A very interesting criticism on the revisionist- capitalist way of thinking on education issues during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. The Chinese communists criticize Kairov and his work (Pedagogika) to be pro capitalist and trying to bring back the capitalist way in education and culture. Mao and the red guards criticize the forces that try to bring capitalism back and state that the main issue is the contradiction of the working class with the bourgeois. This article is defending the proletariat way of thinking in education and the superstructure . On July of 1968 Mao gives the directive of the 21st of July, which sets the example of the Shanghai Machine Tools Plant in training technicians from amongst the workers and the issue of the separation of practice from theory with a vanguard way of thinking.
A comment on Kairov’s “Pedagogy” by the Shanghai Revolutionary Mass Criticism Writing Group
Drawn up
under Chairman Mao’s personal guidance, the Decision of the Central Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution pointed out: “In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution a most
important task is to transform the old educational system and the old
principles and methods of teaching.” At present, we must press ahead with
redoubled efforts to accomplish what Chairman Mao pointed out as “a most
important task.”
An
important experience gained in the course of the proletarian educational
revolution is that we must persist in using Mao Tsetung Thought to carry out
revolutionary mass criticism and eliminate the poisonous influence of the
renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi’s counterrevolutionary revisionist
line in education.
The
“theoretical” basis of Liu Shao-chi’s counterrevolutionary revisionist line in
education is Pedagogy,[1] edited by
the Soviet revisionist “authority” on education Kairov. As explained in the
first chapter of the 1956 edition, Pedagogy
entirely serves the purpose of fulfilling “the new tasks in education put
forward by the 20th Congress” of the Soviet revisionist party, that is, the
“tasks” of restoring capitalism.
Shortly
after the socialist revolution began in China, Liu Shaochi and his agents on
the cultural and educational front -Lu Ting-yi and his bunch- brought in
Kairov’s Pedagogy and designated it
as teaching material for teachers’ colleges throughout the country. They did
this to oppose Chairman Mao’s proletarian line in education. In 1957, they let
Kairov visit Peking, Shanghai and many other places where he spread his
poisonous influence. Liu Shao-chi personally received him and had a warm
“hearty talk” with him. When the revolutionary teachers and students, guided by
Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line, launched a high tide in
educational revolution in 1958 and severely censured Kairov’s Pedagogy, Lu Ting-yi tried to snuff out
the vigorous educational revolution, rushing forth in defense and howling that
Kairov’s Pedagogy “is socialist”.
In
expounding the Law of class struggle in the socialist period, Chairman Mao
pointed out: “The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own
world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of
which will win out,
socialism
or capitalism, is still not really settled”. Who transforms whom? Should we use
Chairman Mao’s proletarian thinking on education to transform the old bourgeois
schools, or should we let Kairov’s Pedagogy
carry the day in our schools? This is a serious struggle on the educational
front between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In order to deepen the
educational revolution, it is therefore necessary to use Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Tsetung Thought to analyse and criticize Kairov’s Pedagogy.
Two Diametrically Opposed Views on Education
What is
education?
In reply
to this question, the first chapter of Kairov’s Pedagogy says: “Education is purely a human phenomenon”.[2]This definition completely denies a
most fundamental fact: In class society, education is a phenomenon of class
struggle. It is by no means true that “a man should receive a proper education
in order to be a man”.[3] Every
elass wants education to be given because it wants to maintain its rule.
Education develops out of the need of class struggle, not of an abstract
“human” need. Every class educates and transforms the younger generation in
accordance with its own world outlook and political line, training its own
successors and thereby achieving the purpose of consolidating its own rule.
After seizing political power, the proletariat must turn education, which is an
instrument for bourgeois rule, into an instrument for demolishing this rule and
for completely eliminating, the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes.
The proletariat must make education an important position where “the
proletariat must exercise all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie in the
realm of the superstructure, including the various spheres of culture”.
For the
dictatorship of the proletariat to be consolidated and the socialist revolution
and socialist construction carried through to the end, proletarian education
must train working people with, socialist consciousness and culture from among
the workers, poor and lower-middle peasants and fighters in the People’s
Liberation Army. We will never allow anyone to deny this clear-cut class
character of proletarian education on any pretext whatsoever.
