Revolution in Education: Our Experience (1)

by Kuei Yu-peng, student of the department of mechanical engineering, Tsinghua University

Published in Peking Review, 14(34), 20 August 1971

All students in our class are workers who have worked at least ten years in different plants. Since we have come to the university, what should be our attitude towards the tasks of “studying in the university, managing the university and using Mao Tsetung Thought to transform the university”? It took us some time to know the correct answer. When we first entered the university, as I recall, we were really quite enthusiastic! But as soon as we take up our study, many contradictions arose and our earlier enthusiasm began to cool down.

The main shaft’s gear box is a key part of machine tools. This is the part where bourgeois technical “authorities” used to create obstacles for us. This time we made up our minds to master this key part in our class of machine tool designing. But no sooner had our teacher touched on it than problems cropped up. When she mentioned common multiplier φ in explaining the speed diagram of gear box in a machine tool, we didn’t know what she was talking about. We passed on to her our opinion several times, but there wasn’t much improvement. Then, we became impatient. Some said: “We can’t even ‘study’ well, what’s the use of talking about ’managing’ and ’transforming’ the university!” They also found some “grounds” to support their argument: Since there was the leadership, we didn’t have to bother about “management”. Since we all came from the factories and were unfamiliar with things in the university, it was difficult for us to “manage“ the university. Besides, heavy load of study left us no time for dealing with matters of “management”.

Precisely at that time, the Second Plenary Session of the Party’s Ninth Central Committee called on us to study philosophy. Through the study of On Practice, On

Contradiction and Chairman Mao’s thinking on revolution in education, we realized that the idea of “only studying without taking part in management” actually reflected our inadequate understanding of the struggle between the two lines. Proletarian revolution in education is still going on and class struggle has not yet come to an end. As to bourgeois ideology, if you do not transform it, then you will be transformed by it. While in the university, we should contribute our efforts to build a new socialist university. Therefore, neither of the three tasks of “study, management and transformation” should be neglected.

This study helped us foster the determination to “manage” and “transform” the university. But we were still not quite clear about how to carry out these tasks. We thought that since the teacher could not give a good lecture on machine tool designing, we might as well take over the platform and give a good explanation on this subject ourselves. So we prepared the lectures together with the worker-teacher. When everything was ready, we were going to give the lecture. On second thoughts, we began to ask ourselves whether this was correct.

Chairman Mao has taught us: “Without intellectuals our work cannot be done well, and we should therefore do a good job of uniting with them”. If we brushed our teacher aside just because she could not teach well and if we gave a good lecture ourselves, would not that pour cold water on her initiative? That would not be the right way. We realized that making the lecture in this class good was merely “one step”, whereas the question of making the college education of hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants and soldiers in the future a success was a “ten-thousand-li” long march. We should not forget the long journey while paying attention only to the present “one step”! How could we fulfil our tasks if we failed to unite with and help the teacher. So we decided to do a good job of helping the teacher, whatever difficulties and hardships are involved.

Then we carefully analysed why this teacher failed to give a good lecture. In her subjective wish, she was enthusiastic and wanted to give us a good lecture, but as she had been under the influence of feudal, bourgeois and revisionist education for such a long time, she could not all of a sudden change her ideas. Our worker-teacher found that the things she taught had not completely severed from the stuff put up by a foreign theoretical “authority”. Thus, we were faced with the problem: Where, after all, should we help the teacher? Should we help her only in giving a good lecture to our class? Certainly not. We held that we must help her make fundamental changes, that is, help her change her world outlook and liberate herself from feudal, bourgeois and revisionist spiritual shackles. This was the bounden duty of us students coming from among the workers, peasants and soldiers.

Students of our class discussed the matter and and agreed that the root cause of our teacher being unable to give good lectures was her entanglement with the system of that old “authority”. It seemed that we had to help her criticize the old system which divorced theory from practice. Since she built her lectures around the common multiplier φ in explaining the speed diagram and talked from theory to theory without any connection with production practice, we told her again and again: “This multiplier was summed up from the prolonged production practice of the working people. But the bourgeoisie made it so mysterious and used it to curb us workers”.

