(June 8, 1964)
Xiao Chünü[1] never attended school, not only did he not go to any foreign-style school, he didn’t even attend a private old-style school. I liked him very much. The teaching at the Peasant Movement Training Institute relied mainly on him. He was a waiter in a Wuchang teahouse, yet he could write very fine articles. At the Peasant Movement Training Institute, we simply gave people pamphlets to read—the peasant movement in Guangdong, the peasant movement in Donglan County, Guangxi—just these pamphlets for people to read. Nowadays schools don’t issue lecture notes. I am lecturing on the Great Learning, telling the students to take notes, making them copy things down mechanically. Why not issue lecture notes? They say it’s for fear of making mistakes. Actually, isn’t it the same? Isn’t there a fear of making mistakes when copying mechanically? They should be printed and given to the students to read and study. You should talk a bit less! The main thing is to have the students read the materials, including oracle bones and bronze vessels. If you lecture on history, you should give the materials to people. Don’t just hand out materials from one side; both sides (positive and negative) should be distributed, both the new learning and the old learning should be distributed! Print and distribute the Xinmin Congbao and the Su Bao; distributing only Liang Qichao won’t do. My work “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War” was precisely the lecture notes for the Red Army University. Once written, there was no need to lecture; the book was issued to you, letting you read it yourselves. “On Protracted War” was written in the same way. “On Contradiction” was written
[1]
This is part of Mao Zedong’s speech at the Central Committee Work Conference of the Communist Party of China held in Beijing from May 15 to June 17, 1964.
[2]
Xiao Chünü joined the Communist Party of China in 1922. In 1925, he co-edited China Youth with Yun Daiying. In January 1926, he assisted Mao Zedong in editing The Political Weekly, and in March participated in organizing the sixth session of the Peasant Movement Training Institute and served as an instructor. At the end of October, he became a political instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy. In April 1927, he was arrested and killed by the Kuomintang reactionaries.

over several weeks, writing day and night; the preparation was extremely difficult, but after it was written, I lectured on it for only two hours. Once it’s written, there’s no need to lecture! Let people read it! Teachers nowadays are very lazy, very stupid. (Someone says that if lecture notes are written and given to students, the teacher will have nothing left to lecture on.) That’s good! If you don’t lecture yourself, you free up time to research problems.