Party and Professionals

The Political Role of Teachers in Contemporary China

Gordon White

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351554947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1981, this study fits into a wider context of works analysing the impact of the social revolution on the structure of Chinese society since 1949. Party and Professionals focuses on the teaching profession in relation to social ranking. As a part of the intelligentsia, the socialist government has an ambiguous relationship with teachers of all levels and this work aims to highlight the government's political interactions with teaching professionals. This title will be of interest to students of Asian studies, Politics, International Relations and History.

Appendix

1. I. THE RECRUITMENT AND SOCIALIZATION OF TEACHERS
   1. (i) How Teachers Should View Their Work, Their Students, and Themselves [Excerpts]
      Ding Haochuan/Renmin Jiaoyu
   2. (ii) The Soviet Teachers I Have Seen
      Zhang Lianfeng/Xiaoxue Jiaoyu Tongxun
   3. (iii) Be an Engineer of the Human Soul
      Liu Shi/Zhongguo Qingnian Bao
   4. (iv) Do a Good Job of Inculcating a Sense of Professionalism among Normal School Students
      Jinan Normal School/Guangming Ribao
   5. (v) Learn from and Serve the Workers and Peasants
      Kang Jintang/Wuli Tongbao
   6. (vi) Training New-Type Teachers with Greater, Faster, Better, and More Economical Results
      Investigation Group of Propaganda Team Stationed in Guangxi Normal College and Revolutionary Committee of Guangxi Normal College/Guangming Ribao
   7. (vii) Worker-Teachers in China’s Education Revolution
      New China News Agency
   8. (viii) Correctly Understand and Fully Bring into Play the Role of People’s Teachers
      Criticism Group of the Jiangsu Provincial Conference on Writing/Renmin Ribao
2. II. THE SOCIAL PRESTIGE OF TEACHERS
   1. (a) General Prestige in Society
      1. (i) Any Job That Benefits the People Is a Glorious Occupation
         Song Jianming/Xiaoxue Jiaoshi
      2. (ii) Respect the Work of Primary School Teachers
         Liaoning Ribao
      3. (iii) Educate the Peasants to Respect Teachers
         Shiqian/Nanfang Ribao
   2. (b) Relations with Students
      1. (i) This Is No Excuse for Not Respecting the Teacher
         Chen Jian/Zhongguo Qingnian Bao
      2. (ii) Equality and Respect
         Yang Yi/Zhongguo Qingnian Bao
      3. (iii) On Drawing a “Dividing Line”
         Sheng De/Wenhui Bao
      4. (iv) Red Guard Young Fighters Ascend the University Platform Revolutionary Students of First Class of Third Political
         Grade of Beijing Normal College/Renmin Ribao
      5. (v) Letter and Excerpts from the Diary of a Primary School Pupil
         Renmin Ribao
      6. (vi) Understand Clearly the Reactionary Essence of the “Dignity of the Teaching Profession”
         Wang Qian/Guangming Ribao
      7. (vii) Disrupting the Relationship between Teachers and Students
         Peking Review
3. III. THE MATERIAL LIVELIHOOD OF TEACHERS
   1. (i) A Talk with Teachers on Wage Reform
      Feng Suhai/Jiaoshi Bao
   2. (ii) My Opinions Concerning the Calculation of Teachers’ Salaries
      Shi Tianhe/Jiaoshi Bao
   3. (iii) Guangming Daily Appeals for Better Conditions for Teachers
      New China News Agency
4. IV. THE POLITICAL STATUS OF TEACHERS
   1. (a) Political Attitudes and Ideological Training
      1. (i) Use the Spirit of the General Line to Criticize Further Bourgeois Ideas Existing among Teachers
         Xiaoxue Jiaoshi
      2. (ii) Professions and Politics [Excerpts]
         Renmin Jiaoyu
      3. (iii) Is It the Case That Primary School Teachers Have Complicated Class Status, Are Backward in Thinking, and Have Unimportant Jobs? [Excerpts]
         Jing Shihua/Jiaoshi Bao
      4. (iv) To Be a Teacher Is to Make Revolution
         Wenhui Bao
      5. (v) Revolutionary Committee of First Middle School, Shunchang, Fujian, Promotes Revolutionization of Teachers’ Thinking and Exploits Their Revolutionary Enthusiasm
         Guangming Ribao
      6. (vi) Thoroughly Transform the Original Ranks of Teachers Zhongshan Medical College
         Revolutionary Committee/Guangzhou Hongdaihui
      7. (vii) Seriously Carry Out the Party’s Policy Toward Intellectuals, Tightly Grasp the Remolding of Teachers’ World Outlook
         Party Branch of Baijiazhuang Worker-Peasant-Soldier School, Beijing Municipality/Gwawgming Ribao
   2. (b) Politics and Profession: Power in the Schools
      1. (i) Teaching Is the Overriding Central Task in Schools
         Renmin Jiaoyu
      2. (ii) Thoroughly Overcome Sectarian Sentiments
         Wang Btnqing/Xiaoxue Jiaoyu Tongxun
      3. (iii) A Discussion with Primary School Teachers on the Issue of Joining the Party
         Party Members Administration Office, the Organization Department, CCP Zhejiang Provincial Committee/Xiaoxue Jiaoyu Tongxun
      4. (iv) Refute the “Don’t Be Afraid of Delegating Power to Your Aides” View
         Ju Hongqi/Renmin Ribao
      5. (v) Persevere in and Intensify the Educational Revolution [Excerpts]
         Guangming Ribao
      6. (vi) Effectively Strengthen Party Committee Leadership Over the Revolution in the Realm of Teaching
         CCP Committee of the Tianjin Educational Bureau/Renmin Ribao
      7. (vii) Firmly Adhere to the Philosophy of Struggle; Carry Out Properly the Revolution in Education
         Workers’ Propaganda Team of the Maoming Municipal Middle School No. 1, Guangdong Province/Guangming Ribao
      8. (viii) People’s Daily Calls for Reliance on Professors in Running Colleges
         New China News Agency
5. V. TEACHERS’ DISCONTENT AND DEMANDS AND CCP RESPONSES
   1. (i) You Cannot Treat Primary School Teachers That Way
      Shen Yang/Gongren Ribao
   2. (ii) Difficulties and Worries of Women Teachers in Primary Schools
      Shan Lingyi, Wang Chuanfeng, and Zhang Wenyu/Qingdao Ribao
   3. (iii) Raise the Status and Remuneration of the People’s Teachers to an Appropriate Level
      Chen Yuan/Guangming Ribao
   4. (iv) The Question of How to Assess Correctly the Status of Teachers
      Jiaoshi Bao
   5. (v) Teachers Are Needed for the Revolutionary Cause
      Hong Jiaobing/Guangming Ribao
   6. (vi) Zhang Tiesheng’s Letter Has Given Impetus to the Revolution in Education
      Renmin Ribao

