The Malleability of Man in Chinese Marxism : Donald J. Munro

The Malleability of Man
in Chinese Marxism*
Donald J. Munro
Introduction
" Human nature changes " - a vague statement acceptable to Marx and
to Engels, to Stalin and to Mao. The point is: what is it that changes,
under what conditions does it change, and what is the nature of the
change? The article that follows is a case study of the interaction between
the concrete cultural and social dimensions of a given country and a
philosophical concept that has made its way into that country's official
ideology. It examines the idea of the malleability of human nature in
contemporary China. The concept is' of monumental importance in
Chinese Marxism, and examination of its evolution and implications will
illuminate the Chinese definition of social class, and the causes of a
nationwide crisis in the educational system in 1958 that foreshadowed
the dramatic 1966 closing of all schools and their subsequent restructur- _
ing. Most important, the analysis clarifies the meaning of a term so often
used in discussions of Chinese thought and so rarely understood.
The Marxist and Confucian Background

Examination of the development of this idea must begin with an
investigation of Marx's own treatment of human nature, which con-
stitutes the Talmudic legacy. The meaning of the concept in China can
be most dramatically revealed against this background.
Marx's own doctrine that "thought is action {praxis)" requires him to
deny the reality of fixed concepts patterned after static things, because if
thought is action its objects will never be static things but always pro-
cesses. Thus, no fixed human nature and no fixed concept of one. How-
ever, in both his early and later writings Marx's concept of man does
include implicit references to static elements as well as the explicit
references to elements which continually change. The static dimension
of man centres on the idea of " needs." Here a distinction must be made
between what Marx in some places calls human needs (what we might
call real needs) and those other needs more directly related to biological
•This article is based on material drawn from the author's book, The Concept
of Man in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, forthcoming) and
from the W. Y. Evans-Wentz Lectures delivered by the author at Stanford Uni-
versity in 1970.
610 The China Quarterly
survival.1 Let us first consider the former. To state, as Marx does, that
all men have these human needs is not to claim that people are necessarily
aware of them. It is rather to assume they exist and then to claim two
things: that men should experience them and that they would be happier
if they could express them. For Marx, the most important of all human
needs is the need to express one's individuality in a manner that most
closely resembles the creative act of the artist. This idea is first suggested
in the writings of the young Marx on the alienation of the labourer from
his product and is continually reflected in his later discussions of the
shackling effect on men of the division of labour. It can also be found
in some of the discussions of " exploitation " in which that term is used
to refer to selfish activities that prevent other people from understanding
what they are as human beings and what they are capable of being.2
In the case of the survival needs, a distinction should be made between
those that are " essential" (for food, drink, sex and shelter necessary to
ensure the survival of the individual or species) and non-essential or
acquired needs. Drawing on a Hegelian discussion of civil society in The
Philosophy of Right, Marx identified needs that arise through the indivi-
dual's attempt to adapt to his particular society; an example of such an
acquired need would be that for money which develops among members
of bourgeois societies.
Let us turn now to the notion of changeability in human nature as dis-
cussed by Marx and Engels. In this connexion three distinctions must be
made. First, a fundamental assumption in their historical materialism is
the belief in the perfectibility of the human species. The history of the
species as a whole is leading up to the moment when the full range of each
individual's inner capacities can be manifested. Engels voices his faith in
this " irresistible evolution " when he says:
To see the glory of human nature, to understand the development of the
human species in history and its irresistible evolution, to realize its always
certain victory over the unreasonableness of the individual, we do not have
to call in the abstractions of a God to whom we attribute all that is beautiful,
great, sublime, and truly human.3
Note that in this discussion of an " irresistible evolution " to eventual per-
fection the subject is not individuals or groups, but man the species. The
second kind of change that human beings undergo is evolutionary change
that leads to physiological alterations. Typical examples in Marxist writ-
ings are the development of the hands and brain. Interaction between man
and his environment is viewed dialectically, leading to changes in both.
1. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Third ms. "Private