But Kairov, lauded to the skies by Lu Ting-yi as a “socialist” educator,
gave this definition when he spoke of the essence of education. Education, he
said, is the “passing on of experience and knowledge to a new generation” by
the “older generation”;[4] in a
socialist school, therefore, “the primary task is to give the students
profound, accurate and common knowledge on the development of nature, society
and human
Taking
this as his cue, Lu Ting-yi parroted: “This thing called education is quite
clear; it means passing on knowledge to others and learning knowledge from
others. That is what education means”.
Is that
really “what education means”?
Knowledge
and the passing on of knowledge are not supraclass or supra-politics; nor is it
true that “all children are equal”[6] in this respect, as Kairov claimed.
Knowledge
and culture are a reflection of social being. Chairman Mao has taught us: “Ever
since class society came into being the world has had only two kinds of
knowledge, knowledge of the struggle for production and knowledge of the class
struggle”. Since education is an instrument of class struggle and class
dictatorship, all the knowledge that comes from it is bound to be thoroughly
permeated with a class character. In the schools the slave-owners set up for
their own children, the students were taught to use living slaves as “targets”
for practice in shooting and killing. This is passing on one kind of
“knowledge”, that is, the slave-owners’ “knowledge”. Hitler growled that “we
will train” fascists “before whom the world will tremble”. This is also passing
on one kind of “knowledge”, that is, fascist “knowledge”. Socialimperialism has
recently snarled that it will train a type of “young cadre” who can “make quick
decisions equal to the occasion” and carry out tasks of aggression “without any
reservation”. This is also passing on one kind of “knowledge”, that is,
social-imperialist “knowledge”. Replete with lengthy descriptions of tsarist
Russia’s “explorers and travellers”, Kairov’s Pedagogy “fascinatingly” “encourages the development of the spirit
of adventure among the students”.[7] Is it not
clear what kind of “knowledge” Kairov was passing on? As Lenin had pointed out:
“It was the declared aim of the old type of school to produce men with an
all-round education, to teach the sciences in general. We know that this was
utterly
false”.
“Every word [the old schools gave] was falsified in the interests of the
bourgeoisie”. (Lenin, Collected Works, Chinese
ed., Vol. 31, p. 252.)
As regards
the “passing on of knowledge”, is it possible that
“all
children are equal”? This Lassallean opportunist view of “a national education
with everybody enjoying equality” was thoroughly criticized by Marx long ago.
Since the beginning of classes, all exploiting classes in a ruling position
have held a tight grip on the monopoly of knowledge, making it absolutely
impossible for the powerless exploited classes to receive an education. In
ancient India, a country in the East under the slave system, a law stipulated
an immediate death sentence for anyone allowing the Shudra class, which was
considered to be lowly, to obtain any knowledge. Confucius, who represented the
interests of ancient China’s declining slaveowners and aristocracy, did his
utmost to advocate the policy of keeping the people in complete ignorance. He
said that “the people can be made to follow a course, but they cannot be made
to understand it”. Such a policy was later followed by the feudal landlord
class for more than 2,000 years. Bourgeois education which emerged with the
capitalist relations of production is entirely subordinate to the law of profit
which reflects the bourgeoisie’s reactionary nature. The so-called
“double-track system” of education which the bourgeoisie pushes is completely
pervaded with its class character of enslavement and exploitation. All those
who are children of the bourgeoisie will be given the “knowledge” of exploiting
and oppressing the working people, and be trained to be the future rulers. But
all those who are children of the working people will be kept out of the
schools or, as Lenin said, be trained into “useful servants of the bourgeoisie”
able to “create profits for it without disturbing its peace and leisure”.
(Lenin, Collected Works, Chinese ed.,
Vol. 31, p. 252.)
