Today, November 29, 2008, I read this news on the Internet.
By Zhang Ming, Professor of Renmin University of China
Recently, teacher Yang Shiqun of East China University of Political Science and Law was a bit annoyed that he was sued by his students for being counter-revolutionary, and the Public Security Bureau has already filed a case. Such a serious charge, a serious state of affairs, is nothing more than the fact that he criticized Chinese Culture in his lectures and that the language involved the government. These days, students suing teachers is never a new thing. If a teacher is not careful in class, and a very righteous student gets upset, a small report will be filed, and in a couple of days, the school will have to talk to you. But directly to the teacher to the bureau, and can actually make the Public Security Bureau to investigate the case, seems to be rarely heard.
This took me back to 43 years ago. It was the end of 1965, the eve of the Cultural Revolution. At that Time, the political situation was very tense. I had just been assigned as an elementary school teacher in Haidian District, Beijing, because I could not go to university because of my overseas connections (that is, my Parents were abroad). This was a very lucky job. It was much better than going to the countryside, even though the monthly salary was only 31 yuan and 50 cents.
My first job as a teacher was to teach “Nature” to the fourth and sixth grades, and “Chinese History” to the sixth grade. To teach “nature” was to tell students about basic biology, chemistry and physics. For example, the principle of levers, why pulleys save force, the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons, how to prove that the earth is spherical, how oxygen fuels combustion, and so on. These are very easy for me to teach, and they are not related to politics. Students also love to listen to my class because I can relate to real Life situations and answer questions. So although I am young, only 19 years old, I am very popular with my students.
But it was difficult to teach Chinese history. As soon as I looked at the history textbook, I felt that it was very different from my own knowledge of history. I remember the first lesson was about the Chinese apes, the cavemen. The book mentions the Paleolithic and New Age eras. Although this is not strictly speaking the scope of Chinese history, it can still say a little bit about how to distinguish between the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras. But immediately below is the emergence of Dayu’s water control, slave society, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. But it doesn’t tell the sequence of Xia, Shang and Zhou, and then it comes to the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, and then the uprising of Chen Sheng Wu Guang. The following is even stranger, the Han and Tang dynasties are barely mentioned, and then the four great inventions are mentioned, and suddenly there is another Yue Fei against the Jin Dynasty, and then jump to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Opium War, the young Mao Zedong, the May Fourth Movement, the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, Chiang Kai-shek’s 4.12 mutiny, the War of Resistance against Japan, the Liberation War and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
I think it is impossible to tell Chinese history in this way, and students cannot have a general outline of Chinese history after learning it. But I didn’t dare to modify the lecture notes without permission. I came up with a way to ask students to memorize the order of “Xia, Shang and Zhou, Qin, Han and the Three Kingdoms, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing”. As for the Northern and Southern Jin dynasties, the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Hu, etc., it is not necessary. Personally, I have always had an aversion to memorizing the chronology of history, so I told the students, “You just have to memorize this order, and remember two chronologies: one is the birth of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 AD, and the other is the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
To deepen the sixth graders’ impression of Chinese dynasties, I also took one class at a time, in two sessions, to the Tiananmen East Chinese History Museum. The exhibits there were still arranged by dynasties. I held the whip myself and talked from the beginning to the end, which also happened to be from the Beijing apes to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In the place of Ming Dynasty, there was a topic about Hai Rui, so of course I spoke more about it. The students were very satisfied with the tour, and I was glad to give them a simple but complete overview of Chinese history.
Little did I know that when it came time to talk about the People’s Republic of China, Director Lu, the party secretary, approached me. This nominal teaching director was a newly assigned Party member, and the Four Clean-up Task Force developed two other young Party members, and the three of them, along with Director Lv, formed the elementary school Party branch of our 37 faculty members. This was a performance, no, then called achievement, as a result of the Four Clean-ups outstanding politics. The principal at the time was a non-party member and a total poser. The real power was in the hands of Director Lv.
When Director Lv, who was wearing a blue cotton jacket, called me into her office, I was very nervous because she kept a taut face: “Please sit down, Mr. Pan.” , after a slight pause, then said, “You are a new teacher, and I have not had time to talk to you, how have you been working lately?”
Of course I couldn’t say anything. So she began to ask: “Where did you get to in your history class?”
I replied, “I talked about the founding of the People’s Republic of China.”
She stared at me and asked, “What did you talk about?”
I was sweating nervously: “I talked about Chairman Mao and the Communist Party leading the people to liberation.”
“Really?” Her gaze became more stern, “Some students exposed you as saying that the working class is the ruling class.”
I was relieved: “Yes, I said that before liberation the landlords and capitalists were the ruling class and exploited the working people, and after liberation, the working people turned over and became the ruling class and suppressed the landlords and capitalists.” I could see from Director Lu’s eyes at this point that she did not understand the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism, which were taught in my high school politics class.
It was my calm attitude and my “theory” that convinced Director Lv, and she immediately changed her attitude and instructed me: “What you say is of course right and in line with Mao Zedong’s thought, but to the children, you have to speak in depth and simplicity. I am from the provincial office and have experience in teaching, and I am trying to help you improve your business today. You go back and try to prepare your lessons.”
I left the teaching director’s office. Took a deep breath. I realized that this was the level of the elementary school party secretary. She always said she was from the provincial office, but in fact she was some kind of clerk of the Jilin provincial government, transferred to Beijing with her husband who was a military doctor, and knew neither teaching nor Marxism-Leninism. This false alarm was a good thing for me, reminding me to be careful when lecturing, not to play more. At that time, the political atmosphere was very strong, talking about class struggle every day, criticizing the exploiting class, saying that the landlords, rich peasants and capitalists ruled the working people. The naive young students simply thought that “ruling class” was a pejorative term, and when they heard me describe the great working people for the first time, they of course denounced me. And such a report, whether it is to report teachers, friends or parents, elders, are publicly encouraged and supported. There is also a term called “drawing the line”. I can’t believe that after almost half a century, it is still common for students to denounce their teachers’ lectures, and that they can still alert the dictatorship and make the Public Security Bureau open a case.
At that time I thought I was proficient in Marxism-Leninism, stronger than the party branch secretary, smug for a long time. Then came the Cultural Revolution in the summer of 1966. Chairman Mao said that Wu Han’s writing of the play “Hai Rui Dismisses the Officials” was an attack on the Party by reversing the case for Peng Dehuai. So Wu Han, the vice mayor of Beijing, had no choice but to kill himself to the Party and the people, becoming the sacrificial lamb of the unprecedented Cultural Revolution.
The sixth graders who had graduated but could not go to junior high school had to stay in elementary school to make revolution. The History Museum in Tiananmen Square East was also closed for criticism. One day I suddenly saw a big poster given to me by the students, exposing that I had brought them “to the History Museum to preach about Hai Rui, what a poisonous intention! It seemed that I had become Wu Han’s accomplice. Of course, this time it was not a denunciation, but a public denunciation and criticism. The students who signed the posters were all students with good academic performance at that time, and they were the students who enjoyed my history class the most.
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