20
20
The attack on the Three Family Village quickly moved from the
papers to the schools. Students were encouraged to pen their own
excoriations of the traitors, as one newspaper put it opening "Fire At the
Anti-Party Black Line!" Pupils made posters vilifying the scoundrels'
names and plastered them over every available wall. Thus they carried
out their duty to "hold high the great banner of Mao Zedong thought!"
The banner of Mao's thought soon wrapped itself around the
necks of more than just the Three Family Village. Schoolchildren were
encouraged to find other literary works rotting with revisionism and
anti-revolutionary notions. The children leapt avidly to their homework
assignment. But they became even more enthusiastic a few months later
when a new directive came from above: ferret out bourgeois tendencies
and reactionary revisionism among your teachers.
The new task was one any youngster could apply himself to with
gusto. That teacher who gave you a poor mark on your last paper? He's
a bourgeois revisionist! Humiliate him. The pedagogue who balled you
out for being late for class. A capitalist rotter! Make her feel your wrath.
Revenge had nothing to do with it. This was simply an issue of
ideological purity.
Students examined everything their teachers had ever written. In
the subtlest turns of innocent phrasing they uncovered the signs of
reactionary villainy. At first, they simply tacked up posters reviling the
teachers as monsters and demons. Then all classes were suspended so
that pupils could work on sniffing out traitors full-time. Instructors who
had fought faithfully with Mao's revolutionary forces were suddenly
reviled. Others who thought of themselves as zealots of Maoist thought
were pilloried as loathsome rightists. Some couldn't take the
humiliation.
Gao Yuan, son of a Party official in a small town, was a boarding
student at Democracy Street Primary School in Yizhen at the time. At
Gao Yuan's school, one teacher attempted to slit his throat. Other
pedagogues tried to placate the students. They "exposed" their
<< < GO > >>
20
20
The attack on the Three Family Village quickly moved from the
papers to the schools. Students were encouraged to pen their own
excoriations of the traitors, as one newspaper put it opening "Fire At the
Anti-Party Black Line!" Pupils made posters vilifying the scoundrels'
names and plastered them over every available wall. Thus they carried
out their duty to "hold high the great banner of Mao Zedong thought!"
The banner of Mao's thought soon wrapped itself around the
necks of more than just the Three Family Village. Schoolchildren were
encouraged to find other literary works rotting with revisionism and
anti-revolutionary notions. The children leapt avidly to their homework
assignment. But they became even more enthusiastic a few months later
when a new directive came from above: ferret out bourgeois tendencies
and reactionary revisionism among your teachers.
The new task was one any youngster could apply himself to with
gusto. That teacher who gave you a poor mark on your last paper? He's
a bourgeois revisionist! Humiliate him. The pedagogue who balled you
out for being late for class. A capitalist rotter! Make her feel your wrath.
Revenge had nothing to do with it. This was simply an issue of
ideological purity.
Students examined everything their teachers had ever written. In
the subtlest turns of innocent phrasing they uncovered the signs of
reactionary villainy. At first, they simply tacked up posters reviling the
teachers as monsters and demons. Then all classes were suspended so
that pupils could work on sniffing out traitors full-time. Instructors who
had fought faithfully with Mao's revolutionary forces were suddenly
reviled. Others who thought of themselves as zealots of Maoist thought
were pilloried as loathsome rightists. Some couldn't take the
humiliation.
Gao Yuan, son of a Party official in a small town, was a boarding
student at Democracy Street Primary School in Yizhen at the time. At
Gao Yuan's school, one teacher attempted to slit his throat. Other
pedagogues tried to placate the students. They "exposed" their
<< < GO > >>