The Rustication of Urban Youth in China by Peter J. Seybolt

Author:Peter J. Seybolt [Seybolt, Peter J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138191792
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

*Shang-hai shih Nan-ching tung lu Kuei-chou li-nung p’ei-ho nung-ts’un kao-hao tsai-chiao-yü. “K’ung-ku ho fa-chan chih-shih ch’ing-nien shang-shan hsia-hsiang ti wei-ta ch’eng-kuo.”

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Important Content of the Revolution in Education

Yenan Middle School Party Branch, Tientsin*

Among the students whom our school has graduated since 1968, more than thirteen hundred have gone to the villages and border regions to join the brigades and make a home. There they have been tempered and matured in the Three Great Revolutionary Movements in the villages. Not a few have become members of the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Youth League. Many have joined the leadership ranks on varying levels or have undertaken technical work and have become very useful in the struggle to construct new socialist villages. These rich results have greatly encouraged the school’s students, teachers and revolutionary parents, making the Party’s educational policies enter their hearts more deeply, and making the idea that agricultural work is glorious pass from class to class. We have come to understand through practice that the school must regard coordination with the villages in reeducating students who have gone to the countryside as an important aspect of the educational revolution.

In 1968 our great leader Chairman Mao announced that “educated youths must go to the countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants.” The students in the “three old classes” (that is, the classes of ‘66, ‘67, and ‘68) found that after the tempering of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the great majority of them had achieved a profound understanding of the meaning of Chairman Mao’s directive. Resolved to carry it out, they went one after another to the villages. Under these circumstances, some of the teachers said, “Once we’ve seen the students out the door, our responsibilities are over. Their tempering is their own responsibility, no need for us to worry.” Although the Party branch felt that this viewpoint was not quite right, it still did not pay enough attention to it. After a period of time, we heard that some of the students had met with some difficulties in the villages and were vacillating in their thought; and some individual students had also done some wrong things. At that time the whole school was discussing it, and not a few teachers held that we ought to form bonds with the villages and coordinate with the work of the poor and lower-middle peasants in ideological education; on the other hand, some people also held that the school is the agency that sends people, it is in charge of mobilization, and it is the poor and lower-middle peasants’ business to educate them after they have reached the countryside; it is not necessary to be concerned with so many things.

Should we concern ourselves with this ? Is it after all an “external” or an “internal” matter ? Considering this question, we organized all the teachers to study conscientiously the Party directive on education, study the discussions of Chairman Mao relating to the cultivation of successors to the proletarian revolutionary cause, and

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