I. The Recruitment and Socialization of Teachers

Appendix / I:i


How Teachers Should View Their Work, Their Students, and Themselves [Excerpts]^*

Ding Haochuan

It is my opinion that today every teaching comrade, be he a primary school teacher, a high school teacher, or a university professor, should take serious consideration of the following three questions:

First, how should he view his work?

Second, how should he view his students?

Third, how should he view himself?

These, I believe, are the basic questions that every teacher of today ought to be clear about. A correct understanding of these three questions is the first prerequisite enabling us to become authentic people’s teachers.

I would like to present my personal view as follows for the consideration of my comrades.

1. How Should We View a Teacher’s Work?

In semifeudal and semicolonial China, workers, peasants, and other laboring people were, of course, “slaves suffering hunger and cold”; even the intellectuals were in general not guaranteed a livelihood. On the other hand, China was culturally a very backward country, and intellectuals made up a very small percentage of the entire population. At the same time, intellectuals were unemployed in large numbers, and it looked as if China had a surplus of them. Under such circumstances, to find a job and earn a living became primary concerns for all intellectuals. It was even more so for workers, for peasants who had lost their land, and for other laboring people. A teaching job was by no means “sweet.” (How many teachers were there who did not feel they were a bit “miserable and shabby” themselves?) However, in order to get hold of a job like this, by which “one could somehow avoid starvation, but nevertheless could not have enough to eat,” people by the tens of thousands experienced all kinds of hardship and humiliation, in a tragedy of internal strife, jostling against each other, and trying to squeeze out the others. This happened in the so-called “pure and noble educational circles.” Probably every teacher, or anyone who had been a teacher before, had such an experience. The longer one was in the profession, the more and “richer” would be his experience of this.

