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The 1963 Temporary Work Regulations for Full-time Middle and Primary Schools: Commentary and Translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Susan Shirk
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Extract

After the Great Leap Forward the Chinese Ministry of Education designed new programmes for teaching and administration. These guidelines, the “1963 Temporary Work Regulations for Full-time Middle and Primary Schools,” which are translated below, were drafted during 1961 and 1962, promulgated in 1963 but only became generally available during the Cultural Revolution when, in 1967, they were reprinted and circulated for criticism, to serve as negative examples for those drawing up new educational reforms. These 1963 regulations were an attempt to structure a school environment in which the teaching and learning of academic subjects would flourish. They provide documentary evidence for the concentration on expertness and “quality” which characterized educational policy during the period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Moreover, the regulations illustrate how the policy-makers defined “quality” education; they describe the specific measures which the authorities felt were necessary to guarantee a school setting conducive to that goal; and they indicate what values the policy-makers were willing to trade-off in pursuit of educational “quality.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 55 , September 1973 , pp. 511 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

1. The copy I have used was reproduced in July 1967 by the Chiao-yü pu “wu-ch'i kung-she” tzu-liao tsu (The May Seventh Commune materials group of the Ministry of Education). I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Stuart R. Schram for correcting a number of points in my original translation. Naturally, I remain responsible for any surviving errors.

2. According to one source, by 1962 die national figure for agricultural middle schools had dropped from the Great Leap high of 22,600 schools (enrolling 2,030,000 students) to only 3,715 schools (enrolling 266,000). I-chiu-tiu-pa fei-ch'ing nien-pao (1968 Yearbook on Chinese Communism) (Taipei, 1968), p. 194Google Scholar, quoted in Donald Munro, J., “Egalitarian ideal and educational fact in Communist China,” in Lindbeck, John M. H. (ed.), China: Management of a Revolutionary Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971), p. 277Google Scholar.

3. Since the Cultural Revolution many local areas have reported the establishment of new, flexibly scheduled and conveniently located work-study schools which have enrolled students who never before attended school (for example, Hung-ch'i 6 (1971), pp. 35–41Google Scholar; Jen-min jih-pao, 6 January 1972, Survey of the China Mainland Press (SCMP) 5057, pp. 99–100; Jen-min jih-pao, 26 March 1972, SCMP 5112, pp. 149–152). This suggests that the 1964–66 campaign to set up more work-study schools made an impact in some parts of the country but not in others, did not have much effect anywhere, or was simply a preliminary step in the popularization of education.

4. Emphasis added. Kuang-ming jih-pao, 15 May 1964, SCMP 3237, p. 16.

5. “Shen-hsiang ch'üan-jih chih chung-hsüeh te hsiu-cheng-chu-i chiao-yü hei kang-ling – chung-hsüeh wu-shih t'iao pi-hsü p'i-p'an” (“The black programme of revisionist education which stretched to full-time middle schools – the middle school fifty regulations must be criticized”), Na-han chan-pao (Battle Cry Bulletin) (Canton, written 24 December 1967, published April 1968).

6. Shang-hm chiao yü, 12 May 1965, Selections from China Mainland Magazines 486, p. 26.

7. Nan-fang jih-pao, 25 March 1963, SCMP 2973, p. 6.

8. “Chronology of the two-road struggle on the educational front in the past seventeen years,” Chiao-yü ko-ming (Educational Revolution) 6 May 1967, translated in Chinese Education I:1 (1968), pp. 39–41Google Scholar.

9. Yen-hung, Shih, “Down with the fountainhead of revisionist education,” Jen-min jih-pao, 18 07 1967Google Scholar, translated in Chinese Education 1:2 (1968), p. 23Google Scholar.

10. “Teaching Plan” might be another term to describe the work regulations translated here. More likely, the new teaching plan and the new work regulations were drafted concurrently so that the two could be implemented together to increase “quality” in schools.

11. Nan-fang jih-pao, 25 March 1963, SCMP 2973, p. 6.

12. Correspondence with Mei Hsiao T. Huang, Berkeley, California, August 1972.

13. Notations refer to the sections of the two sets of regulations. For example, P-8 refers to section eight of the primary school regulations, and M-9 refers to section nine of the middle school regulations. Only the middle school regulations are here translated in full.

14. During the Cultural Revolution this rule was specifically criticized for divorcing politics from other subject matter; “Shen-hsiang chüan-jih chih chunghsüeh te hsiu-cheng-chu-i chiao-yü hei kung-ling – chung-hsüeh wu-shih t'iao pihsü p'i-p'an”.