It is
therefore quite clear that any talk denying the class character of education is
nothing but sheer political deception. Saturated with the class character of
the bourgeoisie, Kairov’s Pedagogy is
in fact an attack by the bourgeoisie on the proletariat. It was this same
Kairov who, while boasting of the “guiding principle” of his Pedagogy in 1957, said: “The schools now
have two tasks: to train students who will study in institutes of higher
learning and to train students who will participate in labour and production”.[8] The “two
tasks” Kairov mentioned are the “two kinds of educational systems” advocated by
Liu Shao-chi; they are also identical with the socalled competition in climbing
the “pyramid”, as initiated by Lu Ting-yi: a few will get to the top and become
new bourgeois elements, while the majority will be kept at the bottom, that is
to say, they will have to engage in “labour and production” when capitalism is
restored. Thus we have quite a variety of terminology -from Kairov’s “equality
in education” to his “two tasks” of education, and from Liu Shao-chi’s “two
kinds of educational systems” to Lu Ting-yi’s competition in climbing the
“pyramid”. Though they go by different names, their essence is the same, namely,
to achieve the counterrevolutionary purpose of transforming the proletariat
according to the bourgeoisie’s world outlook and restoring capitalism.
Kairov openly declared: The educational thoughts of the
17th century Czechoslovak bourgeois educator Comenius and the 19th century
Russian bourgeois educator Ushinsky all were “opposed to the ruling principles
of the social systems” of their time and, therefore, they constituted “the most
valuable experience in education”[9] which
we must now inherit in their entirety.
Hence bourgeois educational thoughts, which have grown from
the economic base of capitalism, are not only “opposed” to the capitalist
social system but are flaunted as “the most valuable experience in education”
for the socialist educational system! This fully shows that Kairov’s stock in
trade was, in essence, the same as the traditional bourgeois education. What
such education “opposes” is not the capitalist system, but the socialist
system. “There is no construction without destruction, no flowing without
damming and no motion without rest”. From Kairov, a teacher by negative
example, we have learnt that the proletariat must thoroughly criticize the
bourgeoisie’s educational system and educational theories and thoughts in order
to establish its own educational system. “Education must serve proletarian
politics and be combined with productive labour”. “Our educational policy must
enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually
and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and
culture”, On these fundamental questions, proletarian education must
unequivocally draw a clear line of demarcation with respect to the educational
thoughts of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. Two Diametrically Opposed Theories of
Knowledge
On the basis of his already mentioned reactionary concept
of education, Kairov, without exception, collected Comenius’ teaching
principles, Ushinsky’s theory on moral education and even the “four-division
teaching method” of the German reactionary educator Herbart. After some
tinkering, he patched together his huge teaching “system”, which included “five
teaching principles”, “six links in the classroom”, “a fivegrade marking
system” as well as a host of “principles”, “structures”, “outlines”,
“regulations”, “means” and “methods”. It was so typical of scholasticism that
Lu Ting-yi and his gang greeted it with accolades, talked about how
“scientific” it was, and ordered that teachers all over the country must carry
it out most precisely.
Is it really so “scientific”? Certainly not. Actually, it
is an antiscientific and bogus science.
Chairman Mao has taught us: “All work in the schools is for
transforming the ideology of the students”. The process of teaching is one of
knowing, and all of man’s knowledge is stamped with the brand of a class.
Therefore, this process is one in which two ideologies struggle with each
other, proletarian ideology overcomes non-proletarian ideology, and the
students’ proletarian world outlook is gradually fostered in the living study
and application of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and in the three great
revolutionary practices -class struggle, the struggle for production and
scientific experiment.
The correct realization of the teaching process must be
guided by a correct theory of knowledge. The proletariat has the
dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge and the bourgeoisie has the
idealist metaphysical theory of knowledge. From what theory of knowledge did
Kairov proceed to arrive at his mass of “principles” and “methods”?
After quoting a passage of Lenin’s instruction on the
theory of knowledge, Kairov openly stated that “teaching is not and cannot be a
process identical with the scientific process of knowledge”.[10] This
is like saying: The Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge is null and void in
the teaching process.
Having negated the Marxist theory of knowledge in one
stroke, Kairov advanced his own “theory of knowledge”: As long as the students
“comprehend the already known”,[11] and
the “available knowledge”[12] that
“man has accumulated over the centuries”,[13] everything
will be all right, because all this knowledge “belongs to scientifically solid
and reliable wealth”[14] and
is absolute truth which can never be changed to the slightest degree.
In talking about “accumulated” and “available” plus “solid
and reliable”, Kairov really can be said to be a “knowledge capitalist”!
