Editor's Introduction

The documents in this issue of Chinese Education were published in China in 1979 and 1980. They appeared originally in Renmin jiaoyu (People's Education), Hongqi (Red Flag), and Guangming Daily, and cover a variety of topics.     

Editor's Note

This issue of Chinese Education completes the translation of Hung Ch'i, 1970, No. 8, the first part of which appeared in the previous issue. It also continues the series of translations from the book Comrade Mao Tse-tung on Education Work begun by the previous editor of this journal. All of the articles in this book have appeared at one time or another in English translation - most of them in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. The purpose of republishing them here is to bring them together for easy reference. We are, however, departing from the practice of the previous editor of retranslating these articles, and will instead present them as translated by the Foreign Languages Press in Peking.     

Erratum

On page 12 of Chinese Education, XI:2-3 (Summer-Fall 1978), it is incorrectly stated that the University of Chicago lends its Renmin jiaoyu holdings. While it will not do that, the Far Eastern Library of the University of Chicago will furnish photocopies or microfilms of the JMJY holdings on request.     

School and Society,July 1, 1979, to June 30, 1980

The Elementary School [Folkeskole]

In the past year, the folkeskole has been better material for the media than any time in the past, and its circumstances, its tasks, its content, and its results have been commented upon and discussed in both the national and the local press. In the school year 1979-1980, there were 740,000 pupils enrolled in these schools, including kindergarten classes (Jyllandsposten 4/19). The number of children is decreasing as reported by central authorities from the Minister of Education, for example, in Politiken, 1/16, which at the same time reports that the development of the school has therefore become difficult to control, as many municipalities have reported, e.g., Frederikshavn Avis 3/13.     

Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development for POW+TREE on High School Students with Learning Disabilities

High school students with learning disabilities often have difficulty expressing their thoughts in writing. At the secondary level, writing becomes paramount to successfully navigating the curriculum and expressing knowledge. In this study, the effectiveness of Self-Regulated Strategy Development for POW (Pick my idea, Organize my notes, Write and say more) + TREE (Topic sentence, Reasons—three or more, Examine, Ending) for persuasive quick writes with four high school students with learning disabilities was investigated. Results indicated an increase in the number of response parts written and increased stability in the number of words written. The participants who deemed the intervention as positive provided social validity.     

Higher Education Policy Formation in the Federal Republic of Germany: A Closer Look at Neglected Aspects

This article does not attempt to deal in comprehensive terms with educational policy formation in the Federal Republic of Germany. Nor is it a venture into institutional history. It is an effort to state some preliminary findings about relatively ignored aspects of educational policy formation, largely refracted through the recent experience of one institution, the University of Duisburg — planned over 400 years ago, established in 1655, closed "on many grounds, particularly the problem of unfavorable political circumstances in 1818," reincarnated the same day and year as a Pädagogische Hochschule (1), and most recently reformed as a comprehensive university (Gesamthochschule) comprising "die Abteilung Duisburg der Pädagogischen Hochschule Ruhr und die Fachhochschule in Duisburg."(2) Some materials will be drawn from recent forays of German social science into related fields, and from journal and daily press accounts of educational politics.     

Pedagogical and Didactic Aspects of the New Hauptschule

Northrhine-Westphalia, with 17 million people the largest of the eleven Länder (states) of the Federal Republic of Germany, issued revised curriculum programs for all its schools between 1966 and 1968. The most interesting changes occurred in the secondary school for those children (about 60% of the age group) whose parents do not enroll them at age 10 in a Realschule (semiacademic) or a Gymnasium (academic). These children formerly remained in the Volksschule for a total of eight years; but now the upper half of this school, expanded by one year, is called Hauptschule and is designed to offer more substantial education than previously, including a foreign language (English). The same pattern is followed in all the other West German Länder.     

Introduction: Primary-School Reading Texts and Teaching Methods in the Wake of the Cultural Revolution

This issue of Chinese Education is devoted to selections from post-Cultural Revolution elementary school primers. These are, so far as we know, the only samples of primary-school reading materials that have come out of China this past decade.     

The General Reform of Primary-Secondary Education (La Réforme Haby)

On July 11, 1975, the French government adopted La Réforme Haby, an education act that authorizes a general reform of primary and secondary education. Named after René Haby, Minister of Education in the cabinet of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the act is to be implemented progressively over a three-or four-year period beginning in September 1976 or 1977, depending on the speed with which the mechanics of the reform can be set in place. The new baccalauréat, which, as in the past, will be conferred at the end of grade 12 (la terminale), is not expected to be introduced before 1979 at the earliest.     