Property and Labour"), translated in Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man
(New York: Frederick Ungar, 1963), p. 141.
2. John Plamenatz, Man and Society (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), Vol. 2,
p. 321.
3. Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy (1888), quoted in John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), pp. 235-236.
The Malleability of Man in Chinese Marxism 611
Productive labour in pursuit of survival is man's unique form of inter-

action with nature through which the organism is itself changed. Labour
and language (required by the co-operative nature of labour) together
promote the development of the hands and brain. Note once again that the
subject of this change is the human species, not individuals or groups.
Productive labour that originates in man's attempt to satisfy basic sur-
vival needs leads us to the third kind of change to which human nature is
subject. Marx's classic statement concerning human essence (Wesen;
Chinese pen-hsing or pen-chih) is contained in his " Sixth Thesis on
Feuerbach ": " The essence of man is no abstraction residing within each
individual. In its real form, it is the ensemble of social relations." This
statement means that the forms of ownership of the means of production
and the level of technology of a given period lead man necessarily into
certain dynamic social relations. We can say that the " human essence "
changes in the sense that both the kinds of social relationships in which
men find themselves and also the nature of their productive activity
change from one historical period to the next. Note that there is an
implicit distinction in Marx's position between man's social nature (his
true nature) that is subject to change and the animal nature that com-
prehends the other kinds of activities in which he takes part.
Actually, a fuller understanding of this third kind of change leads us
right back to the notion of perfectibility. In time Mankind, and more
immediately the proletarian, through participating in revolutionary acti-
vity, will enter into social relationships themselves constitutive of a new
kind of man. " Self-change," as Marx calls it in The German Ideology,
refers to the process of self-realization of the species, and "fully de-
veloped human beings," as he describes them in Capital,4' refers to the
truly human individuals at the end of the process.
The idea of the changeability of man is one of the several notions from"
the corpus of classical Marxism most influential in contemporary China.
If we wish to understand the evolution and significance of this concept in
recent Chinese thought we must begin with the basic question: in what
realm of concrete human activity has the presence of this idea made any
real difference? Only in the answer to this question can we find clues to
the fate of that idea in China. The answer is the same whether we are
talking about the Soviet Union or the Chinese People's Republic: (the
educational realm. Education must be understood in the broadest sense.
In traditional, as in contemporary China, no clear line is drawn between
academic and moral education, and so, in the discussion that follows, the
principles are applicable to instruction both in and out of the classroom.
In both China and the Soviet Union the idea of the changeability of
human nature leading eventually to the emergence of the New Man be-
comes educationally operative as the principle of the malleability (k'o-su-
hsing) of human nature.) A change in vocabulary is in order here.
The term " changeability " has referred to man's capacity to change in
4. Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, p. 76.

response to social and natural forces, as described by Marx and Engels.

