Educational Reform: China in the 1970s and Russia in the 1920s

Abstract

to challenge the existing institutional order. Revisionism throughout society came under attack, and a major focus of student criticism was the educational system itself. Scholars are still debating whether the Cultural Revolution achieved the goals that Mao Tse-tung, the Red Guards, and others had in mind for it, but it is clear that since the fall of 1968 there has ensued a very broad range of educational reforms. These reforms in turn have given rise to a debate among those Westerners who make their living studying China. One view is that the in education (i.e., the reforms currently being introduced) is romantic and unrealistic, and the resulting effort will inevitably harm China's effort to develop trained manpower for modernization.' The other view is that the Maoist educational line is not utopian, and is in fact more suitable to China's needs and problems than conceptions of education drawn from Western or Soviet experience. By pursuing the current reforms China may be able to develop skilled manpower without sacrificing revolutionary social goals.2 It is difficult to resolve this debate as long as one assumes, as many do, that these Chinese educational reforms are unprecedented and that past historical experience can tell little about their chances for success. In fact there are very clear precedents and attempts at similar reforms, not only in China itself (during the Yenan period-1936-453and during the Great Leap Forward-1958-60) but in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. In this article we will consider the relevance of the Soviet experience to the current reforms.