[Comment on “Teaching Must Be Reformed”]
Return to Comrade Lu Dingyi.
Read, very good.
(April 7, 1960)
Mao Zedong
April 7
[1]


Lu Dingyi, alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, head of the Central Culture and Education Group, and Vice Premier of the State Council—this speech draft sent to Mao Zedong for review on April 4, 1960, pointed out: From now on, we intend to conduct relatively large-scale experiments, in full-time primary and secondary education, to appropriately shorten the length of schooling, raise the level of attainment, control class hours, and increase labor. We plan to spend 10 to 20 years gradually, by stages and in batches, realizing the reform of the school system in full-time primary and secondary education. We can now set the following goals: strive to basically eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged workers and peasants and universalize primary education among school-age children during the Second Five-Year Plan period; strive to basically universalize junior secondary education by the method of “walking on two legs” during the Third Five-Year Plan period, while vigorously developing senior secondary, specialized secondary, and higher education, running some accelerated higher specialized schools, developing various types and levels of spare-time education, and training for the country a contingent of scientific and technical personnel and a contingent of Marxist-Leninist theoretical workers who are both red and expert. To accomplish this task, teaching reform must be carried out.


Since 1958, we have conducted experiments in various places on reforming the school system, reforming primary and secondary school curricula, and reforming teaching methods, proving that teaching reform is practically feasible. Now, all provinces and municipalities are making specific arrangements according to their own conditions and conducting relatively large-scale experiments in teaching reform. Education and teaching must be integrated with productive labor. The main purpose of school teachers and students participating in labor is to remold thinking, change the situation in which education is separated from productive labor and education is divorced from reality, and change the relationship between intellectuals and workers and peasants. This is a major task of political and ideological work and must be resolutely implemented. Our preliminary conception of the new school system is to shorten the length of full-time primary and secondary schooling to about 10 years and raise the level of attainment to the equivalent of the first year of the present university.


Of course, experiments alone are not enough for teaching reform; material and ideological conditions must also be prepared. Among these, the material conditions are:


First, the level of teachers must be raised, which requires corresponding reforms in teacher education and attention to organizing in-service training for existing teachers.


Second, the existing “two-shift” schools must be gradually transformed, batch by batch, into full-time schools, and then into boarding schools, which requires capital construction.


Third, kindergartens and nurseries must be run well, which requires greatly developing preschool teacher training schools and schools for training childcare nurses.


Fourth, new educational tools such as audio tapes and slides must be adopted, and necessary instruments, models, and other new teaching aids must be fully provided.


Fifth, there must be an adequate supply of paper.


The ideological conditions mainly consist of a thorough critique of bourgeois pedagogy and the development of communist educational theory. We must oppose the servile style of prostrating ourselves before bourgeois pedagogy, advocate breaking down superstition, emancipating the mind, daring to think, daring to speak, daring to act, fully mobilizing the masses, and testing everything through experiment—the communist style.


On April 9, 1960, based on this draft submitted for review, Lu Dingyi delivered a speech at the Second Session of the Second National People’s Congress.
On April 10, Renmin Ribao published his speech in full.