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“Revolution in Education” Committees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Robert McCormick
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Extract

During March 1973, I was part of a study tour visiting, as is common with such groups, a variety of units in China. My own particular subject is education and I was therefore particularly interested in the various educational institutions we visited as a group: such as the Canton Medical College, Peking University, Nanking University, Futan University, Canton Province Teachers’ Training College and middle and primary schools. At Nanking and Futan universities I was also able to have discussions, separately from the main group, on purely educational issues

Type
Report from China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 57 , March 1974 , pp. 133 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1974

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References

1. At Nanking University I was able to spend some three hours with Chu Shuo-hai, Scientific Research Officer of the Education Office, and Wu Hsiangtung of the Revolutionary Committee, concentrating on the educational structure in China, and the work of the Revolution in Education Committees.

2. At Futan, we were also told, however, that “ability is uniform, motivation is high (because of the political consensus), they have practical experienceand the same fundamental knowledge.” This appeared to contradict earlier statements, unless “fundamental knowledge” meant that gained from life experience, rather than academic knowledge.

3. Marett, V., “Examinations without recrimination,” in China Now (Education Special), No. 25 (10 1972) (London: Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding)Google Scholar . According to this article, at Canton Teacher's Training College this procedure was used for assigning students to various departments.

4. Originally published in Red Flag, No. 8 (1970)Google Scholar , transl. as “Strive to build a socialist university of science and engineering” (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972Google Scholar ).

5. I was unable to obtain information on what techniques of data collection or analysis they taught the students in preparation for this investigation, although I did specifically ask about this.

6. Revolution in Education Committees appear to have two functions in this aspect of reform: one in which they administer the reform, that is they provide the organizational structure and the power to implement reforms; the other in which the members of the committee are actually involved in the reforms themselves, e.g. rewriting textbooks.

7. It has been rightly pointed out that many of the suggestions for innovations made in 1967, and used subsequently, had in fact been employed in some institutions prior to this. See Price, R. F., Education in Communist China (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 273Google Scholar.