Socialist Education Campaign

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Socialist Education Campaign

• 3 interrelated campaigns:1. Educational campaign2. Rectification campaign3. Purification movement – PLA

• Mao: open investigation• Liu: covert infiltration• Mao: mass education movement• Liu: party-controlled rectification operation

Socialist Education Movement• The Socialist Education Movement was soon paired

with another Mao campaign, the theme of which was "to learn from the People's Liberation Army."

• Minister of National Defense Lin Biao's rise to the center of power was increasingly conspicuous.

• It was accompanied by his call on the PLA and the CCP to accentuate Maoist thought as the guiding principle for the Socialist Education Movement and for all revolutionary undertakings in China.

Socialist Education Movement• A thorough reform of the school system, which had

been planned earlier to coincide with the Great Leap Forward, went into effect.

• The reform was intended as a work-study program--a new xiafang movement--in which schooling was slated to accommodate the work schedule of communes and factories.

• It had the dual purpose of providing mass education less expensively than previously and of re-educating intellectuals and scholars to accept the need for their own participation in manual labor.

Socialist Education Movement• The drafting of intellectuals for

manual labor was publicized through the mass media as an effort to remove "bourgeois" influences from professional workers--particularly, their tendency to have greater regard for their own specialized fields than for the goals of the party.

• Official propaganda accused them of being more concerned with having "expertise" than being "red" .

Sent-Down Youths and Education Policies

Burning of Buddhas

Burning of Books & Old Culture

Elena Songster & Jessica Stowell, OU

Sent-Down Youth

Elena Songster & Jessica Stowell, OU

Sent Down Youth

• Sent to countryside to learn from peasants• Barefoot doctors• Education stopped, schools closed• Teachers persecuted

Education

Not with Mao around!

• Mao told the people of China that teachers were against the revolution and that children shouldn’t continue their classes.

• This left the children with free time since they didn’t go to classes. Mao encouraged them to become red guards.

• If you were chosen at a red guard audition it was considered a great honor and was many children’s dream.

Mao’s Educational Policies

• The CCP were reliant on Soviet help:–600 Russians taught in Chinese universities–36,000 Chinese had studied at Russian

universities• The illiteracy rate improved and so did school

attendance, but not as much as it could’ve been because of the Cultural Revolution

• Students were taught about Mao and the ideology

The Youth Movement

Instead of killing the intellectuals in China, who amounted to less than 10% of the population, Mao decided to re-educate intellectuals in the ways of the proletariat.

To do so, he made many books and learning sources illegal, and relocated members of the bourgeoisie class to farming communities where they were forced to do manual labor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbECxnd5ZA4

Cultural Revolution Targets Students

• Maoists also turned to middle-school students for political demonstrations on their behalf.

• These students, joined also by some university students, came to be known as the Red Guards .

• Millions of Red Guards were encouraged by the Cultural Revolution group to become a "shock force" and to "bombard" with criticism both the regular party headquarters in Beijing and those at the regional and provincial levels.

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The Education System

• All children taught to aspire to being young pioneers, the first rung towards party membership

• Enrollment as a young pioneer was a major event for a student and family

• All students were encouraged to admit their failings in public in an attempt to become better socialists

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The Education System

• Indoctrination in the classroom began with primary education

• History taught to highlight the wrongs of the feudal past and western imperialism

• Students taught to have unbounded love for comrades and hatred for class enemies

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Completely Smash the Liu-Deng Counter-Revolutionary Line, 1967

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“Smash the old world/Establish a new world.”

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“Let the new socialist performing arts occupy every stage”

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“Proletarian revolutionary rebels unite!”

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“Field for criticism”