural gyration in China (1966-1969) witnessed a capacious effort by the Maoist leadership to engineer the socialist mutation of Chinese society, ace of the area most radic entirelyy affected by the Cultural Revolution was the Chinese procreational organisation. The Great limit transport has brought about much frugal instability and lack of agricultural business, lead-in to the great famine. The goals and policies imposed by the government during the Cultural Revolution greatly modify the educational system and shifted heighten from an industrial intensive end product to an agricultural production. Although umpteen rural schools continued to function throughout this period, testis education virtually ceased in the urban areas.In this paper, we will dooff take a look at the three main designs in the educational reforms. With this general background description of the program, w e hope to explain whatever of the goals that the Communist functionied hoped to achieve. The second section of this paper will discuss the message that China employed to carry out the three main objectives, analyzing the modify manner in the implementation process and the structural impact it had on the educational system. Finally, we will evaluate the repercussion and critiques these reforms had on students and the society as a whole.educational ReformsThe Cultural Revolution had three prefatory objectives in reforming the educational system. In terms of the content of education, the first objective was to escalate ideological education so as to raise the policy-making mind of the students. The second objective was to integrate conjecture and fare in the educational process in order to make education to a greater extent reactive to the immediate production call for of the country. In terms of the scope of the educational system, the third objective was to popularize edu cation, especially in the rural areas of China.1 anterior to the Cultural Revolution, it seems that there was a tendency in Chinese education to emphasize technological and professional dressing ofttimes at the outgo of the socialist revolution as envisi integrityd by Chairman Mao. In 1956, with the debarion of the third year of senior middle school in which a section of the constitution class was held each week, it was account that semipolitical classes were entirely cancel lead. This trend was further reinforced after the Great Leap Forward when educational policy emphasized more study and slight sprain and politics. This general educational policy seems to prolong led to the integrating of an elite technocracy drawn cock-a-hooply from the educated bourgeois elements of the past. Thus, the most grave goal of educational reform in the Cultural Revolution was to marshal the students and raise to a higher level their awareness of class contradictions all the same alert in Chinese society. As Mao made clear, all work in school is for changing the thinking of the student.2 This educational objective was part of the massive effort of the Cultural Revolution as a whole to revitalize the commitment of the country to the socialist transformation of society.The stinting objectives of the educational reforms of the Cultural Revolution should be seen within the context of the boilersuit strategy for economic education. The emphasis on integrating theory with practice, or education with production, was not new in itself. The Ministry of Education stated explicitly in 1950 that the purpose of institutions of higher acquirement in the Peoples Republic of China is to train high level specialists for national reconstruction in congruity with the principles of the Cultural and Educational policy included in the Common syllabus of the Peoples Political Consultative Conference of China, and using a method which combines theory and practice. These specialists w ill go advanced standards of polish, will master modern attainment and technology, and will know total dedication to serving the people.3 However, the way in which theory was linked to practice was quite different from that which Mao had in mind for the Cultural Revolution. And the problem here was not simply one of implementation but of basically different concepts of economic development.From 1949 to 1958, Chinas strategy for economic development essentially followed that of the Soviet model, which stressed the growth of heavy attention at the expense of light industry and husbandry. As bottlenecks began to form, China began inquisitory for alternative developmental strategies. Thus, the Great Leap Forward was an attempt to ring the masses on a large and intensive scale to trespass the bottlenecks in the economy. While this strategy as a whole failed, it mark the point at which China changed from its preceding(prenominal) strategy to one placing comparatively more emph asis on rural development. This change in developmental strategy brought a basic change in the definition of what practice constituted in the educational process. In one case, it meant running(a) in the industrial sector primarily in a technological capacity, darn in the early(a), it meant working in the field to increase rural production. Thus, in the former case, linking theory and practice meant training more highly expert specialists to advance the technology for Chinas heavy industry, while in the latter, it meant training less(prenominal)-highly experienced generalists in less time to pile up the topical anaesthetic production needs of the rural sector. Thus, the economic objectives of the educational reforms were oriented primarily to the development of agriculture and light industry.Up until 1966, educational opportunities, grumpyly at the higher levels, d come uped unduly concentrated in the big cities. The rural areas, despite just about improvements since 1949, d id not benefit from educational expansion to nearly the same degree as the urban areas.4 In fact, according to a Russian source, after initial success at popularization of educational opportunities between 1950 and 1958, the bout of students at all levels of education decreased