Mao Zedong In Chinese Schools

Mao Zedong’s declaration of the People’s Republic of China of 1949 marked the beginning of a new era for China. Mao became the first president of New China, and started new policies and reforms that still have repercussions nowadays. We all know that under his leadership strong reforms, such as the infamous Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, ended in the death of millions of Chinese citizens. But if students in Western countries study these events, nothing is less sure about Chinese students, China being known for its censorship. I wanted to know if school programs in China included classes about Mao Zedong and his policies, and if yes, what was the teacher’s approach on the topic.

To answer my first question, I went to Datong, a city in Northern China, and spoke with sixteen-year-old Tina.

“We first learned about Mao Zedong in middle school, in history class, she said. We were told that reforms like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were mistakes. But Mao is mostly described as a hero.”

I then knew that Chinese students learned about Mao. But I wasn’t satisfied with only one answer, so I interviewed seventeen-year-old high school student Christina, in the city of Beijing.

“Our teachers have neutral positions, she started, that is to say they cannot really criticize Chairman Mao, because in our opinion he has to be a hero. So they are inclined to talk about it, but they talk really fast, the course is really fast. They cannot give their points of view on the topic.”

So to preserve the good image of Mao Zedong, teachers don’t criticize him or give their opinion. I asked a history teacher in Beijing how she felt about it.

“In our high school all knowledge about Mao Zedong comes from the national program and from the textbooks, she declared. Our main approach is affirming the great contribution of Mao Zedong to the Revolution, for example his Cultural Revolution.”

This teacher mostly defended the leader. But we know that the revolutionary wasn’t the hero depicted by Chinese textbooks, and the fact that they describe Mao as a hero who saved China show that the truth is still concealed behind the myth.

The Chinese government might be afraid of students finding out that the government is not that perfect if they learn the man the leader of the Communist Party really was. As historian Charles Ingrao says; school textbooks are “weapons of mass instruction”. Knowledge is power, and some wish that the past stays buried and forgotten, as proves the Japanese New History Textbook from 2000 that downplayed Japan’s actions in the Sino-Japanese Wars.

The fact that teachers cannot criticize the revolutionary proves that China still has a long way to go to reach the level of free speech we benefit from in Western countries.