New directions in education

Abstract

According to the conventional periodization of post-1949 China, the Great Leap Forward of 1958 marks the end of direct Soviet influence and the beginning of a new Chinese road to socialism. The single, unified nationwide objective was to produce laborers with socialist consciousness and culture. But many different forms of schooling would be used in pursuit of that single aim, including schools run by the state and those run by collectives; general education and vocational training; education for children and for adults; full-day schools, work-study schools, and spare-time schools; and schools that charged tuition as well as those that did not. Both in city and countryside, the min-pan idea was now applied to the secondary level. The Kiangsi Communist Labor University was a unique institution not only because it was so successful but also because of its provincewide scope and its continuing reliance on a part-work part-study curriculum. The peasants themselves looked down on the work-study agricultural middle schools.