Such was the social status of teachers that it yielded positive results. Many teachers, especially teachers in primary schools, leaned to the revolution and to the laboring people. Among them there were a good many who played an important role in the revolutionary movement, and who made great contributions. At the same time, this type of social position also had its negative impact — the burden of making a living hung so heavily on their necks that they were unable to raise their heads. They lost the feeling for new things and events and their courage and confidence in advancing forward.

With Liberation, there was a tremendous change in Chinese history. The absolute majority of the teachers were conscious of this change and experienced fully the joy of liberation. They therefore studied actively and worked diligently, and they recovered the physical exuberance of youth. This was a great event that merited joyous celebration. But, unavoidably, there are also those teachers, who, because of the long suffering and the heavy burden of making a living, and in addition, because of our inability to improve our material life in a very short time, are still not clearly conscious of this tremendous change, and have not yet felt the joy of Liberation. These comrades are inevitably inclined to regard today’s events with their old perspectives. They regard the task of the teacher simply as an “employment opportunity,” or “a way to make a living.” In the case of a number of teacher-comrades whose political consciousness is weak, when their personal gains are blocked, when they are psychologically bruised, or when they are unhappy for some other reason, the devilish shadow of their old thoughts and old cognition of long standing are likely to reappear. With a harsh wooden face, purporting to be worldly, they say: ‘What is this new society, old society; don’t we still teach to earn a living!”

Therefore, what concerns us is that we must recognize precisely the change in the times. We must realize that in the past we were acutely concerned about our individual livelihoods and individual futures. This resulted from the oppressive shackles imposed upon us by the old society. Try to recall seriously your own attitude at the time when you had not yet been shackled by the burden of earning a living, or when you were only very recently shackled. You were full of the desire to pursue truth and freedom. Analyze seriously how this feeling became eroded and diminished; then you will understand concretely the harm and injury inflicted on you by imperialism, feudal forces, and the reactionary Guomindang clique. Then, you will realize concretely that today these shackles are no longer there. Today we are liberated. Today our fatherland and our people have demanded us to stand up to be proud people’s teachers; we must not be timid mediocrities preoccupied with the conversion of hours of work into quantities of millet. Today, it is still essential to recognize fully this problem and to strengthen our courage and confidence when we go forth with our heads held high.

There is still another harmful perception, which is to regard teachers as brokers of knowledge [zhishi fanmaizhe]. This kind of perception was a product of the capitalist nations and was an import. In the past, China in fact paid much attention to “teachers of men” (stressing the influence on the student of the teacher’s moral quality). In capitalist society, where everything is commercialized and controlled by the bourgeoisie, knowledge has become a merchandise and teachers have become merchants selling knowledge. The various kinds of knowledge have their different markets and prices. Schools and other cultural and educational institutions have also become enterprises in which capitalists invest.

In China, which was a semifeudal, semicolonial country, the transformation of knowledge into a commodity and the commercialization of teachers were not as thorough as in capitalist countries. Nonetheless, in big cities and in those schools which had been deeply influenced by capitalist “culture,” these phenomena were already in existence. This perception has already become certain people’s “faith.” This “faith,” when combined with the ideology of the guilds and gangsof feudal society, caused factional struggles in the past within China’s educational circles, struggles of a particularly sickening nature.

Capitalist civilization is falling and in decay. Scientific thought is being suffocated in all the capitalist countries. (We only need to think of one fact — that nuclear energy in the U.S.A. can only be used to manufacture weapons for the extermination of mankind — to realize that capitalism as a social system can no longer tolerate the development of modern science.) In the socialist USSR [there is] progress by leaps and bounds in all kinds of cultural enterprises and spectacular accomplishments in all kinds of sciences. After the elimination of exploitation and oppression of men by men, mankind is in an environment of boundless power and limitless glory, manifested in the struggle against nature. Our China is following precisely this road and advancing steadfastly. The first step is to consolidate the people’s democratic dictatorship and complete new democratic construction. The second step is to realize socialism. Sober recognition of these facts should enable us to discard resolutely the habits of the knowledge merchant and arouse our enthusiasm for teaching and research for the sake of the welfare of the broad masses and the true and free development of science and technology.

