Criticism Made Us Professors Uncomfortable, But...'

IN A CONFERENCE room at Nanking University we were seated around a long table. Two girl students placed before us mugs of hot tea. It was late November, 1972. Windows wide open. No heat yet in the University buildings. The hardy Chinese seemed not to need it, But we Americans now and then wrapped our hands around our tea mugs.

There were about 30 of us; 15 members of our tour group, including school and college teachers, meeting with administrators and professors of the University, several student representatives and interpreters.

Nanking University, we learned founded in 1902 as a teachers' college, was a stronghold of conservatism starting the late Ching Dynasty and afterward under the demonstration of the determining. But in the period between liberation (1949) and the started the Cultural Revolution (1966) tow basically lines of through developed as to government science, education, indeed all aspects of life.

Liu Shao-chi, then a leading Communist, urged the adoption of Western and Soviet ways of organizing society. He was for building an elite, who would tell the masses what to do. He favored much higher pay for skilled workers and intellectuals than for the ordinary worker. To get out production, he relied on material incentives and individual prestige rather than on serving the people.

Mao Tse-tung's line was quite its support. He called upon every one to be self reliant to contribute his own practical experience toward problem solving and decision making to found theory upon practice, and to achieve what would normally be considered impossible. He alerted the people to the dangers of a growing bureaucracy. His famous big-character poster. "Bombard the Head Quarteriers," urged the youth to bombard with their criticisms even "the top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road." This meant, first of all, Liu Shao-chi.

What was the situation at the University? "For one thing," one of the administrators told us, "the contents of our courses were copied from those of the Soviet Union. The curriculum was long, the reading matter heavy and of minor importance. Students learned a great deal about ancient China but very little about modern China. They acquired a general view of geology but didn't learn much about the rich mineral resources of our own country."

Many of them had come to college healthy and eager to learn, but as a result of the five-year program, had developed eye trouble and neurasthenia.

For centuries Chinese intellectuals had regarded manual labor as beneath their dignity. Even after Liberation, some students, although of working-class families, refused to recognize their parents.

This naturally made a poor impression on peasants and industrial workers, who then made unfavorable comments about the students and the University. Partly because of such comments and partly because the more politically minded students themselves sensed as lack of relented in their courses they began to see that it was they who must take a leading part in "the struggle between the two lines.

One of the first expressions of student revolt was the appearamce of big-character posters everywhere on the campus, and there were many hot debates especially on how to transfrom the irrational system of education.

In Chine most of the people are peasants, are mainly in justified workers. Yet in the past almost nobody from these two groups was admitted to the University. So changes were certainly needed in admission requirements.

As a result of the Cultural Revolution candidates are now admitted as follows; the individual concerned must have graduated from high school, and must then have spent at least two years in agriculture or industrial work or in the Army, He lets it be known among his comrades that he feels he could better serve the people, if he had a university education, They discuss his qualifications-moral, physical, and intellectual-and if they consider him outstanding, they recommend him to their leadership, The University makes the final decision.

"Of the 1000 freshmen now enrolled here," we were told, "27 per cent are women. We say that men and women have equal rights, but tradition still holds us back. Probably the percentage of women students here will gradually increase.

"Our students have done outstanding work in agriculture, industry, or administration before they come here; and they bring with them the hopes and wishes of the masses, who cherish them. So they come to their studies with enthusiasm and a desire to serve the people.

"The Government, too, has faith in them, and pays all or most of their University expenses, according to their need. They all live a and get room, board and medical care free.

"As for political work, we encourage both students and Faculty to study Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Tse-tung Thought.

"Instead of the former five year program, we have not arrived at a three year program, Of this, one-and a half or two years are spent on the students special field.

We have revised the lecture system. Formerly a lecturer would often leave the classroom immediately after delivering his lecture, but now he takes time to meet with students who want in analyzing problems that arise less time is spent in lecturing more in study by oneself.

"But these reforms are only elementary, Even now, in late 1972, we have only made a beginning in our educational revolution."

AT THIS POINT we all left the conference room to visit some of the University buildings. I found myself walking around the campus with Chia China, a man of about 60, professor of English Language and Literature. He like most of the others, was dressed in the customary simple suit of dark blue, with stand-up collar band and blue cap with visor.