markedly from 1960 to 1965. It was also said that Liu Shaoqi admitted that in the 1965-66 school year approximately 30% of the children in China were not covered by a system of primary education.5 This bleak describe was partially confirmed by the Peoples Daily report that in 1965, 30 million school-aged children were not in school, most of them being rural children.6 Thus, one of the major objectives of the educational reforms was to correct this situation by increase the number of schools in the rural areas and initiating a large scale recruitment of peasants and workers into the documentary educational system.Means of the ReformsThe implementation of educational reforms was carried out via a deconce ntrate process, as most schools were placed under topical anesthetic management. In fact, it was reported in 1973 that each school had its own Revolution in Education Committee responsible not only for implementing reforms but also for part of the planning process within its own institution.7 So it would seem that topical anaesthetic experimentation within the general framework of the new educational policies was encouraged. experiment was seen as necessary primarily because of the emphasis on adopting flexible methods to meet the diverse needs of different schools and regions. We will identify below the major guidelines regarding the implementation of the educational reforms, as well as describe some of the different ways the reforms were implemented.In order to elevate the political knowingness of the students, the curriculum was heavily stocked with political education courses. The major texts utilise were drawn from the works of Mao. Aside from increasing the number of politi cal course, other courses also drew upon Maos thoughts to explain various approaches to the analysis of whatever phenomenon was involved.8 This trustfulness on Maos thoughts was essentially the concept of putting politics in ensure of knowledge. At the same time, revolutionary mass criticism and class pushs were actively promoted to bring into sharp relief the various contradictions in society from a more person-to-person perspective. The principal means of linking theory and practice in the educational process were to make production labor a major part of the students curriculum and to direct research to meet local needs. These methods were ground on the concept of practical training, although their implementation in China seems to have gone far beyond that practiced by other countries.In the rural areas, students would spend much of their time working in the fields and learning from the peasants. The training of the students included clearing marginal lands, planting and harv esting, working on the construction of water conservation projects and irrigation systems and so on. 9Research in let go of was directed towards increasing the crop yield and the mechanization of the local production units. What the specific tasks would be depended on the particular needs of a presumptuousness locality. As for the urban sector, secondary and higher learning institutions were reported to have set up local factories within the schools not only to train students in practical work, but also to engage in significant production work. In other cases, factories and schools established ties with one another so as to direct the research of the latter to the needs of the former, making affirmable the immediate application of new findings. At the same time, veteran workers were often brought to the schools to teach in certain areas and students worked at the factories for practical training. Some factories raze established schools of their own, although this method seems t o have more or less hurt out.In brief, the educational reforms designed to attain the economic objectives basically gave the students more practical training and actual work in production than did the previous educational system. It was said that prior to the Cultural Revolution, peasants and workers had much difficulty tending schools because of such obstacles as high entrance examination standards (primarily for colleges and universities), high be and expenses, inaccessibility since most schools were located in the cities, conflict of class schedules with local production time tables, and the lack of direct and immediate relevance of the courses offered to local production needs. As a result, educational opportunities were still not drawn-out to many in the country living in the rural areas.During the Cultural Revolution, many of the reforms were implemented specifically to erase such barriers to education. Some of the spacious guidelines for popularizing education were 1) lo wering educational standards, thus making possible the large scale recruitment of peasants and workers into the existing educational system, and especially to higher learning institutions 2) lowering educational fees and expenses 3) shortening the number of years for a basic education, commonly from a 6-3-3 to a 5-2-2 system, while higher education was usually decreased from four or five years to two or three years (this allowed more to enter the educational system since less time would be taken off needed production work and the school population would be reduced for a given pith of students going through) 4) promoting popularly-sponsored schools-this expansion occurred mainly in the rural areas and was limited basically to the primary school level 5) adapting curriculum and schedules to local requirements and 6) simplifying teaching materials.10inside these reform guidelines, however, schools at all levels could experiment with different ways of implementing the reforms. For ex ample, capital of Red China University with its more carefully selected students continued to have higher standards of education than many other colleges and universities. However, an attempt was made to lessen the gap.11 Or with regard to popularly sponsored schools, there arose mobile schools, spare-time schools, half-work, half-study schools and so on. Furthermore, the specific curriculum of each school, except perhaps