Finally, certain segments of our young revolutionary comrades harbor another kind of incorrect perception of the task of teaching. They regard teaching as a nonpolitical task. Being a teacher, in their minds, is not sufficiently “revolutionary,” or at the least, is lacking in [political] “spice.”

These comrades have exalted revolutionary enthusiasm. They are willing to exert their greatest effort in the revolutionary undertaking. This is good. But they lack specific understanding of the revolutionary cause and the concrete content of political work.

The revolutionary cause becomes an empty idea without substance if it is devoid of concrete work of various kinds in various fields. Such concrete work for the most part is troublesome, tedious, and unspectacular. It is precisely the combination of these troublesome, tedious, and unspectacular concrete tasks of various kinds and fields that make the whole spectacular revolutionary undertaking possible.

In the people’s cause, any single task has its political meaning. The task of the teacher is of course no exception.

According to the reasons stated above, we have reached this conclusion: today, we cannot regard a teacher’s task as simply “a way to earn a living.” We want to oppose “knowledge merchants” and the attitude of aiming for profit. The task of a teacher is one of those tasks that have decisive meaning in the the entire cause of people’s liberation. We must view it with a serious and responsible attitude.

2. How Should We View Our Students?

How should we view our students? In my opinion there are two self-evident arguments that people often ignore or hastily glance at without paying much attention to their concrete content. This neglect is not necessarily in spoken or in written form; it is expressed in actual work.

The first argument: in most cases our students are preadults and youths, and they are still in the period of growth.

The second argument: they are our progeny. They will inherit the undertaking of our generation. Because they will be living in an epoch still newer than ours, their epoch will make greater demands on them. At the same time, owing to the fact that they are our progeny, the lifestyle, thoughts, and consciousness of our generation unavoidably influence them tremendously.

We can all agree with these interpretations. However, in work situations we have often found phenomena deviating from or diametrically opposed to them.…

The students are our progeny. What is the meaning of this in the concrete condition of China today? In my view, they are not only the builders of the New Democratic society, but they must also shoulder the historical task of establishing socialism and realizing communism. Specifically, we the teachers should use education and training to equip them with the abundant knowledge and high moral quality necessary for carrying out their great historical tasks.

Because what we want to nurture is a completely new generation, we cannot mold the students according to the images of our generation. On the one hand, we have to arm them with distilled knowledge and accumulated experience; on the other hand, we must remember not to let them walk along aimless paths that we have already traversed. We must remember not to let them suffer the kind of torture or pain inflicted upon us by our elders. Most importantly, we must not influence them with the various defects in our thought, consciousness, and living habits.

In response to the demands of this task, we should naturally think of the need for us teachers to reform our own thinking and become personal examples.

When we talk about the thought reform of teachers and teachers’ having to be models for students, today in China, especially in the original schools of the newly liberated areas, there is a special phenomenon: in general the young students’ enthusiasm for and speed of progress are greater than their teachers’. This phenomenon has been particularly obvious in schools above the secondary level. In studying political thought at many schools, the teachers are students and the students are teachers. This of course has its objective cause. A person of advanced age, who has been subject to the influence of the old educational system and the grind of daily life (more correctly, we should use the term “torment”) for several decades is not capable of being receptive to new and fresh events and objects as quickly and effortlessly as young students. When such a person had some sort of status in the old society (in fact, this “status” was in general empty and unsubstantial), he’ll have to overcome more psychological barriers on the road to progress. The young students don’t have such barriers, or their barriers are fewer. Therefore, this kind of situation is in general unavoidable; moreover, it is not a bad phenomenon.

However, if on the basis of this situation we conclude that teachers cannot ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Ideological and Policy Context
• The Social Prestige of Teachers
• Issues of Income and Material Welfare
• The Political Status of Teachers
• Teachers as a Political Interest Group
• Conclusions: The Political Nature of the Teaching Profession
• Notes
• Appendix