Talk when Receiving Committee Members of the National Student Federation (Extracts)

Date: 1957-02-24
Source: Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward
        (Harvard University Press, 1989), ed. Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, Eugene Wu

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Talk When Receiving Committee Members of
the National Student Federation (Extracts)
24 FEBRUARY 1957
[189] [After] our generation dies, the difficulties will be yours. At
that time you will have a much better foundation. Our foundation
now is not good. There are very few college students, very few intellectuals: 40 million! school-age kids cannot go to school. To have all
the school-age kids in school is, I'm afraid, impossible even in a hundred years. Even the Soviet Union has not done that.
So far the Soviet Union has resolved only the problem of the
seven-year [schooling] system. It has not succeeded [in implement
Sources: 1:189; alternate text, 6A:37, which gives the date as 14 February.
The alternate text says 400,000, which is clearly incorrect. In 1956 there had been about 60
million children in primary schools, or 52% of the primary-school-age population; see
CHOC 14, pp. 211, 214.
ing] the ten-year [schooling] system . . . We can issue directives, [and]
let local party committees make reports to students. [We] have
already pointed out this problem at the conference of party secretaries from provincial and municipal party committees held recently.
[We] told them to pay attention to strengthening work in the school
[system]. If the political classes are boring, make people doze off,
then it’s better not to discuss [politics]. It would be better just to doze
off. [Dozing off] can save energy [and] maintain [your] vigor.
(Whether you want to relay these few words is up to you.) You are all
leaders. I think you definitely don’t approve?
2It is not absolutely clear whether Mao thinks the student leaders disapprove of boring lectures, dozing off, or his own radical suggestion to abolish classes—but, most likely, “dozing off