for the political education courses, varied according to the needs of the particular region. Thus, the popularization of education was carried out under a flexible and decentralise educational system.Repercussion of the ReformsWhile the drastic educational reform measures have given peasants opportunities to attain basic education in rural areas, as well as agricultural production and political gains, it naturally came with immutable negative impacts that promoted many post-modernists critiques. In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, values worry collabora tion, diligence, modesty, and respect for elders and teachers were discarded as a result of the purge of the old(a) Chinese cultures and traditions. Many have failed to retain the virtues during the revolution. Second, due to political struggle and line drawn between working classes and intellectuals, as well as political and violent nature of the social revolution, substantial innocent teachers and professionals were subjected to personal attacks and humiliation, some even executed. Third, specific strategies of the reformed curriculum and examination system proved to be misguided and wasted the schooling of many novel people. The disconnection between academic achievement and students future travel, the emphasis on political correctness over academic achievement, and the neglecting of theory learning and over-emphasis on hands-on experiences were all examples of poor decisions. Fourth, the Cultural Revolution both change state students and rule them. It liberated students an d people because it opened their eyes to the inequality existing in education and society However, it imposed political control and dominated them because it did not allow real democratic, independent and critical thinking ability.12 As Freire (1970) put it, If teachers help students from oppressed communities to read the word but do not also teach them to read the world, students might become literate person in a technical sense but will remain passive objects of history rather than active subjects.13ConclusionThe Cultural Revolution opened peoples eyes but imposed the governments intentions on the people and placed their thinking. Thus, people were forced to follow the governments ideology. In accordance with the three objectives set forth by the Communist Party, strategies were carried out in a decentralized manner that placed significant amount of decision making on local management. To raise political awareness, much of the curriculum were inspired by Maos thinking. His princ iples such as practice training were also preached to the students, which compliments well with the second objective to integrate theory and practice while increasing agricultural production. At the time, schools and factories were tightly assimilated, as much of the students from urban areas were nonionised to work in rural areas, in order to experience the real China and raise consciousness on the large class separationism that existed. Lastly, with adjustments to the curriculum schedules, time commitment, academic and financial requirements, the barriers to entry were significantly reduced for many rural youths. Basic education was finally attainable by peasants and popularized in the rural area. However, this caused a reduction of higher education and development of specialized skilled workers in the urban area, in accordance with the focus on agricultural production rather than industrial production.The extremist nature of the reforms achieved by China was unlike what other c ountries could have accomplish. While political agendas and production goals were met, it came at a great cost to students that lasted through the generation. Connections to their ancestors culture and virtues were cut in favor of Maos thinking and the way of the new China. This led to activities that post-modernists could consider contradictive to the development of humanity, which was evident in the case of innocent individuals who retain the old culture or decided against Maos thinking were humiliated or executed. Students freedom of critical thinking was taken away, replaced by political correctness and over-emphasis on hand-on experiences, ultimately hindering their theoretical knowledge and future career development.BibliographySeybolt, Peter. Editors Introduction, 1971Huey, Alison B. The Revolutionary Committee of Peking affectionateness School 31, 1970Gardner and Idema, Chinas Educational Revolution, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973Klepikoy, V. Z. The component part of Public Education in China, Sovetskaia Pedagoka 8, 1968, translated by J. Barry Eliot, CE 1Peoples Daily, Chinas Educational Revolution, 1965McCormick, Robert. Revolution in Education Committees, The China Quarterly 57, 1974Wuyuan Rev. Comm. et al., A unused Type of School That Combines. Theory with Practice, 1968Yu-lin Special Region Rev. Comm. and Kuei-ping Rev. Comm, postulate Workers to take in Socialist Consciousness and Culture, 1970,Wan, Guofang. The Educational Reforms in the Cultural Revolution in China A Postmodern Critique, 1998. https//eric.ed.gov/?id=ED427419Lankshear, C. and Mclaren, P.L. Critical Literacy, unused York call down University of New York Press, 1993Shor, I. Empowering Education, Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 1992.1 Peter Seybolt, Editors Introduction, 1971, p. 4.2 Alison B. Huey, The Revolutionary Committee of Peking Middle School 31, 1970, p. 206.3 Seybolt, p. 4.4 Gardner and Idema, Chinas Educational Revolution, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973, p. 2 575 V. Z. Klepikoy, The Fate of Public Education in China, Sovetskaia Pedagoka 8, 1968, trans, J. Barry Eliot, CE 1, p. 42.6 Peoples Daily, Chinas Educational Revolution, 1965, p. 258.7 Robert McCormick, Revolution in Education Committees, The China Quarterly 57,1974, p. 133.8 Wuyuan Rev. Comm. et al., A New Type of School That Combines. Theory with Practice, 1968, p. 24-319 Yu-lin Special Region Rev. Comm. and Kuei-ping Rev. 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