15. For example, “‘Combat self-interest, criticize and repudiate revisionism’ carry out well the struggle-criticism-transformation in various schools and units,” Hung-ch'i 10 (1967)Google Scholar, translated in Chinese Education 1:2 (1968), p. 13Google Scholar; also Jen-min jih-pao, 28 October 1957, Current Background 846, p. 22.

16. Munro, Donald J., “The malleability of man in Chinese Marxism,” The China Quarterly (CQ) 48 (1971), p. 625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. The only exception to the emphasis on standardization was what appears to be an attempt to give teachers some scope for individual ingenuity and creativity in teaching: “Except for the requirement that the content of teaching should be unified according to the textbooks, teaching methods should not strive for uniformity” (M–16, P–13).

18. The precise bureaucratic route is somewhat unclear because there seems to be a break in the printing in section 8 of the middle school document. What the regulations seem to say is “go through the county” department for primary schools, and “go through the special district or municipal” department for middle schools.

19. See, for example, primary sections 10, 14, 23, 24–27; and middle school sections 8, 17, 28, 30–34, 48. The concern for students' health has not been a matter for debate among leadership factions; Mao Tse-tung himself has frequently said that schooling should not be so stressful that it strains students' health. A fascinating subject for future research is how the concern for sufficient rest time and protecting health relates to Chinese cultural beliefs and values.

20. The term “organized activities” usually connotes activities of a political nature, e.g., Communist Youth League and Young Pioneers.

21. Once again notice the de-emphasis of group-orientated socialization practices.

22. During the Cultural Revolution the 50 middle school regulations were criticized for overemphasizing academic study and neglecting extracurricular activities, thereby making the students “bookish”; “Shen-hsiang ch'üan-jih chih chung-hsüeh te hsiu-cheng-chu-i chiao-yü hei kang-ling – chung-hsüeh wu-shih t'iao pi-hsü p'i-p'an.”)

23. One 1962 newspaper article said it was “Utopian” to expect all teachers to have transformed their political consciousness (Jen-min jih-pao, 13 January 1962, SCMP 2342, p. 5). Many older teachers who had been fired as Rightists during the Anti-Rightist Campaign were welcomed back to their jobs during the 1961–66 period (information I obtained from refugee students interviewed in the course of research for my forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation on the social relations of Chinese middle schools).

24. Shih Yen-hung, p. 24; also Munro, , “Egalitarian ideal,” p. 272Google Scholar.

25. “It is entirely correct, in light of the present level of economic development, to control appropriately the rate of educational development and to emphasize that on the basis of a definite quantity educational quality should be promoted so that the educational undertaking as a whole may better keep pace with the present economic construction.” (Nan-fang jih-pao editorial, 6 May 1961, SCMP 2523, p. 15.)

26. Analyses of the economic aspects of the Maoist educational model include: Munro, “Egalitarian Ideal”; Peter Seybolt, J., “The Yenan Revolution in mass education,” CQ 48 (1971), pp. 641–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDowell, S. Garrett, “Educational reform in China as a readjusting country,” Asian Survey XI:3 (1971), pp. 257–270Google Scholar; and Pi-chao, Chen, “The political economics of population growth: the case of China,” World Politics VIII:2 (1971), pp. 245–272Google Scholar.

27. Bowles, Samuel, Planning Educational Systems of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 29Google Scholar.

28. Shabad, Theodore, “Soviet schools will stress jobs,” New York Times, 26 06 1972Google Scholar; and “A new emphasis on an old approach,” New York Times, 16 July 1972.

29. Savarkar, Joy, “Indian ferment,” The Far Eastern Economic Review, 4 11 1972Google Scholar.

30. Quoted in Cameron, J. and Dodd, W. A., Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1970), p. 223Google Scholar.

31. Michel Oksenberg argues persuasively that many of the conflicts which produced the Cultural Revolution can be understood in terms of “the divergence between Mao's emphasis upon redistribution and his colleagues' emphasis upon regulating society. …” (Oksenberg, Michel C., “Policy making under Mao, 1949–68: An overview,” in Lindbeck, (ed), China: Management of a Revolutionary Society, p. 114.)Google Scholar

32. Jen-min jih-pao, 25 August 1964, SCMP 3299, pp. 16–17; Nan-fang jih-pao, 11 December 1964, SCMP 3377, p. 23; Nan-fang jih-pao, 22 February 1965, SCMP 3240, p. 18; Hung-ch'i 13 (1965), p. 35Google Scholar.

33. Seybolt, , “The Yenan Revolution,” pp. 656–64Google Scholar.

34. See Munro, , “Egalitarian Ideal,” especially pp. 263, 266, 272–73, 279 and 283Google Scholar.