Wake up（249）

 

249

 

In the era of great changes in the world that have not been seen in a century, it is useless to be pessimistic. It is better to think about how we have overcome one hurdle after another in life in the past. The "Naonao" alumni group is becoming more and more popular. The reason is that the three founders, Li Aiwen, Qian Xiaojuan, and Sun Yulan, brought the alumni back to their school days.

There are more and more people surfing the Internet. A netizen called "New Illiteracy" suggested to "Naonao": Can you expand your alumni network to all those who experienced the "resumption of classes and revolution" back then? Because we have the same experiences and feelings, the same cognition will allow us to find a common language, and let us find common ground in our memories for the rest of our lives. Not forgetting the original intention means not forgetting the ignorant years we have experienced.

After discussions, Li Aiwen, Qian Xiaojuan, and Sun Yulan adopted the suggestions of "new illiterate" netizens.

Netizens of "New Illiteracy" posted an article by netizens outside the school in the "Nao Nao" alumni group:

My school days were spent at farm school. During the "resumption of classes and revolution", the farm's school was paralyzed, and the students did not go to school. They were energetic and did not study, had no books to read, their heads were empty, and they had nothing to do. To steal melons and fruits from public and private vegetable fields, chickens and ducks are also stolen for barbecue, and some children dig a hole with a knife in a big cooked pumpkin, put a pile of shit in it, and then cover the hole again, When they are full, they go to the pie battle.

The warm moon is bright and clear, and the watermelons with peeled skins in the watermelon patch of Team Six’s vegetable garden are shining blue under the moon’s light. A group of teenagers wore straw camouflage hats, divided into a line, and groped towards the melon field inch by inch in the grass. On the high melon guarding shed in the middle of the melon shed, vegetable farmer Tan Hangao watched the melon field vigilantly with a flashlight. When he found a group of children had entered the melon field, he slipped out of the shed to catch them. These children have quick legs and feet, and one of them picked a watermelon and ran away without a trace. Tan Hangao stomped his feet in anger and cursed in Nanxian dialect: "You do it day and night, and you do it at night. If you catch it, you will cut your skins." Ga!"

The children were divided into two factions, and they set up a ring in the team office during the day. Each of the two factions occupied an office, and threw mud bricks at each other across a gable wall, smashed the file cabinets and furniture in the office, and destroyed the telephone. They removed.

At night, the children built fortifications and blockhouses on both sides of the lake and dam, throwing stones at each other under the cover of night to fight, and some people were often injured.

After going on like this for a while, the teacher from Wuwan Primary School came to visit. Teacher Yao Guodong came to my house and told my father that a junior high school class had been opened in a separate school, and asked me to respond to Chairman Mao's call, "Resume classes and start a revolution." My father respected the teacher very much, he agreed to let me go back to school, and told me to listen to the teacher, "Heaven, earth, king, parent, teacher", the teacher is the father's generation, "a teacher for one day, a father for life", and so on. Although after the baptism of the "Cultural Revolution", the teacher became a "smelly old nine", the traditional cultural concept of father respecting teachers and teaching has not changed.

In 1968, after the school’s old textbooks were banned as drugs of “feuding, capitalizing, and cultivating,” there were no textbooks when the school started. Teacher Yao used a book of Chairman Mao’s poems as a textbook. He explained each poem one by one. Meaning, let’s talk about the method of artistic creation. I remember that Mr. Yao admired the phrase "a peaceful world, the whole world is the same cold and hot" in Chairman Mao's poems, saying that his vision, courage and heart are unprecedented and unprecedented.

Teacher Yao is very responsible in class. He has to write a composition every week. After the correction, he has to comment on the excellent composition, and then copy it and paste it on the blackboard newspaper. Teacher Yao was the editor-in-chief of the Farm Daily and has rich experience in news writing. He opened a "news writing class" by himself to teach the secrets of being a reporter and writing news. Some news terminology such as "principal mark, secondary mark, secondary mark, brief mark, important news and headlines" and other new terms were learned from him for the first time. After I graduated from junior high school, I worked as a "loudspeaker" correspondent for the embankment in Wild Boar Bay , and later served as the "communication team leader" who presided over the important tasks of class propaganda in high school, and then worked as a journalist in Hunan Radio and Television after graduating from university. All the way started from Mr. Yao's news writing class.