l^n the Soviet and Chinese analysis, this capacity for change is purpose-
fully directed by educators and propagandists to social ends; it is then
more appropriately called " malleability " or " plasticity." In any case*
in both countries this has meant a tendency to understress the static
elements in Marx's view of human nature and to stress changeability^
Very simply put, this concept is the philosophical underpinning of ar
variety of doctrines that understress the importance or existence of innate
or acquired impediments to the acquisition of all possible human skills,
talents, abilities and to personality change. Instead, any analysis of learn-
ing or personality formation stresses the "social environment."5 But
references to social environments are impossibly vague; we learn nothing
about what specifically causes change or what is specifically subject to it.
Obviously some telescoping has occurred. We have left the Marxist
vision of a gradual change of men into the state of New Mankind, and we
have encountered instead the Soviet and Chinese conviction that the emer-
gence of new men can be hastened and, indeed, is imminent in their
societies. A basic explanation of this switch can be found in the influen-
tial Leninist reformulation of Marxism, "the theory of uninterrupted
revolution." A few revolutionaries can first make revolution and after-
wards use their position to forge the advanced industrial economy re-
quired by socialism (a thesis that repudiates historical materialism, which
requires the advanced industrial economy first, and then revolution). This
being the case, why cannot those same revolutionaries first make revolu-
tion and then use their position to begin forging the new man whose
imminent emergence is also associated with socialism?
In China, this doctrine represents a major departure from traditional
Confucian views of human nature. When the Chou Confucian text. The
Doctrine of the Mean, says, "What is decreed by Heaven is called the
nature (hsing)," it is stating that human nature, being so decreed, is
fixed and unalterable through human action. Although descriptions of the
specific content of human nature varied from thinker to thinker, it was
common to find affection for kin, transferable to other people (jeri) as one
of the enduring attributes.8 A corollary of this traditional belief in a static
nature was a claim of universality - the nature of all men is the same.
5. In both the Soviet Union and China the tendency to understress the import-
ance of innate differences or innate abilities is facilitated by the habit of thinking
in terms of the collective rather than the individual. People speak of the individual
being " incomplete apart from the collective" (whatever that means). They say
that the ability of the individual can only exist as part of the ability of the group
or be demonstrated in the group's activity. The group does well in school. The
group has knowledge, ability, creative spirit. See, for example, Hung wei-ping pao
(Red Guard News) (Peking), 23 November 1966.
6. Philosophers in contemporary China give Wang Fu-chih credit for first dis-
proving the Neo-Confucian notion of an unchanging " moral nature." Neo-Con-
fucian thinkers often argued as to whether mind or nature was static or active.
Chu Hsi maintained that both dimensions are present.
If there is a departure from the Chinese tradition in the idea of mal-

leability there is significant continuity in the tendency to split the human
self into a social nature of unique status and an animal nature, the claims
of which were often ignored except when they interfered with the former.
The distinction in classical Chinese thought is drawn by speaking of the
former as " the greater part [of the self] " or " the Heavenly nature "
and the latter as "the lesser part." In Neo-Confucian thought writers
differentiated between man's pure nature (t'ien-ti chih hsing or li-hsing)
and his physical nature (ch'i-chih chih hsing). Obviously the attributes of
the social nature differ in traditional and contemporary thought. However,
the tendency of official theoreticians in contemporary China to focus
almost exclusively on man's social nature, subject to change, and relatively
to ignore biological phenomena derives support from the convergence of
certain elements in Marxism and Confucianism on the matter of the split
self.
The Social Nature as Mental Phenomena

