Ccp Education

Prior to the establishment of the CCP, China was rife with illiteracy - brought on by the poor education standards and limited access to education. The school system was incredibly elitist, meaning only the urban elite were able to receive primary and higher education. Upon the establishment of the Communist regime within China, education saw a significant improvement. Mao began to implement changes which improved the curriculum, access to education as well as entirely reforming the language in the form of a new, standardised alphabet - Pinyin. However, as a result of Mao’s skeptical views towards education, as well as a desire to industrialise, focus was shifted towards manual labour - most notably during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) - and education had been entirely abolished during the Cultural Revolution. This meant that any improvements made thus far had become redundant and therefore meant that the CCP had ultimately not improved education between the years 1949 and 1976.

Some historians agree that the CCP had been successful in improving education in China through the implementation of Pinyin in 1955 - the new standardised language system. This had solved the problems with the old Chinese language system, namely the complexity of it as each word had a different symbol that had to be learned. The letters were now based on the Latin alphabet meaning that words in Mandarin could be pronounced phonetically. This had greatly improved communication within China - something which had been a great handicap to Chinese education prior to this - and had meant that peasants were now able to better understand the language and therefore improve their literacy. All in all, this change had managed to successfully unify the Chinese language in turn greatly improving education and had made a lasting impact on the language system of China, as Pinyin remains the form of written language in China to this day.

Another successful improvement which the CCP had made in education was through the reformed curriculum. The reforms had aimed to move away from the primarily humanitarian curriculum, consisting of the study of classical texts such as Confucianism, which existed in pre-Communist China and to move towards more technical fields. This had resulted in a strong focus, by universities, towards vocational and technical training which were crucial in running a modern economy. As a result, twenty new polytechnics and 26 new engineering institutes - which had specialised in steel making, mining and geology - had been created in order to accommodate the new influx of students. These schools proved to be of use to both society and the economy as they were now producing skilled labour which was vital in running modern machinery in factories as well as farms. By 1953, 63 per cent of university students were now studying engineering, medicine and agriculture. When compared to figures from pre-Communist China where a mere 10 per cent studied natural science, 11.5 per cent engineering and only 3 per cent in agriculture, it is evident that the reforms had created a far more technically knowledgeable population which it so desperately required. Overall, the new curriculum set up by the CCP had greatly improved education as it shifted focus onto technical subjects such as engineering and agriculture, which had previously been almost non-existent, and provided a new generation of technical workers required to run a modern economy.

The CCP had also improved access to education in China. There had been a significant rise in the number of students for both primary and higher education between the years 1949 and 1958. The number of primary school students had increased from 26 million to 64 million and enrolment, for higher education, had quadrupled from 117,000 to 441,000. This reflected the new regime’s strive to spread education across China and more so improve access to the peasant population. Moreover, the government had established new Min-Pan - ‘run by the people’ - schools in rural areas which had been financially supported and managed by the local village, making them effective as poorer peasants could now receive a basic education. Winter schools had also been established. These provided short courses for adult peasants during a time when they were unable to work or farm due to weather conditions. The party claimed that 42 million peasants attended during the winters of 1951-52. Although these changes saw an increase in the attendance of students in education, some flaws still remained. Much of the system had remained elitist and inequitable as it often favoured children of a bourgeois background, universities still serviced mainly urban students and in some instances, winter schools had been ineffective due to the peasants not being able to remember what they had learned from one winter to the next. Despite this, however, the overall access to education had significantly improved as now more places had become available in schools for both urban and rural students.

Other historians would argue that the CCP was unable to improve education between the years 1949 and 1976, mainly due to Mao’s later attitude to education. As the regime became more consolidated, Mao began to develop a stronger skepticism towards the education system. He argued that the 12 year education system was too long and that exams had been too rigid. He believed that students were not prepared for manual labour, a seemingly vital part of the Chinese economy and saw the failure to create educational equality as evidence that capitalist roaders had taken over the party. As part of the Socialist education campaign, began to focus on Marxist-Leninist theory and class struggle, with socialist heroes such as Comrade Lei Feng playing a central role in school. Mao’s attitude played a key role in the failure present in the education system during the GLF and Cultural Revolution.

Education in China saw significant failures during the GLF. This was a result of Mao’s