The False Intelligentsia (1927)

Since the beginning of May 1974, our hsien, led by the higher Party committee, has initiated, on a trial basis, spare-time correspondence education for educated youths who have resettled in the countryside. The institutes of higher education in Shanghai provide us with teaching materials. Aside from this, our hsien has undertaken full responsibility for organization and tutoring. In connection with the needs of the Three Great Revolutionary Movements in our hsien, five subjects were initiated for the first term of correspondence education: "Selected Readings from the Classics of Marxism-Leninism," "History," "Writing," "Breeding of Fine Strains of Paddy Rice," and "Agricultural Meteorology." We have engaged 23 part-time teachers and enrolled 30 students for each subject, totaling 150. The students are organized according to subject into 30 study groups. These groups are distributed over nine communes and state farms where the resettled educated youths are relatively concentrated.     

A Network for Popularizing Socialist Education

In Nanan hsien, schools are run in front of the doors of the poor and lower-middle peasants, in the remote mountain areas, and on the off-shore islands, as demanded by the poor and lower-middle peasants. This has changed the former irrational distribution of schools. Besides, sparetime schools and political evening schools of various types have been set up throughout this hsien by such means as are appropriate to the local conditions. In this way, popular education for school-age children and teenagers is basically achieved and 80 percent of the adult commune members can also take part in the study. Experience of this hsien shows that it is entirely possible to popularize socialist education so long as we conscientiously carry out Chairman Mao's "May 7 Directive" and fully arouse the masses.     

As the Party Nurtured Me,so Will I Nurture the Educated Youths

Encouraged by the admonition of our great leader Chairman Mao that "educated youths must go to the villages to be reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants.… Comrades in villages everywhere should welcome their going," we at Nansa Brigade in I-ch'eng hsien, Shansi, welcomed twenty-three educated youths who came to the countryside from Peking in December 1968.     

Pedagogical Innovations in the English School System

In July 1977 the secretary of state for education and science, together with the secretary of state for Wales, published the Green Paper — the report Education in Schools — which contained the outline for future school policy in England and Wales. (1)     

Publisher's Note

The State Education Leaders Delegation visited the People's Republic of China in October 1977 under the auspices of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and as the official guests of the Ministry of Education in Peking. The group observed educational institutions and discussed the new directions of Chinese education with colleagues in China's educational circles. The scholar-escort of the delegation was Ronald N. Montaperto of the University of Indiana, who is serving as the guest editor of this issue of Chinese Education.     

University Reform and Skeleton Legislation on Higher Education in the Federal Republic of Germany

This article, Part II of a two-part study by Professor Teichler, has been translated from Pädagogik und Schule in Ost und West, November-December 1972, No. 6. Part I appeared in Western European Education, Fall 1972, Vol. IV, No. 3.     

The Beginnings of Curricular Reform: The Reports "Fifteen to Eighteen" and "Half our Future"

Late in 1959, the Ministry of Education published a report on the situation of youth between the ages of 15 and 18. (89) The focus of the study, also known as the Crowther Report after the chairman of the committee authoring it (90), was the age group that was past the compulsory school age, a large segment of which was already gainfully employed with no further contact with formal education. The report, which contained important reform proposals on the organizational and curricular restructuring of the secondary school system, focused upon the following task, spelled out by the minister: "to consider the education of boys and girls between ages 15 and 18 in relation to the changing social and industrial needs of our society and the needs of its individual citizens, and in particular to consider the balance between these ages at various levels of general and specialized studies and to examine the interrelationship of the various stages of education." (91)     

Editor's Note

Volume IX of Western European Education is being devoted in its entirety to the translation of the four studies on "Educational Reform and the World of Work" in Italy, Sweden, France, and England, respectively, that constitute volumes I and II of the Marburg Research Group's Qualifizierung und Wissen-schaftlich-technischer Fortschritt am Beispiel der Sekundar-schulreform in Ausgewahlten Industriestaaten.     

LAW NO. 71-576 OF JULY 16, 1971, "Relating to Apprenticeship"

As announced at the time in this journal (Vol. III, No. 2-3), the French National Assembly, on July 16, 1971, passed four laws on vocational and technical education that are particularly bold and far-reaching. Because of the interest in this legislation shown by many American educators, we are providing a complete translation of Law No. 71-576, "Relating to Apprenticeship." A full translation of Law No. 71-575, "Pertaining to the Organizing of Continuous Professional Training within the Framework of Continuing Education," is available in Herbert E. Striner, Continuing Education as a National Capital Investment (Kalamazoo, Michigan, The W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1972, Appendix A). Translations of Laws 71-577, "Concerning Guidance in the Field of Technical Training," and 71-578, "On the Financial Sharing of Employers in Primary Technical and Professional Training," can be found in Raymond E. Wanner, Career Education: A French Approach (Washington, D. C, Institute of International Studies, U. S. Office of Education, 1972, Appendices A and B). The laws appeared originally in the Journal Officiel de la Republique Française, July 17, 1971, pp. 7035-7046.     

The Position Taken by the Swiss Science Council on the Report Tomorrow's Secondary Education

The Swiss Science Council was asked by the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Public Instruction to take a position on its report Tomorrow's Secondary Education. The Science Council issued its comments on March 22, 1974. We publish in translation the full text of the Science Council's position as it appeared in Politique de la science, August 1974, No. 3.