ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that a major weakness of the Cultural Revolution was its failure to theorise on education and also shows that the interrelations of education as knowledge, process and structure with the political-economic structures of society at large. It argues that reversals in educational policy spring from a widely held conservative view of education as vocational training, and from what is seen to be the need for the kind of specialists which traditional European style schools have demonstrated they can produce. The most conspicuous changes brought about in schooling by the Cultural Revolution involved two interlinked principles: the combining of education with productive labour, and 'open door' schooling. Liu Xiyao reiterated a much earlier intention to develop a 'complete system of tertiary education' in each province, municipality and autonomous region. This would mean institutions for the humanities, pure and applied science, agriculture, medicine and teacher-training.