The “old class” refers to the class of 1966, 1967 and 1968 junior high and high school graduates in the last century, whose youthful trials and tribulations and life hardships are difficult to describe.
After the resumption of the college entrance examination system in 1977, many of them regained their textbooks and enrolled in college, becoming the enviable “new class of three”. “.
From 1966 to 1976, in addition to the “Old Three”, there were a large number of students who also studied in elementary, middle and high schools, and I will name them “After the Old Three”.
This group of people has a mixed fate, participated in the rebellion, “breaking the Four Olds”, after that some arranged jobs in the city, some settled in the squad, some returned to the countryside to work, some were recommended as workers, peasants and soldiers college students, some got into the university …… situation is more complicated, but did not cause social The situation is more complicated, but did not attract social attention.
I belonged to the “old three after”, the “Cultural Revolution” broke out, I was in the third grade in rural areas.
This is the period when a person grows from a teenager to a young man, a time to learn and reserve knowledge, a time to sow the seeds of ideals, and a time to choose a path in life. The original path of pursuing education in a step-by-step manner was violently distorted; the original dream of a better future was mercilessly shattered; the original family education, social education, moral cultivation, civilization cultivation, including lovemaking, were all subverted by the cruel political movement.
The generation after the “Old Three” was also deeply affected by the “Cultural Revolution”, a generation that was delayed, destroyed and ruined. “The Cultural Revolution was cold and ruthless to us, but we embraced it with enthusiasm and naivety, blindness and ignorance!
Seven system schools – lack of teachers, lack of funds
“At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the normal order of the school was completely disrupted. Instead, classes were suspended and revolutionary, big-character posters were written, criticism meetings were attended, struggles against principals and teachers were held, demonstrations were held, and the “Four Olds” were broken. …… Students, who had been confined to their classrooms all day to read and write, were suddenly like a flock of sheep left unattended, attracted and inspired by all sorts of new and strange things. They were attracted and motivated by all kinds of novelties, and then threw themselves into them feverishly, seeking excitement and pleasure.
First of all, the school system has changed. In our village, we had a high school for six years, and after graduation, we enrolled in junior high school. The junior high school in the county was accepted in batches according to the test results, some in the county and some in the town. After completing three years of junior high school, students then applied for high school, also according to the test scores to different grades of schools, and then apply for university after graduating from high school. “After the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the implementation of the supreme instruction of the great leader Chairman Mao that “the school system should be shortened and education should be revolutionized”, the high school in our village was changed into a junior high school, i.e. grades 1-5 in elementary school and grades 6-7 in junior high school. -7th grade. The school system was shortened by two years compared to the previous junior high school graduation.
Overnight, the high school became a middle school, where did the teachers come from? Where will the teaching facilities come from? Where does the funding for education come from? Where does the teaching management come from? All of this is not to talk about, but only in the school gate for a “Ding Fan seven-year school” sign. At this time, the state corresponding supporting middle school, high school, college closed enrollment, we rural children in the village after the seven system school, and learned the head.
Our village is large, the school at most four or five hundred students, there are more than 20 teachers, public teachers and private teachers almost half each. The public teachers were mostly junior high school students who had previously enrolled in the local secondary teacher training school, which was a two-year program, one year less than reading high school. This group of teachers is quite competent to teach elementary school, but the seven system of school substitute for the sixth and seventh grades, it seems to be a struggle. Moreover, the “Cultural Revolution” also stopped the enrollment of teachers, this batch of public teachers are still very scarce. The school had no choice but to temporarily recruit many private teachers to cover the classes. The private teachers were junior high school students and high school students. High school students are mostly in junior high school better academic performance, after graduation, unwilling or despise to test the teacher, took the high school, ambition is to graduate to apply for university, the future is unlimited.
High school students than the secondary school teacher more than a year of school, the result of the university stopped enrolling, had to return to the village as farmers. And on the teacher, less than a year of schooling, not to mention, after graduation is the tang public teachers, eat the state commodity food, earn dozens of wages per month, it is the turn of people despise when the private teachers of high school students. In such a context, although some private teachers are high school students, teaching standards are often higher than some public teachers. With teachers without education funding, private teachers earn work credits, participate in the year-end dividend of this production team, the county education bureau to send a few dollars a month living allowance, actually equal to the state should pay part of the teacher’s salary, passed on to the farmers.
Language class – memorizing quotations and copying newspapers
What about the teachers?
“At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, probably the editors of the publishing house and the workers of the printing factory who printed the textbooks were also in revolution, so we didn’t even have textbooks. The language teachers were copying Chairman Mao’s quotations on the blackboard, copying newspapers, and the homework after class was to recite and copy Chairman Mao’s quotations. Finally, the new textbook came. The selected texts included the writings of Chairman Mao, his poems, Lu Xun’s essays, newspaper editorials, and revolutionary memoirs. There was an article praising the oil painting “Chairman Mao went to Anyuan”, in which a sentence said that Chairman Mao “slightly locked brow, tightly pursed mouth”, which I still remember particularly well.