However, this “knowledge capitalist” doesn’t know a thing about the
historical-materialist knowledge on class struggle.
The reactionary world outlook of the exploiting classes
determines that the “knowledge” they have “accumulated” is full of mistakes
which distort objective reality. Take history for example. As written by the
exploiting classes, history has been turned upside down: The peasants in the
uprisings which pushed history forward in feudal society were slandered as
“brigands” and “bandits”; on the other hand emperors, kings, generals and
ministers were described as the masters of history and their “policy of concessions”
was said to have promoted the advance of history. Unless this reactionary point
of view is criticized, it is impossible to get any “available” and scientific
knowledge of history. How can we regard all of these reactionary and fallacious
things the landlord class and the bourgeoisie have talked about “over the
centuries” as “available” and “solid and reliable wealth” we can accept? Isn’t
this an open plea for students to submissively “accept” all kinds of spiritual
poison? Isn’t this training bourgeois slaves who resist all revolutionary
truths? Isn’t this a typical theory for staging a cultural restoration?
Chairman Mao has taught us: “In the absolute and general
process of development of the universe, the development of each particular
process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth,
man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is
only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes
absolute truth”. Even those parts of the “knowledge” that contain certain
amounts of relative truth must also be examined, remoulded and developed in the
light of today’s revolutionary practice of the proletariat and should not be
regarded as something for ever unchangeable. To more rapidly master the latest
knowledge in the field of natural science, that is, the newly discovered
relative truth at a new stage of development it is sometimes unnecessary to go
back to its development “over the centuries”. From the start, we can talk about
the latest discoveries and latest creations by the working class. It should be
pointed out that Kairov’s “solid and reliable wealth” poison was one of the
reasons for the repetition and unnecessary complexity of textbooks in the past.
Kairov solidified knowledge not merely out of ignorance,
but because of his reactionary bourgeois nature. Since the bourgeoisie have
long been “sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills”, they
dare not in the least face the fiery struggle of the proletariat and other revolutionary
people and look at the revolutionary situation in which class struggle, the
struggle for production and scientific experiment advance at a fast rate. They
can only turn their backs on the present and face the past, calling all the
reactionary and rotten traditional ideologies of the slaveowner class, landlord
class and bourgeoisie “solid and reliable knowledge”. They won’t allow people
to wage revolution against this knowledge, criticize it and develop it. In
doing so they have tried in vain to hold back the rapid spread of
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought all over the globe. Didn’t Laa Ting-yi
shout that “many universities are engaged in transforming education, and my
attitude is to wait and see”? Their real purpose in “solidifying” knowledge is
to “consolidate” the bourgeoisie’s ruling position, “consolidate” their right
to carry out unlimited exploitation of the working people so they can live on
the latter’s sweat and blood, and, in other words, “consolidate” tfieir
“wealth”.
The law of the Marxist theory of
knowledge is: “Practice, knowledge, again: practice, and again knowledge” and
“The standpoint of practice is the primary and bask standpoint in tfee
dtatectwal-materialist theory of knowledge”. But Kairov declared that he had
found a “short cut”, that is, from the books, of the teachers to those of the
students. In his own words, what “decides the quality of the students’
knowledge” is “classroom teaching”[15] and
“the sources of knowledge are concrete things themselves, as well as the description
of matter, phenomenon, processes and events, printed matter
(first and foremost textbooks) and the teachers’ language”.[16]
The small quantity of “printed matter” in the classes was
limited to Kairov’s tiny orbit of “five principles” and “six links”. The
maximum it could do was to cram into the students’ minds all the “classical”
textbooks and teaching materials that had been, compiled by the bourgeoisie.
Let’s look at the textbooks and teaching materials which Lu Ting-yi and his
gang turned out in accordance with the requirements of Kairov’s Pedagogy. Anti-Marxist in their world
outlook and their political content serving the needs of the bourgeoisie, they
were completely cut off from the needs of the prevailing socialist revolution
and construction. Their arrangements for teaching were filled with metaphysics.
