The Thought Reform Of Teachers Of The Primary And Secondary Schools In Nanjing (1949-1952)

In 1949, the founding stage of PRC (People’s Republic of China) was badly in need of talents to reconstruct the new nation. Meanwhile, the regime change activated the social thoughts and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), as the ruling party of the new regime, needed to integrate these social thoughts and set up, under the Marxism-Leninism, new perspective towards politics and value. Intellectuals, an immense group, naturally turned out to be the target group to be united by the CCP. Early in the August of 1948, the 8-word strategy "zheng qu, tuan jie, gai zao, pei, yang"(to strive for, to unite, to reform, and to culture) was raised by the CCP, and survived in the new China. Under such tenets,1949-1952 witnessed a nation-wide intellectual reform.The thought reform of teachers of the primary and secondary schools in Nanjing (1949-1952) was one part of this nation-wide intellectual reform,and it had its representativeness and particularity.This thought reform by the CCP,conducted in a manner of national movement, involved all walks of intellectual group, with public school, private school, and even missionary school not excluded, with teachers, school staff, and students involved, the participation being comprehensive. In the reforming process, the new regime not only filled the routine schedules of school with political propaganda, and besides,included the everyday personal life of each teacher into the reform scope, so as to involve every single teacher into the political propagandism.With routinized and institutionalized infiltration, summer and winter vacation was also availed to conduct intensive learning, trying to maximally make each teacher clear about and innately accept the CCP, the new regime, and its political idea, so as to set up a Marxism-Leninism dominating ideology.Naturally, despite theoretical learning taking up a large proportion in the routinized and centralized learning, paper learning could only yield sensible understanding. To strengthen the theoretical knowledge calls for the integration of theory and practice. After the outbreak of Korean War, in order to consolidate the newly born regime, the CCP conducted movements like current affairs propaganda, 3-antis and 5-antis movement, the suppression of counter-revolutionists, and school teachers were also involved so as to consolidate their theoretical learning and to procure more direct and rational understanding about the CCP and the new regime.Through the participation of political movement, the Kuomintang bourgeoisie leftovers, such as decadent life style, supra-class ideology, employment ideas, could be eliminated on the one hand,and on the other hand teachers could be made aligned with the central, to convert the freedom-adoring and independence-pursuing intellectuals into part of the working class who were will to service the new regime, and to change them from a politics-ignorant group into one that cares about politics and are willing to actively participate.Early in the Yan’an Rectification age, the CCP had already conducted ideological reform movement. The flexible and diverse forms applied in this movement were thus a continuation and development of the enduring ideological reform, with a relatively mature ideological reform mode coming into being and to gradually mature in later practice. In the process of thought reform, teacher participated in actual work, so as to "labor as penance means" and fulfilled a heart and soul change; besides, teachers were also organized to hold complaining conventions, through which participators can clearly realize the difference between the old and new regime, and draw a clearcut borderline with their old self, so as to form more incisive understanding of the new regime with resonance; by means of blackboard news and exhibitions, organizers tried to help the teachers realize the necessity of their own reform by watching others’ reforming results, and thus believe that they can also become a qualified people’s teacher by active reforming; setting up models was an important means of reform, rendering direction to the reforming teachers, and the comparison with models helped to notice the gap, and strengthen self-reform to better fit the construction of new China. With reform means so multitudinous,self-participation and the watching of others’ participation were integrated to guarantee better reform effect.What the author trying to do is to comprehensively and multi-anglely deconstruction and analysis the ideological reform movement,further to reduction the complete picture and the logic behind the movement,for example,how the learning of the papers conducted,how the teachers participated the political movements,and how each style of the reform played the role.In short, the author look forward to finding how the mechanisms of power running,while that is the magic weapon in the process of founding and consolidating the new regime.