I learned the rhetoric of “prose” in language class from a text by Chen Boda, then head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, who gave a speech at a meeting of the Red Guards at Tiananmen Square, where Chairman Mao, the great leader, went to meet the Red Guards, to this effect: “The Red Guards from all over the country have come from far and wide to our Beijing, the heart of the great motherland, to the center of the leading world revolution, to the great leader Chairman Mao ……” the teacher explained that this series of three “came to”, the text is full of momentum, the meaning of layers of The three “came” in a row are called “prose”.
As for ancient texts, the seventh grade language textbook selected two, one is “Wu Song beat the tiger”, from the classical novel “Water Margin”; the other is “Yugong Yishan”, still remember “Taixing Wangwu two mountains, 700 miles square, 10,000 feet high”, the knowledge of ancient texts learned can be seen.
Math class – politics and struggle
If the language class is so good, the math class should be better, right? Actually, no. The word problems in math textbooks are political and full of fireworks throughout. Each word problem is often preceded by a quotation from Chairman Mao, boldly arranged, such as “Never forget the class struggle”. Examples of questions are about landlords taking over peasant land before liberation, or peasants paying rent to landlords, or people’s communes producing a bumper crop of grain, or factories producing many products to support Asia, Africa and Latin America. A casual search on the Internet reveals the following question.
“The brutal economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced the peasants to stage many uprisings against the rule of the landlord class.”
Before liberation, the landlords used their power to take over the land, collect rents and debts, and extort money, causing the poor peasants to be “heavily in debt. One landlord lent poor farmer Uncle Chen 24 yuan at 84% annual interest rate.
This is by no means an exaggeration, similar math homework problems, I do not know how many.
There was a time when the top demanded to do “open school”, that is, to invite workers and peasants on the podium, to break the intellectuals “stinky old niners” dominate the podium situation. Our village seven system school has invited representatives of the poor peasants to recall the bitterness and sweetness, invited the brigade cadres to tell the struggle for land reform, but also hired the brigade veterinary station Dr. Li to talk about veterinary knowledge. Uncle Li is originally from Henan, how many years a mouth of Henan did not change over, he spoke a lesson quite seriously, the class barely heard a few sentences.
The school also had a “revolutionary general on the podium” activity, as a way to prove that the revolutionary general can do anything. Once, the teacher who taught us mathematics, Mr. Niu Yongsheng, asked me to lecture on the stage, he was my mathematics teacher, but also in charge of the school Mao Zedong Thought propaganda team, I was a propaganda team member, rehearsing programs under him all day, he was more familiar with me. That day, I wore the propaganda team performance costume, yellow top, blue pants, waist tie armed belt, head yellow military cap, face also painted layer of oil paint, full of energy. I took a big step onto the podium and taught the students in the same class about solving quadratic equations. The back of the classroom was filled with students and teachers from neighboring schools who came to observe the lecture. After the class, everyone reacted well to my lecture, and even the observers were full of praise. In fact, what I said was all taught by Mr. Niu in advance, word by word, and I drew a tiger from a cat, which was comical and ridiculous, and was really a farce.
Science and chemistry class – useless field unwilling to learn
After reading the fifth grade in the village school, without exams, the class went to the village seven system school junior high school. Middle school language and mathematics courses are retained, no physics and chemistry classes, instead on the “basic knowledge of industry” and “basic knowledge of agriculture”, the content of industry to learn Daqing, agriculture to learn Dazhai, the Great Leap Forward, agriculture eight words of the Constitution, etc., two years passed, did not learn much knowledge. When I graduated, high school enrollment began, but the recommendation system was implemented, and the number of places was very limited, so less than 10% of the students were lucky enough to go to high school, and the rest went home to work as farmers and repair the earth.
I belonged to the “children of the Black Five”, so naturally I would not be recommended. Later, I took the opportunity of the “intellectual rebound” in 1973 and went to Yanjing Middle School for high school after several transfers. The school was located 30 miles from my home in Yanjing town, using the Li family compound of the landlord and capitalist Li Ziyou family as the school building. Because it was a school directly under the Yuncheng district, so the teachers were strong and the teaching equipment was perfect. However, our peasant children were short-sighted, and felt that they were recommended to attend junior colleges and universities, and needed to graduate from high school and return to the countryside to participate in labor training for two years to meet the conditions, so their hope was extremely slim. Most of the students were not interested in mathematics, science and chemistry, and thought that learning those thermal energy, acceleration, beakers, test tubes, etc., back to the countryside what use? The teacher who teaches physics, Mr. Chang Jingxin, asked for students’ opinions, and we even asked to teach how to install electric lights, how to drive tractors, mills and other practical skills. Do you think it is absurd? When the college entrance examination system was restored in 1977, it was silly. Many students enrolled in the liberal arts, not out of love for the arts, but the mathematics and chemistry courses “blind”, can only rely on rote memorization of history and geography, “sharpening the gun”, to get a fighting chance.