Courses were tremendously complicated and isolated from each other, and the
lively objective world was cut to pieces. Enclosed all-yearround in the
Kairov-designed classroom, which was like a hermetic can, the students were
forced to gulp down, without digestion, stuff of the 18th or 19th century. For
16 or 17 years, they were unable to see rice, sorghum, and other kinds of
grain, or how the workers work, how the peasants farm and how commodities are
exchanged. Didn’t this deliberately turn them into imbeciles?
It must be pointed out that we do not exclude students
getting indirect knowledge in the classroom and from books. Teaching consists
partly of imparting indirect knowledge. Precisely as Chairman Mao pointed out:
“All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. Bat one cannot have
direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge
comes from indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and
foreign lands”. For students to really grasp it, indirect knowledge must also
be combined with revolutionary practice. Only thus can it be transformed into
“genuine knowledge”. In “making the past serve the present and foreign things
serve China” and “weeding through the old to bring forth the new”, the key is
in the latter and serving today’s revolutionary needs. Chairman Mao has taught
us: “There are many things which cannot be learned from books alone; one must
learn from those engaged in production, from the workers, from the peasants”.
This means students should get out of the school into the midst of actual
struggle and make the workers, peasants and soldiers their teachers. “While
their main task is to study, they should also learn other things, that is to
say, they should not only learn book knowledge, they should also learn
industrial production, agricultural production and military affairs. They also
should criticize and repudiate the bourgeoisie”. Colleges of science and
engineering should set up factories, while colleges of arts should consider the
whole society their factory.
People may ask: Should children also learn according to
this law? Don’t they learn to distinguish between “good people” and “bad
people” from picture books? Children also first learn to know individual and
concrete things and then form a concept about a certain thing. Cattle are a
broad concept, while the ox and the buffalo are narrow concepts. The ox a child
sees is a concrete thing. Children below school age make society their school
and imitate grown-ups in working and fighting. In this way they get a real-life
education. But their perception was obstructed under the control of the
revisionist line in education and this must also be reformed.
Kairov’s anti-Marxist theory of knowledge directly upheld
the domination of schools by the handful of bourgeois reactionary educational
“authorities” and bourgeois intellectuals. To facilitate a capitalist
restoration, it also tried to turn the younger generation into bourgeois
elements who fear revolution and the masses and resist new socialist things.
Because of this, he went one step further in arbitrarily declaring:
“Every sentence and every instruction of the teacher” has
“the nature of law”;[17] “all
scientifically disputable and unconfirmed things should be excluded from
courses”.[18]
Whose “law” is this? If this “law” is adhered to, all
students become slaves of bourgeois education and their minds have only one
function -endless memorization and recitation. Revolutionary students must
unite with the revolutionary teachers in overthrowing this kind of “teachers’
dignity” advocated by the landlords and the bourgeoisie and in opposing dealing
with students by methods used in dealing with the enemy. Both should also
completely discredit the socalled “education of love” and must not let any one
poison students with the bourgeois theory of human nature.
Revolutionary educational work is glorious and so is the
labour of the revolutionary teachers. The view that “it’s tough luck to be a
teacher” is wrong. Promoted by the proletarian revolution in education,
completely new relations between teachers and students are taking shape in many
of our schools. They are revolutionary comrades and comrades-in-arms and their
relations are not those between the rulers and the ruled. The teachers should
love the students, help them, use Mao Tsetung Thought to raise their political
consciousness, bring their initiative, eniJnisiasm and ereativeness into full
play, and train them to have the ability to analyse and solve problems. The
students should respect the teachers, firmly abide by revolutionary discipline
and revolutionary order, study hard for the revolution to a lively way and be
filled with proletarian revolutionary spirit.
Truth has a class character. There have
never been truths commonly regarded as “indisputable” by all classes in the
field of social science. “The socialist system will eventually replace the
capitalist system”. Can this objective truth which is regarded by the
proletariat and the revolutionary people as indisputable be accepted likewise
by the bourgeoisie? Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought develops in the course
of struggle and can be learnt only in struggle. To oppose the revolutionary
“contention” in the sehools is to oppose the proletarian revolutionary spirit
and to oppose using Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to criticize and
occupy those positions controlled by the bourgeoisie. Therefore, Kairov’s real
aim is solely to allow the unchecked spread of bourgeois poisonous weeds, but not
tolerate the existence of the proletarian truth. “It is one of our basic tasks
to contrapose our own truth to bourgeois ‘truth’, and win its recognition”.