What precisely is this social nature of man, according to Chinese
theoreticians? The classic statement is contained in an essay Liu Shao-ch'i
wrote in 1941 entitled " Man's Class Nature." He said:
Man has two essences: one is man's natural essence, including his physical
constitution, cleverness, state of health, instinctive capacities, and so forth (for
example, in medical science there are various types of physical constitution);
the other is man's social essence, including his psychological state, thoughts,
consciousness, viewpoints, habits, demands and so forth.7
Very simply put, man's social nature refers to mental phenomena in
China; it encompasses all mental activities both affective and cognitive.
Frequently the content of the social nature is reduced to those value-
laden beliefs and attitudes subsumed under the term " thought," in which
case the social nature (class nature) is said to control all other psychologi-
cal phenomena.7* Furthermore, there is a general tendency in Maoism
for the link between man's social nature (thought) and the economic base
(so essential in the Marxist definition of social relations constitutive of
man's essence) to be sometimes fuzzy, sometimes non-existent, and never
as necessarily linked as in classical Marxism. This is caused by three
factors. First, in official policy statements the rise of a certain type of
thought is not necessarily linked to a single specific social relationship,
and, furthermore, extended participation in the social relationships is not
always mandatory. For example, a bourgeois intellectual can gain a pro-
letarian nature (a labour viewpoint) by working with peasants, and in
7. liu Shao-ch'i, " Jen ti chieh-chi-hsing " (" Man's Class Nature "), in Lun Ssu-
hsing (On Thought) (Peking: Ch'iin-chung shu-tien, 1949), p. 9.
7a. Wang Tieh, Ch'ing-nien ying-kai tsen-yang fa-chan ko-hsing? (How should
young people develop their personalities'}) (Peking: Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien ch'u-
pan she, 1959), p. 29.
some instances he need only spend a relatively short period of time each
year with them. Second, in the case of manual labourers, political educa-
tion alone, with no change in social relationships, is sufficient to bring
about change in social nature (i.e., change in thoughts and in class). This
has been accepted despite periodic Maoist attempts to bring factories to
farms, thereby giving peasants industrial experience. For example, the
philosophical basis for this new view was spelled out in a 1963 article by
Kuan Feng of Peking University in Che-hsueh yen-chiu (Philosophical
Studies).6 Discussing the People's Liberation Army (PLA) model Lei
Feng, Kuan stated thauCommunist world views are not formed spon~
taneously or ensured by family background, but are cultivated through
education^ Through education, he went on, an individual peasant may
be changed into a collective peasant, and, through more education, the
collective peasant may be changed into a Communist. " Communist" is
understood in terms of the thoughts held by the peasant. The same point
was made in an analysis of educational work in the PLA. It stated that
one must " take the great number of soldiers born in peasant and petty
bourgeois families and change and forge them into proletariat soldiers."9
Third, a distinction must be made between "class background" and
V class tainting.'^ The latter refers to the continued susceptibility of all
individuals to some thoughts of another class. Viewed in the aggregate,
these thoughts still exist because there actually is or was an economic
class that once gave rise to them, bourgeois ideas float around because
bourgeois social relationships did once exist. However, these thoughts
are also said to be caused by current actions that may simply resemble
actions attributed to a class that is no longer permitted to exhibit its
class characteristics/TThis is suggested in the following quotation:
j
Extravagance and waste are such things as will not only result in extremely
great losses economically but, more importantly, will also bring about a flood
of bourgeois ideas everywhere to corrode our cadres and the ranks of our
workers politically and ideologically.10
Furthermore, individuals can be tainted by ideas even though they them-
selves never participate in the social relationships of the class in question.
It is certainly true that economic variables have been important con-
siderations in defining social class in China, especially during the period
1950-53.11 An individual's "family background" (chia-t'ing ch'u-shen)
8. Kuan Feng, " Shih-lun Lei Feng ti shih-chieh-kuan ti hsing-ch'eng " (" Ex-
amining the Formation of Lei Feng's World View "), Che-hsiieh yen-chiu (Philo-
sophical Studies), No. 5 (1963), pp. 1-11. Kuan Feng, one of China's most influen-
tial philosophers from the mid-SOs became a member of the Cultural Revolution
Group and was subsequently disgraced.
9. Lien-tui kuan-li chiao-yii kung-tso (A Company's Managing Educational
Work) (Shanghai: Jen-min ch'u-pan-she, 1965), p. 4.
10. " Refutation of the Theory that' Waste is Justified'," Hung-ch'i (Red Flag),
No. 2 (1970), as quoted in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report
on Communist China, Vol. 1, No. 23 (3 February 1970), p. B4.
11. Discussions with Gordon Bennett were helpful in making this analysis.
and "individual background" (ko-jen ch'u-sheri) were determined by