Teacher Cao taught mathematics. There was no textbook. Teacher Cao made up his own handouts, starting with positive and negative numbers. During the two years of junior high school, he often went to the countryside to support agriculture. At that time, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, and the production team was teaching how to prevent nuclear weapons. The team began to dig the air-raid trenches. The farm is low-lying, with sandy beaches at an altitude of about 29 meters, which is not conducive to digging air-raid shelters. The armed forces of the branch field instructed each team to dig curved "zigzag"-shaped air-raid shelters. Preventing tanks from advancing is a key facility for strategic defense in plain areas. Schools also dug air-raid shelters.

In addition to activities such as supporting agriculture, preparing for war, digging trenches, military exercises, and training, the school also has frequent political studies and criticism meetings, and the time for actual class is very limited. Mr. Cao's math class is intermittent, beating, and he hasn't finished teaching junior high school algebra in two years. Trigonometry and geometry have nothing to do with it.

There were no physics and chemistry classes at that time, and what I learned was "agricultural basic knowledge" and "industrial basic knowledge", and even the simplest basic terms such as Newton, Joule, and hydrogen-oxygen water molecules were not mentioned. Fortunately, these shortcomings in mathematics, physics and chemistry in junior high school were made up for by self-study in high school.

The political class was taught by Mr. Che. What impressed me the most was his talk about the "Three Great Battles" during the War of Liberation. I was so excited. He drew red and blue arrows on the blackboard, and vividly moved the combat situation map of the fierce battle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party on the blackboard. His political agitation ability and eloquence taught these lessons very well. He opened his eyes wide and gasped in admiration.

The historical contribution of Mr. Che's political class is the famous "Menglianggu Battle" he mentioned. Ten years later, this battle became a noun explanation question in the unified history test paper of the national college entrance examination in 1978. A precious 5 points.

English, Chinese and world history, and geography classes were not offered, but music classes were offered. Chairman Mao's quotations were all composed, and each class learned to sing one.

Learning has no goal, "knowledge is useless" prevails, and educated people are discriminated against. The secretary of the school didn’t like a teacher wearing glasses. The teacher asked him why he didn’t do anything wrong, why he didn’t like me. The secretary said, the people wearing glasses in the movie are either spies or traitors. They are all bad guys. , the teacher can't laugh or cry.

Students can't see the future, so they have no motivation to study. Most of the students are there to grow their body, but not much knowledge. What's more serious is that the fallacy that reading is useless and that more knowledge is more reactionary has crushed people's hearts. Most of the students did not return to school and resume classes, and they became child laborers prematurely.

After the "New Illiteracy" netizen posted this online article in the "Nao Nao" alumni group, many netizens followed up:

 

...

The "Cultural Revolution" created a generation of illiterates. I am the "new illiterate" of that era

...

During the "Cultural Revolution", the so-called "suspension of classes to start a revolution" is an absurd political operation. The school did not really resume classes due to sports activities, or closed classes after a short-term resumption of classes. Students, as Red Guards, spread the Cultural Revolution from schools to the whole society, causing serious social unrest.

...

I don't remember whether the notice of "resuming classes and causing revolution" was conveyed to each of our students in its original form. But what is certain is that in just a few months in 1967, there were three People’s Daily editorials——

1967-03-07 Editorial: The resumption of classes in primary and secondary schools creates a revolution

1967-10-25 Editorial: Universities, Middle Schools, and Elementary Schools Resume Classes to Cause Revolution

1967-11-26 Editorial: On the Resumption of Classes in Universities, Middle Schools and Primary Schools, Revolution

At the beginning, there were so many articles, what did it explain? These editorials seem to have passed away and have long since lost their memory. The only thing that leaves a deep impression is that the campus has gone through a catastrophe and is in a mess and desolation. It really deserves to be an unprecedented and unique educational destruction in ancient and modern China and abroad.

...

In fact, at the same time in 1967, the People's Daily published four consecutive editorials of "Saving the Revolution". The first time was on 1967-01-26. More than a month later, on 03-07, in the editorial about "Resume Classes and Cause Revolution", they did not forget "saving and making revolution". However, after four consecutive calls for "thrift and revolution", "diligence and thrift" was still not forgotten in the 10-25 "resumption of classes and revolution". why is that? What is even more obvious is that in the two editorials of "Resume Classes and Cause Revolution", they both explicitly called for "protecting national property" and "educating students to care for national property"! It just reflects from the side how badly the universities, middle schools and primary schools were abused back then! ?

...

In other words, that era was definitely not as beautiful as some people imagined or described now.