(Lenin, Collected Works, Chinese ed.,
Vol. 31, p. 330.) All revolutionary students and teachers should use
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to occupy all
positions, and strive to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in
China and realize the great proletarian truth of “the abolition of the system
of exploitation of man by man over the whole globe, upon which all mankind will
toe emancipated”!
Bourgeois “Self“ Is the Nucleus
Wasn’t it Liu Shao-chi who concocted the notorious theory
of “merging private and public interests”? This is the same as Kairov’s
contraption, the theory of the “transformation of the public interest into
private” which alleges: “The public interest when it is correctly understood is
also my personal interest”.[19]The
wording is different, but the aim is the same: To “transform” the public
interest into private, to “transform” socialism into capitalism. The entire set
of theory and practice in Kairov’s Pedagogy
proceeds from this theory of the “transformation of the public interest
into private”. While peddling Kairov’s Pedagogy,
Lu Ting-yi and company also used this crooked thesis as their bait.
Kairov stated in particular that among the entire mass of
principles he concocted there was one main principle which “can be instituted
in every stage and every link of the teaching process”, that is, “the principle
of the students’ consciousness and initiative”.[20]What
kind of “consciousness and initiative” is this? How to stimulate this kind of
student “consciousness and initiative”? Kairov’s answer: “Getting marks in
school is the impulsive factor in the students’ life” and “a stimulus in
learning”.[21] How
can such “impulsion” and “stimulus” be consolidated? Only when “famous people
in the scientific and art fields or outstanding historical personages” “become
the students’ ideal” will students “find their intellectual support in these
images”.[22]
Here lies the real aim. The so-called “consciousness and
initiative” is nothing but a bait to make students strive in line with the
“style” of the representatives of the bourgeoisie and the landlord class!
Of course it is necessary for the proletariat to master
scientific knowledge. Lenin stated: “The working people are thirsting for
knowledge because they need it to win”. (Lenin, Collected Works, Chinese ed., Vol. 28, p.70.) The proletariat knows
that the victory Lenin meant, which includes becoming the real masters of
knowledge, relies on the powerful dictatorship of the proletariat above all.
Therefore, just as Chairman Mao has pointed out: “Youth should attach primary
importance to a firm and correct political orientation”. We study for the sake
of the revolution, the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and
continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In
feverishly advocating that the students should regard their knowledge as their
“wealth”, Kairov wanted to turn knowledge into personal capital for gaining
fame and fortune. He wanted those with knowledge to be arrogant and sell their
knowledge at a good price. How many young people have been poisoned by the
feudal class trash that says: “I learn every craft in order to sell them to the
imperial and royal families”, or the bourgeois trash that says: “When I have
learnt mathematics, physics and chemistry, I wouldn’t have to worry about
holding down a job anywhere in the world”!
In this process of converting
knowledge into private property, can the students form “sublime”[23] “world
outlook and morality”[24] as
described by Kairov? It is sheer nonsense! Socrates, the Greek slave-owners’
educator, advocated the fallacy “knowledge is morality” 2,300 years before
Kairov. Later on bourgeois philosophers advocated that “knowledge is strength”.
But there is no “world outlook and morality” or “strength” in the world which
stands above classes. What class’ “world outlook and morality” did Kairov want
the students to form? What class’ reserve “strength” did he want to build up?
