Critique on Two Versions of *Chairman Mao on Education*
[1]
Over 50 of Mao Zedong's discussions on education from 1927 to 1967, arranged in chronological order.


On December 7, 1967, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council, the Central Military Commission, and the Central Cultural Revolution Group issued a notice to distribute this book to revolutionary committees (or preparatory groups), military control commissions, military regions, and all levels of schools across the country’s provinces, cities, and autonomous regions.
[2]
Mao Zedong’s revisions to the book *Chairman Mao on the Revolution in Education* primarily consist of the following:


One. Page 9 contains an excerpt from Mao Zedong’s speech at the delegation heads’ meeting of the Second Session of the Eighth CPC National Congress on May 18, 1958, in which he stated: “In short, all this material of mine is meant to prove this one point: aren’t the lowly the wisest and the noble the most foolish, thus stripping the arrogant high-level intellectuals of their capital.” Mao added a parenthetical note after “all this material of mine,” writing: “At that time, a batch of materials on inventors from the past and present, both Chinese and foreign, was printed.”


Two. Page 11 contains an excerpt from Mao Zedong’s talk at the Spring Festival Symposium on February 13, 1964. During his review, Mao changed the line “Confucius was born into a declining slave-owning aristocracy and never attended university; he was a trumpeter for hire” to: “Confucius was born into a declining slave-owning aristocracy and never attended much secondary school or university; his early occupation was helping others arrange funerals—a trumpeter for hire, roughly speaking.” After the sentence “When he later became a high official in the State of Lu, he no longer heard the affairs of the common people,” Mao added: “Later, he ran a private school and opposed students engaging in labour.” After the sentence “Gorky’s learning was entirely self-taught,” he added: “It is said that he only attended two years of primary school.” When discussing the study of classics, Mao deleted the following passage: “For instance, among Buddhist scriptures, the *Diamond Sutra* translated by Kumārajīva is too long and very difficult to finish reading. The *Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sutra* translated by Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty is a digest of the *Diamond Sutra*, consisting of only a few hundred characters, and is comparatively easy to read.”


Three. Page 13 contains an excerpt from Mao Zedong’s talk on education on June 8, 1964, in which he said: “The *Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War* I wrote was actually the lecture notes for the Red Army University. Once something is written, there is no need to lecture on it; the books are distributed to you for you to read on your own.” During his review, Mao deleted the following passage after this: “*On Protracted War* was written in the same way. *On Contradiction* took several weeks to write, working day and night. The preparation was terribly difficult, but once it was written, I lectured on it for only two hours. Once written, there is no need to lecture.”


Four. Page 14 contains an excerpt from the transcript of Mao Zedong’s conversation with Mao Yuanxin on July 5, 1964. During his review, Mao deleted the following passage: “In the past, when I lectured at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, I would distribute the lecture notes to the students, lecture for only 30 minutes, let the students study on their own, then have them raise questions, and the instructors would answer them afterwards.”


Five. Page 16 contains an excerpt from Mao Zedong’s speech at the Hangzhou Conference on December 21, 1965. During his review, after the passage: “We must transform liberal arts universities. Students must go down to engage in industry, agriculture, and commerce. As for engineering and the sciences, the situation is different; they have their internship factories and laboratories, working in the factories and conducting experiments in the labs,” Mao added the sentence: “However, they must also engage with social reality.” In addition to the above, Mao also made some minor textual revisions elsewhere in this book.