Extra-curricular reading – lack of books to read and blind reading
In this village, there was no library and reading room in the brigade department and commune. In the village, only the school leaders and the brigade department subscribed to the People’s Daily, Shanxi Daily, and we occasionally saw newspapers in the school meeting room, flipping through them and reading them blindly. I later went to Fudan University Department of Journalism, the first semester there is a course is “reading newspapers with newspapers”, is Ge Chi Yin teacher lectures, Mr. Ge kind attitude, serious lectures, but very practical.
At that time, to read extracurricular books, all rely on private students to pass each other, mostly “small books” comic books. The big novels, such as “The Firebrand”, “Red Rock”, “Song of Ouyanghai”, “Song of Youth”, “Forest and Snow”, “Bitter Cauliflower”, “Spring Flowers”, etc., some of which were criticized as poisonous grass, and could only be read in secret when easily borrowed. The main interest in reading novels is the strong story, the war, what Shi updated the big trouble with the little captain and Mao Li Taijun ah, what squad surprise attack on the milk head mountain ah.
At that time, love was a bourgeois sentiment, and schools did not offer physical health classes. Individual novels have a small amount of love and sex descriptions, both curious to see, and after reading feel shy, afraid, self-condemnation. After reading them over and over again, I was able to memorize some of the text. For example, the scene of Lin Daojing and Yu Yongze talking about love on the beach in “Song of Youth”; the scene of Apricot Leaf’s mother cheating on her with a long worker in “Bitter Cauliflower”; the scene of Wang Cambodian flirting with his mistress Shuhua, “his thighs pressed against her thighs”, and Shuhua was so scared that she went into the hole in the bed, “revealing her white blossoming buttocks “…… in adolescence, I watched these, can only be silently remembered in the heart, as if doing a shameful scandal, dare not tell anyone. Now think about it, very absurd and ridiculous.
Yan Jing High School library collection of books, unfortunately, is critical of the feudal, capital, repair, excellent books, teachers dare not lend to students. The loan of all the “Hongnan combat history” and other new books, political too strong, readability is too poor. On the contrary, Hao Ran wrote “Sunny Day”, “Golden Light Avenue”, reflecting rural life, we feel very close to read.
I first read “Dream of the Red Chamber” is to teach the language teacher Wang Quanjun borrowed, swallowed once. The school to carry out the “Water Margin” campaign, Chairman Mao said the book “good in surrender”, not seen how to criticize, I borrowed a copy from classmate Shi Zhiqiang to read. The father of Zhiqiang is very learned, there are many collections of books at home.
Physical education class – no equipment, practice running
Physical education classes were more interesting. The village’s seven system school sports facilities are almost zero, single bar, double bar, pommel horse, etc. None of them. Table tennis was hot for a while, and it was a brick countertop that didn’t take long to destroy the blank. On the eve of graduation from junior high school, the school playground was only installed with two pairs of basketball boards, which could barely play basketball. I don’t remember the school having a formal field day, and I didn’t learn basic sports knowledge. In physical education class is basically to practice standing at ease running. One time in class, the physical education teacher suddenly said mysteriously: Taiwan Nationalist airdropped a secret agent, just outside our village, we go to catch live! The students were energized and followed the teacher to a trench outside the village, and the “spy” they caught was a student the teacher had arranged in advance.
As for the foreign language class, it was not offered in the village’s seven system school. Yanjing Middle School has English classes, but the famous Henan Province “Ma Zhenfu incident” occurred, “I am Chinese, why learn foreign languages, do not learn the ABCs, but also can do successor.” The last words of the student who committed suicide resonated with us, and English learning was once again poured with a bucket of cold water. When I went to college, I basically started learning English from ABC.
Think about it, how much did we learn in such an atmosphere and such an environment?
Compared with the “old three”, the “old three after” were wasted from elementary school, junior high school to high school, and wasted their youthful years. Had it not been for the Cultural Revolution, many more of them would have gone to college and become the pillars of various fields.
Nowadays, the construction of a high-rise building with dozens of floors requires digging a deep foundation and using steel and cement to build up to the ground bit by bit before the “ten-thousand-foot tall building can be built from the ground up”. After the resumption of the college entrance examination system in 1977, the class of 77 and 78 who were fortunate enough to be admitted to university, including the “old three”, “after the old three” and a few freshmen, became the darlings of the times. Many of them have made great achievements in various fields. However, due to the lack of congenital and solid foundation, the majority of them, despite hard work and diligent struggle, can hardly produce master-class figures.
Who is it that ruins our youth?
Mei Yiqi, the president of Tsinghua University, once said, “The so-called great scholar is not a person who has a building, but a master.” This statement is not only for universities, primary and secondary education also need excellent teachers.
The ten-year “Cultural Revolution”, the ten-year catastrophe, delayed and destroyed not one person, but a whole generation or generations of people, the collapse of the whole country’s cultural lineage and technology fault, is the tear and destruction of tradition and culture. Those who still blindly shout “accept the exercise” “youth without regret”, those who still blindly miss the “Cultural Revolution”, I do not know whether out of ignorance, or suffer from amnesia? I don’t know if it is out of ignorance or amnesia.
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