Let us look at the process of formation he designed, the so-called “straight
line” system of education: As soon as a student has entered school, his aim is
to make his way up. By finishing primary school he looks forward to be admitted
to middle school, by finishing middle school to be admitted to college, and by
finishing college to get an associate doctorate or doctorate degree by studying
in a research institute. While a few people gain the laurels of an associate
doctor or doctor and are thus qualified to enter the “paradise” of the
bourgeois privileged stratum, most people finish their primary or middle school
education and become workers or peasants only to be exploited and oppressed by
the bourgeoisie. Look at the highest criterion he set, the so-called “internal
cultivation” -
“external cultivation” - “all-round development”.[25] That
is, from “internal cultivation” fostered to gain “social status”[26]and
“personal fulfilment”[27] to
“external cultivation” of “clothing”, “hair style” and “proper manners”,[28] the
students are expected to “develop in an all-round way” into the socalled
“strength” imbued with bourgeois “morality” and into hypocrites, politicians
and spiritual aristocrats of the bourgeoisie. Aren’t these “all-round developed”
capitalist roaders in the social-imperialist country, who have both “internal
cultivation” and “external cultivation”, still riding roughshod over the
labouring people? What kind of a “straight line” is this? This is a “line”
which creates class differentiation for the restoration of capitalism! What
kind of “all-round development” is this? This is an out-and-out “all-round
evolution” of capitalism! The proletariat’s revolution in education is to cut
down this counter-revolutionary line in education and smash the “peaceful
evolution” of the bourgeoisie. We should act according to Chairman Mao’s
instruction and take the road of the Shanghai Machine Tools Plant to cultivate
workers with both socialist consciousness and culture, to train them to be like
the great communist fighter Lei Feng or into someone like the communist new man
Chin Hsun-hua who is a model for revolutionary youth.
Didn’t Kairov repeat and repeat that
choosing some kind of “stimulus” to “stimulate” both teachers and students is
“necessary in studying many questions in education”?[29] The
“stimulus” he had in mind for students was using past
“famous” or “outstanding” representatives of the exploiting
classes as their “stimulus” in pursuing fame and fortune and in climbing to the
high position of spiritual aristocrats of the bourgeoisie. For teachers, he
used the saying that “teachers are the personification of all things beautiful
and examples to be followed”[30] to
“stimulate” their initiative to train bourgeois aristocrats, to bind them
tightly to the house of the dead that is the bourgeois system of education and
to make them reject ideological remoulding. Liu Shao-chi, Lu Ting-yi and their
gang used this “art of stimulating” to the full. They recruited bourgeois
reactionary “authorities” on education and bourgeois intellectuals to corrupt a
number of young teachers and students to provide organizational guarantee for
pushing their counter-revolutionary revisionist line in education and their
political line. The magnificent victory of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution proclaimed the complete bankruptcy of this “art” of Kairov’s in the
eyes of the mass of revolutionary intellectuals.
In the current movement of the proletariat’s revolution in
education, revolutionary teachers and revolutionary students must repudiate
this exploiting classes’ reactionary “art of stimulating.“ They should “fight
self, criticize revisionism.“ In accordance with the outlook of the working
class, they should remould themselves into fighters who “fear neither hardship
nor death,“ fighters in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the
proletariat, fighters who battle all their lives for the consolidation of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and for the prevention of the restoration of
capitalism.
Historical Experience That Merits Attention
Kairov’s trump card was; I am an
opponent of the bourgeois school of “modern education”. Indeed, as a
self-styled inheritor of the bourgeois school of “traditional education”,
Kairov certainly superficially “opposed” Dewey, a representative of the
bourgeois school of “modern education” and a scholar serving the interests of
the U.S. imperialists. However, whether it is “giving knowledge” as emphasized
by the “traditional education” school, or “training skill” as emphasized by the
“modern education” school, it all reflected the dispute within the ranks of the
bourgeoisie. In the final analysis, both serve training successors to the
bourgeoisie, preserving capitalism and restoring capitalism. In fact, following
the spread of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in the world, all
reactionary schools of education to be found among the bourgeoisie are joining
hands to cope with the proletariat. After a careful look at them, people can
see that there is no real difference between Kairov’s so-called thesis of seeds
of knowledge in children[31] and
his thesis that education means “organizing children’s life”[32] and
Dewey’s pragmatic education involving the doctrine of the children being the
centre and education is life. Lu Ting-yi let the cat out of the bag by
declaring: The “merits” of Kairov’s Pedagogy
“lie in the fact that it replaces Dewey’s”. It is just because of this that
the handful of Dewey’s disciples in China, under the cloak of Liu Shao-chi’s
counter-revolutionary revisionist line in education, all became so-called
“experts” on Kairov’s
Pedagogy overnight.