economic factors. For example, they might depend on the number of
production facilities owned, on whether the individual needed to sell
his labour or borrow on loans, and so forth. The number of work ani-
mals one owned and the size of one's plot of land were considered in
rural areas. The two basic documents concerning the classification of
rural classes along this line were issued by the Central Committee in
1933, with supplemental resolutions by the Government Administrative
Council of 1950. During that early period, investigators would delve
back three generations to determine whether or not one belonged to
the landlord class. A key document, " How to Analyse Rural Classes "
("Tsen-yang fen-hsi nung-ts'un chieh-chi"), was published in 1965.
An individual's family background was recorded on his school personnel
record and stayed with him throughout his life. However, after land
reform, as the years passed, concern with economic determinants of class
became lax, and identifying criteria became hazy. This is revealed in a
series of documents relating to the Rural Socialist Education Movement
of 1962-66. A draft document of September 1963 states that "an
Examination of Party members' social stand, class stand, political back-
ground, ideological attitude, and work performance should be carried
out."12 The same document, however, states, " It has not yet been de-
cided whether or not to carry out the work of a new registration of
Party members during this Movement." " But a revised version of the
same document emphatically endorses such an examination of the social
class origins of Party members.14 Furthermore, work teams were to
"organize the class ranks" in the countryside.15 The official position"
has been that changes in the individual's class are a product of both
political education and participation in the appropriate social practice
or social relations. This latter factor lies behind the sending of bourgeois
intellectuals and those tainted with bourgeois ideas to the farm or factory
for remoulding through labour. —
At the same time, there has been an increasing tendency for officials
to classify people, officially or unofficially, in accordance with the political
conduct that manifests their ideas, rather than in orthodox terms of
economically-determined class. ^
12. "Some Concrete Policy Formulations of the Central Committee of the

Chinese Communist Party in the Rural Socialist Education Movement" (" Chung-
kung chung-yang kuan-yll nung-ts'un she-hui chiao-yu ytin-tung chung i-hsieh
chtt-t'i cheng-ts'e ti kuei-ting") (The Later Ten Points), in Richard Baum and
Frederick C. Teiwes, Ssu-Ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of 1962-1966
(Berkeley: University of California Center for Chinese Studies, Chinese Research
Monographs, No. 2, 1968), p. 90.
13. Ibid., p. 91.
Chinese Communist Party in the Rural Socialist Education Movement" (Revised
Later Ten Points), in Baum and Teiwes, ibid., p. 116.
15. Ibid., p. 105.
There axe also some comrades who use the political attitudes as yardstick for
the classification of the upper-middle peasants. This is unscientific, and, be-
sides, this standard lacks uniformity and is difficult to control. Often, some
poor peasants and other middle peasants who are ideologically backward or
who show more political shortcomings are likely to be classified as upper-
middle peasants, thus causing confusion and chaos among the ranks of the
rural class in villages.16
In earlier years, this distinction between class background and political
orientation could sometimes be made by introducing two additional
concepts which supplemented family background and individual back-
ground : " family status " (chia-fing ch'eng-jen) and " individual status"
(ko-jen ch'eng-feri).17 Gordon Bennett refers to an individual who was
registered in 1953 as having " landlord background " but given " revolu-
tionary cadre status." 18 Finally, those who exclusively focused on social
class background and ignored behaviour manifesting correct political
ideas were explicitly condemned. One does not abandon " class analysis,"
we are told, by focusing on these latter matters.181 Red Guard news-
papers during the Cultural Revolution also continually distinguished
between those who are "consciously r e d " (tzu-chueh hung) and those
who are " red by birth " (tzu-lai hung), maintaining that only the former
is true redness.20 ]
Basically, the above situation is a product of two things. First, the
time lag since the period when economic factors were clearly at the
centre of the stage in official class analysis (1950-53). Second, there was
an official departure from the Marxist insistence on linking certain types
of thought with single specific social relationships. In any case, it has
had enormous impact on the development of aVuniquely Chinese view
of malleability (i.e., one emphasizing both change of ideas and also
the new abilities that can be induced through such change^ From a
negative standpoint, this is the consequence of weakening both the
necessity and the nature of any link between ideas and specific social
relationships that may themselves be difficult to change. From a posi-
tive standpoint it is the result of redefining the possible social situations
linked with idea change to include those to which it is relatively easy
for individuals to gain access, such as developing a proletarian viewpoint
through work on a farm during summer vacation periods. There is no
denial here that the social environment influences people's thoughts. On