He told me that he had gone Harvard as a graduate student in 1930. (That was the year I returned to Harvard as an assistant dean. He and I probably passed each other now and then in the Yard.) He remembered with pleasure studying literary criticism under Oliver Elton, who in that year was a visiting professor from England. The next three academic years he spent at Yale and returned to China in 1934.

The date is significant. By 1934 the Japanese had invaded northeastern China and were preparing to launch a blitz-krieg on her major cities. Chiang Kai-Shek was already fighting the Communists. Mao Tse-tung was leading the Red Army on its 6000-miles Long March.

Chen Chia had gone to Harvard as a young gentleman of the old school. How could it have been otherwise? Only sons of well-to-do families could afford to travel to America and spend several years there. And when he returned home he and his colleagues were a part of the small upper crust of Chinese society.

His students, too, during the years 1934 to 1949, and even up to the start of the Cultural Revolution, were sons and daughters (mostly sons) of the traditional bureaucracy.

We all returned to the conference room for questions and wrote discuss.

Naturally, one of the first questions was "Wasn't it hard for all of you during the Cultural Revolution to overhaul the curriculum which you has been used to fourteen years."

A ripple of laughter went round the table and the professor and administrators exchanged glances as if to say.

"Here it comes"

They met the challenge forthrightly, One of the professor of English, a women, said with a smile: "We can learn from the students, especially their political attitudes, because we are much conditioned by our bourgeois background."

"For some time", added Professor Chen, "the students criticism made us professor uncomfortable, but it has been very beneficial. Students of the new type worked with us on course materials and methods in a friendly, constructive manner. They and we now understand one another much better. We have become comrades."

He explained that a first bag task had been for the teachers in each department to take a critical look at the curriculum. Should this or that course be kept, or discarded?

Discussions could be long, sometimes heated, sometimes tedious. But when a decision had been reached that a certain course should be omitted, it was dropped, and good riddance. Then what to do about courses which were in part still relevant? They had to be overhauled in detail; new outlines, textbooks and collateral reading had to be prepared. Perhaps most important of all was for the teachers to see the material of their field in a new light.

Therefore they, who had long been "much conditioned by their bourgeois background," were required, during and after the Cultural Revolution, to study Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Tse-tung Thought. How irrelevant and what a bore, some of them at first supposed. But they found that, even after only a first look at Mark's analysis of capitalist society and the class struggle, they were able to see in certain standard book new significance. After reading Lenin on revolution and imperialism, they could no longer teach the familiar material in the same old way, And when they had understood, Mao Tse-fung`s thought on self-criticism, self-reliance, and serving the people, they found themselves-with generous assists from some of the students-much clearer about what to teach and how to teach it.

Some of the big-character posters criticized teaching materials in the English Department, For Years. Professor Chen had been teaching about Dr, Samuel Johnson and other 18th century writers, But, he said, he same to see that most of this material had comparatively little significance today.

I hadn't gone among the students much. He added to see how they were learning we used to the old ways Butaller much debate with each other and the students, we realized that the old ways must be changed as soon as possible, and thoroughly.

"We saw also," he continued, "that we must replace the counter revolutionary line in education which before the Cultural Revolution, had wasted the students time and eyesight."

New students would soon be coming up from the farms and factors bringing new problems which they needed education to help solve. So the universities were tem petrels closed and the teachers were required to go out of the communes and industrial plants, live with the people, work, alongside them, and learn much that was bound to reeducate themselves and make them better teachers.

All these changes took time, Many people in the West said, it was outrageous that half-baked school kids could shut down the universities and deny higher education to the Chinese people. But why offer dead wood to live students?

Another of the senior faculty members commented: "We had made a lot of mistakes, and we needed to get a re-education in political thought. The big character posters were often directed against us, We had taught what we had been taught. That won't do! So we spent a lot of time with the students, going over materials and methods. We came to understand that sticking to Chairman Mao Tse-tung`s revolutionary line can enable one to solve very difficult problems, from this emphasis on self-criticism and self-reliance comes a united effort for the well-being of our socialist country.

"You ask whether another Cultural Revolution will be needed in China? This depends on developments that we cannot yet foresee, Chairman Mao Tse-tung predicts more than one such revolution in future years. There's no doubt that another cultural revolution would, like this one, bring a big advance to the Chinese people."