Some of us students had heart-to-heart talks with her on Sundays, patiently explaining: “In designing a gear box in factory production practice, it was necessary first of all to decide the range of speed in accordance with actual needs of production before finding out the relations between this common multiplier and the series, thereby making theory serve production. The old system, however, reversed the process like someone standing on his head, making production serve its theory. This kind of theory divorced from practice was of no use to us workers”. In the end she was very much moved, saying: “This old stuff was exactly what I leamt in the past. Helping me by analysing my world outlook, you have really hit the nail on the head”.

Through this period of practice, we arrived at the understanding that the struggle between the two lines was. complex in the university and this struggle became more hidden in the field of teaching. We must persistently command teaching with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and eliminate the poisonous feudal, bourgeois and revisionist influence.

Another experience we gained was that we must persevere in studying through practice and taking part in physical labour. This not only enabled us to learn vocational knowledge but enhance our consciousness of the struggle between the two lines.

Soon after we started our classes, our teacher taught hydraulics in connection with the oil way of a hydraulic shaper. To help us grasp the subject, the teacher drew a chart showing the oil way on the blackboard marked with chalks of different colours. He first told us what the red, blue and yellow lines represented and then proceeded with patient explanations on the platform. We listened carefully. We shook our heads showing we did not get it. He pointed at the chart, explaining “going up and up“ and “going down and down”. He repeated several times but we were still at a loss.

One student said: “You can’t ride the horse you painted on the wall, neither can you operate a shaper. on the blackboard. Unless we get in touch with reality, it won’t do”. Together with the teacher, we criticized the revisionist line characterized by complete separation between book and practice and then switched to on-the-spot teaching in a machinery plant. We studied while taking part in productive labour. And within a week we dispelled the mysterious notion about hydraulics. The students commented: “This method of study which links theory with practice gives quicker and better results”.

Later when we studied boring machine designing in a university-run plant, we drew from this experience and stepped out of the classroom and went to the factories to investigate and study boring machines made in China and abroad. At first our teacher gave us each an investigation outline containing questions in two full pages. He wanted us to collect such parameters like the diameter of the boring bar and the moving range, but failed to give prominence to the struggle between the two lines.

Workers of the propaganda team organized us and the teachers to embark on mass revolutionary criticism and make analysis and studies, making it clear that the purpose of this investigation was not purely for collecting technical parameters, instead, first of all, it was aimed at understanding that under the guidance of different lines, various guiding ideas in designing gave rise to diverse results. This means we must make “analysis in the light of the struggle between the two lines”. Students of our class and our teachers visited eight plants, held 11 forums, investigated more than ten kinds of boring machines both Chinese-made and imported and took part in physical labour at the plants. In the course of making investigations, we analysed the problems in some foreignmade machine tools in the light of the struggle between the two lines.

For instance, one boring machine made in a foreign country was quite “stylish” in appearance and its electrical control box had plenty of fancy ornaments. The worker who operated this machine told us: “Though fancy-looking, this machine tool is more attractive than it is useful; it is flashy but impractical. It divides the main shaft box into two parts with a dozen handles.

This makes you busy as hell when you put the machine into operation. After a day’s work, you are completely exhausted”.

Why are there so many weak points in this kind of machine tool? The basic reason is that the workers are regarded as “appendages” to the machine and “extensions” of handles. Under such circumstances workers’ labour is not respected at all. Precisely as Engels criticized, the bourgeoisie “sees in them [the workers] not human beings, but hands”. (The Condition of the Working-Class in England.) Their idea in designing is to make profit and exploit the working people.

On the basis of analysis and criticism, we conscientiously learnt those good points in foreign-made machine tools so as to make “foreign things serve China”.

We also made investigations on Chinese-made machine tools and studied many machine tools up to advanced levels created by the Chinese working class.

This investigation and study helped us draw a clear line of demarcation between the two different lines of designing and shatter the mysterious notion about designing, slavish comprador idea and the thinking of trailing behind at a snail’s pace. When we returned to the university, we put forward a dozen or so boring machine designs. Both students and teachers were all of the opinion that this investigation and study was a teaching practice which gave prominence to proletarian politics. We have learnt a great deal of knowledge, but what is more important is that we have learnt proletarian thinking and method in designing and received profound education in political line, which we could not have learnt in classrooms.