Chinese Communist Party in the Rural Socialist Education Movement" (The Later
Ten Points) in Baum and Teiwes, ibid., p. 83.
17. Gordon A. Bennett, "Political Labels and Popular Tension," Current Scene:
Developments in Mainland China (Hong Kong: U.S. Information Service), Vol.
VII, No. 4 (26 February 1969), pp. 6-7.
18. Ibid., p. 5.
19. " Chung tsai piao-hsien shih tang ti chieh-chi cheng-ts'e" (" Emphasizing
Manifestations is the Party's Policy on Classes "), Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien {China
Youth), No. 18 (16 September 1965), p. 2.
20. Hung-wei-ping pao, 23 November 1966.
the contrary, the greatest attention is paid to the influence of regional

practices and needs on the thought of local residents. There is only a
lessening of the rigidity of connexion between economically defined class
and thought. Otherwise stated, there is a tendency to define class in
terms of thought. This helps open the door to great expectations about
the work of educators who can concentrate on manipulating thought
rather than the more difficult task of altering social relationships.
Variations within Social Nature

In addition to its unique conception of social nature as exclusively
mental phenomena with tenuous links to the economic base, the ortho-
dox Chinese view of the changeability of human nature is distinctive in
one aspect of primary importance. Mao himself follows the standard
Marxist position that different social classes have different natures.
Is there such a thing as human nature? Of course there is. But there is only
human nature in the concrete, no human nature in the abstract. In a class
society there is only human nature that bears the stamp of a class; human
nature that transcends classes does not exist21
Thus there is no such thing as pan-human qualities. The traditional
Marxist approach, however, has tended to exaggerate the uniformity of
the nature of members of the same class. Chinese orthodoxy accepts
the doctrine of certain pan-class personality features. But the most sig-
nificant feature of the Maoist approach to changeability is its stress
on the vast differences in the social environments, and therefore in the
social natures, even of people within the same class. In other words,
change contributes a quality of uniqueness to each object (stating the
matter in terms of natural law), and that holds true of men as well as of
inanimate objects. As Mao put it.
Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction.
This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which dis-
tinguishes one thing from another... .It can thus be seen that in studying the
particularity of any kind of contradiction . . . we must not be subjective and
arbitrary but must analyze it concretely. Without concrete analysis there can
be no knowledge of the particularity of any contradiction.22
The natures of individuals are subject to this law. Therefore, as Mao
has faithfully maintained up to the present, we must be aware of the
differences between concrete people:
The concept of man lacks content; it lacks the specificity of male and female,
adult and child, Chinese and foreign, revolutionary and counter-revolution-
ary. The only thing left is the vague features differentiating man from beast.
21. Mao Tse-tung, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art (Peking:
Foreign Language Press, 1962), pp. 31-32.
22. Mao Tse-tung, On Contradiction (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1964),
pp. 14, 27.
Who has ever seen such a man? All we ever see is Chang the Third or Li the
Fourth. No one has ever seen the concept of house in general either. They
have only seen concrete houses such as a western style building in Tient-
sin and a house surrounded by a square courtyard in Peking.23
The emphasis on concreteness in Maoism is an emphasis on particu-
larity. The matter can be summed up by stating that the Maoist repudia-
tion of pan-human qualitiestleads him to the usual insistence on talking
rather of men's differing class natures, and also to the decidedly unusual
attention to differences between individuals within classes) One thinks
not of man in general but of specific men. In one of the earliest official
analyses of human nature (1941) by a leading Party theoretician, Ch'en
Po-ta directed attention to personality variation within classes.
Each and every individual's personality hi a class society has a definite class
nature, because in a class society everyone belongs to a definite class, and all
go through life under definite historical conditions. The unity of class nature
and personality is one side of the matter. On the other side, in various kinds
of societies there are a variety (the number is not uniform) of different con-
ditions, different phenomena, different kinds of work for the people, different
kinds of lives, and different kinds of struggles; and the concrete environments,
large or small, to which each person belongs (social, natural), the concrete
angles of life with which each comes in contact (social, natural), all have
various and different special features. This will influence each person's per-
sonality in each sort of society. Some will have abilities leaning in one way,
others in another way; some have interests tending in one way, others in other
ways; and, with regard to each person's character, some are brave and some
are weak, some are deceitful and some upright, some are grand and some
petty, some are modest and some haughty . . . etc. In sum, the many sorts of
social life determine the many types of human personalities.24
Mindful of the definition of social nature and of the kind of variation
believed to exist within it, we can turn to the question of the malleability
of man. This principle has been a matter of the utmost practical sig-
nificance. In its original form prior to alteration in China, it was asso-
ciated with educational policies that inhibited the development of
education in China's rural areas and helped to promote certain forms of
urban elitism.
Malleability and Uniformity

