Published in Peking Review, 14(36), 3 September 1971
I am a teacher of mathematics. When the first group of worker-peasant-soldier students was enrolled in June last year, I was quite enthusiastic when I began teaching. However, I began to have misgivings when six of my ten lectures fell short of the requirements. I felt that I could do nothing about it and waited for the leadership to solve the problem.
It was then that the Party committee and the workers’ and P.L.A. men’s Mao Tsetung Thought propaganda team called a meeting of all the teachers in the university and pointed out that although there were many contradictions in teaching and learning, the first thing to be stressed was remoulding the teachers’ world outlook. Otherwise, nothing could be achieved. The meeting helped me see the way out. With my own ideological problem in mind, I studied Chairman Mao’s a teaching “In the problem of transforming education it is the teachers who are the main problem” and his other teachings on serving the workers, peasants and soldiers.
Why was my thinking always at variance with that of the students? For instance, I thought the aim of teaching a lesson was quite clear, yet the students kept on asking what was the use of my lecture which, they said, was too abstract; I thought that the meaning was quite clear, yet they said they simply couldn’t understand; I thought what I taught was quite concrete and I spoke slowly when I lectured, yet they said it was too abstract and too fast. They added: “We couldn’t really understand you and you seem to fail to understand the questions we’ve raised”.
After analysis, I came to know that all this revealed the sharp contradiction between the old ideology, content and method of teaching and the worker-peasant-soldier students’ demands and process of acquiring knowledge. They were used to understand things through concrete examples. Yet I proceeded basically from mathematics and emphasized the logical inference of the question. I never came into contact with the problems arising in actual production. My teaching conformed to the past revisionist line in education which aimed at training intellectuals who were divorced from proletarian politics, from workers and peasants and from . reality. But now the audience had changed and the aim of training was different. The worker-peasant-soldier students’ criterion in judging the standard of teaching was to put knowledge into practice. When they said that what I taught was “too abstract,“ they meant that my teaching was divorced from reality. This showed that the influence of the revisionist line in education on me was far from eliminated.
Many students put it this way: “Science is knowledge summed up from the experience of the labouring people. But now you talk only about the abstract axioms and formulae. You never link your teaching with actual problems, so we can’t understand it”. Others said: “Now the teachers find it difficult to teach, that is also our difficulty. We should unite with the teachers and make joint efforts to overcome these difficulties”. They helped me understand my failure in teaching and suggested how to improve it.
All this gave me a lot to think about. These students encountered much bigger difficulties in their studies than I did. But to occupy and transform the cultural and educational positions, they insisted on fulfilling the tasks entrusted to them by the Party and their class and studied hard. But I wavered in the face of difficulties. I pondered over the students’ words: “Because of Chairman Mao, we now have the chance to study in a university. But we can’t understand what the teachers say. If all this old stuff isn’t changed, even if you work hard at teaching, it doesn’t mean we have learnt well”. These words made me uneasy. In the past, the revisionist line in education barred workers, peasants and soldiers from the universities, and the few who had gained admittance were later expelled because they failed to pass examinations in the basic courses. Mathematics was one obstacle at that time. When I thought of all this, I became more aware that even if I had the strong desire to serve the workers, peasants and soldiers, I wouldn’t be able to do so if I didn’t conscientiously try to make “the most radical rupture with traditional ideas”, as Marx and Engels had taught. So I would not be able to carry out Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line in education.
The first thing I thought I should do was to become familiar with the workers, peasants and soldiers and then transform the old ideology and method of teaching according to their needs and process of acquiring knowledge. At first I thought some students did not know how to calculate. However, a serious analysis showed that it wasn’t that they couldn’t calculate, but they had their own ways of calculating. The only trouble was they could not express themselves and calculate according to a mathematical formula. The problem, therefore, lay not in their incapability to calculate, but in our failure in teaching.
Acting according to Chairman Mao’s teaching “here again the task of learning from the workers, peasants and soldiers comes in”, I and my colleagues began learning from our students. Once, while teaching mathematics in connection with electrotechnics, we asked a student who was a veteran electrician to calculate first. While analysing the circuit, he did it in his head and finally gave the class his answer. We asked him to tell us his thinking process and helped him express it step by step in mathematical formulae. This not only taught the students how to formulate and made them feel that mathematics was no mystery, but also broke away from the old method of teaching which emphasized pure logical inference.
In transforming teaching, one should often combat various kinds of interference and adhere to the correct orientation. After the enrolment of the new students, teaching mathematics at one period was divorced from specialty and the needs of production, and emphasis was on studying theory instead. After this was corrected, another wrong tendency appeared — negating the necessary systematization of the basic courses and basic training. Some people even felt that our helping the students make up their deficiencies in necessary basic courses in a systematic way meant a “return to the old way”. When we really went among the students to look into the situation, we came to the conclusion that it was necessary to teach them basic knowledge in mathematics in a systematic way. Giving veteran worker-students basic training in mathematics by proceeding from concrete situations was quite different from the past revisionist line which put blind faith in teaching basic courses. To be responsible to the students, I raised my suggestion and applied it in teaching. I was supported by the students and the leadership. Teaching in this way showed rather good results.
Working with the students and teachers in this specialty for ten months, I was happy to see that the students gradually mastered their subjects. Recently we gave them a lesson in calculus, which made all the students and teachers happy. The students said: “Calculus is no mystery. So long as we link it with practice, it’s easy to understand”. Some remarked: “We have begun to master mathematics. We’re no longer afraid of it”. This was a big encouragement to me. Although there are still many difficulties lying ahead, we are confident of overcoming them.
This kind of teaching has given me a deep education. Each lesson I gave was an actual test on my class sentiment. When you could not make the veteran worker-students understand, you would think things over. Subsequent analysis showed that either you had slipped back to pure logical inference as was practised in the past or you were divorced from reality. Therefore, the key lies in continuously eliminating the evil influence of revisionist education in the teachers’ mind, enhancing their consciousness of the struggle between the two lines and revolutionizing their thinking.
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