Some of them occupied leading positions in the departments of education, while
others were scattered all over the country to do their dirty work and swindle
people. What a thought-provoking phenomenon of class struggle is this! What is
worth particular attention is that since Dewey’s pragmatic education had long
lost its function of deceiving progressive American youth, Kennedy, chieftain
of U.S. imperialism at the time, rushed in with the outstanding criterion of
seeking knowledge in the early 60s, officially seeking help from “traditional
education”. Under the cover of the so-called “strengthening the link between
school and life”, Kairov and his kind in this same period went a step further
towards Dewey’s pragmatic education. No wonder Western bourgeois papers said
that these two schools “are intermingling” and “are marching along the same
track”. Revisionism is sure to form a reactionary alliance, politically as well
as ideologically and culturally, with imperialism in the end.
Kairov’s so-called “system“ is absurd, but the problem we
see from viewing this “system” is serious: After the proletariat has gained
political power, how the bourgeoisie stages a counterseizure of power from the
proletariat through the fields of education and culture in order to suppress
and rule over the proletariat again. This historical experience of the struggle
between the bourgeoisie who fights for restoration and the proletariat who
fights against restoration merits our serious attention.
Through the magnificent Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in the last three years, led by the proletarian headquarters with
Chairman Mao as its leader and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy leader, we used
Mao Tsetung Thought the powerful weapon to overthrow the renegade, hidden
traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi and his agents in the field of education. In the
stage of struggle-criticism-transformation during the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao put forward the timely programmatic
instruction: “It is essential to shorten the length of schooling, revolutionize
education, put proletarian politics in command and take the road of the
Shanghai Machine Tools Plant in training technicians from among the workers.
Students should be selected from among workers and peasants with practical
experience, and they should return to production after a few years’ study”.
Inspired by this brilliant instruction of Chairman Mao’s, an upsurge in the
proletariat’s revolution in education has taken shape all over China. An
educational system which serves proletarian politics and is closely linked with
practice in the three great revolutionary struggles, and a teachers’ contingent
determined to bring about the proletariat’s revolution in education are
gradually being formed. However, class struggle on the educational front still
goes on, and the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to win
over the youth goes on. We have to be soberly aware that there is still a lot
of work to be done concerning undertaking revolutionary mass criticism on the
educational front. Only by deeply criticizing the bourgeois world outlook can
we make a thoroughgoing transformation of the old educational system, teaching
principles and teaching methods, and solidly set up a new educational system of
the proletariat on the basis of Mao Tsetung Thought. Let us hold the great red
banner of Mao Tsetung Thought still higher and welcome the coming of a new high
tide in the proletariat’s revolution in education!
Peking Review, 13(10), 6 March 1970
[1] . There are two Chinese
editions of Kairov’s Pedagogy — one
translated from the 1948 Moscow Russian edition, the other from the 1956 Moscow
Russian edition. In the following they are referred to simply as the old
edition and the new edition.
[2]
. Old edition, p. 18.
[3]
.
[4]
. New edition, p. 1 and p. 23.
[5]
.
[6]
. Old edition, p. 11 and p. 103.
[7]
.
[8] . “Academician Kairov on
the Guiding Principle of the Newly
Compiled Pedagogy and the Problem of All-Round
Development.”
[9]
. Old edition, p. 21.
[10]
. Old edition, p. 60 and p. 96.
[11]
. Ibid.
[12]
. New edition, p. .131 and p. 132.
[13]
. Old edition, p. 60 and p. 96.
[14]
. New edition, p. .131 and p. 132.
[15]
. Old edition, p. 131 and p. 61.
[16]
. Ibid.
[17]
. New edition, p. 150-51.
[18]
. Old edition, p. 99.
[19] . Kairov’s report to All-Russian Congress of Teachers
(July 1960).
[20]
. New edition, p. 148.
[21]
. Old edition, p. 209 and p. 248.
[22]
. Ibid.
[23]
. Old edition, p. 56.
[24]
. New edition, p. 224.
[25]
. New edition, p. 314 and p. 21.
[26]
. Old edition, p. 302.
[27]
. New edition, p. 223 and p. 315.
[28]
. Ibid.
[29]
. New edition, p. 308 and p. 16.
[30]
. New edition, p. 47.
[31]
. Old edition, p. 16.
[32] . Kairov: “On the Problem
of Improving and Raising the
Quality of Education in Common Schools in the
Soviet Union.“
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