During the first decade of the People's Republic, the malleability of
man was physiologically explained and intimately linked to educational
policies emphasizing uniformity rather than diversity in instructional
23. Mao Tse-tung, speech in Hangchow on 21 December 1965, quoted in " Mao
Tse-tung tui wen-ko chih-shih hui-pien " (Collection of Mao Tse-tung's Directives
during the Cultural Revolution "), Tsu-kuo (China Monthly) (Hong Kong), No. 66
(1 September 1969), pp. 41-46.
24. Ch'en Po-ta, Jen-hsing, tang-hsing, chieh-chi-hsing (Human Nature, Party
Spirit, and Personality) (n.p., 1947), p. 5.
method and materials. The resultant strains on agricultural manpower

needs and on the egalitarian ideal of the revolution created official dis-
sension at the highest levels. An attack on both principles followed and
was characterized by explanations of malleability in terms of mental
activity that were linked with educational policies stressing variation in
place of uniformity.
Soviet Theory in the Period of Chinese Borrowing

Since 1950 the theoretical underpinnings of the Soviet conception of
the malleability of man has been the Pavlovian doctrine of the plasticity
of the central nervous system.25 Pavlov's classic statement on the
matter is:
The chief, strongest and most permanent impression we get from the study of
higher nervous activity by our methods is the extraordinary plasticity of this
activity, and its immense potentialities; nothing is immobile, intractable,
everything may always be achieved, changed for the better, provided only
that the proper conditions are created.26
This statement is often quoted by educational psychologists, who have
some influence in the translation of theories about man into educational
practices. Soviet views of malleability focus on the limitless changes to
which the human nervous system is subject. There are great possibilities
for men to acquire conditioned reflexes and also for these to be trans-
formed into unconditioned reflexes.27 The implications of the Pavlovian
thesis for Soviet educational policy is that innate differences between
people supposedly associated with differences in intellect are minimized.
The existence of innate differences in aptitude is given nominal recog-
nition, especially in works beginning in the 1960s. The doctrine I am
discussing, then, is one of malleability within certain physiological
limits. But the trend has been to minimize the limits and emphasize the
plasticity. There are a number of reasons for this, all evident in the study
"Heredity and Upbringing" by a Soviet analyst.28 First, the flexibility
of the nervous system, to which I have referred before, is stressed:
25. In the summer of 1950, at the " Joint Session of the Academy of Sciences
of the U.S.S.R. and the Academy of Medical Sciences on Physiological Problems
in the Theory of Academician I. P. Pavlov," Pavlov's theory of higher nervous
activity was strongly endorsed.
26. Pavlov, Selected Works (pp. 446-447), as quoted in Brian Simon (ed.),
Psychology in the Soviet Union (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1957), p.
21.
27. Pavlov did distinguish between different innate " types " of nervous system
activity leading to differences in character types (aggressive, active, quietly deter-
mined, timid), but these innate differences do not determine intellect or its lack,
creativity, or the individual's ability to make social contributions. Furthermore,
one can change types.
28. G. S. Prozorov, "Heredity and Upbringing," in Helen B. Redl (ed. and
trans.), Soviet Educators on Soviet Education (New York: The Free Press of
Glencoe, 1964).
" But the nervous system does not remain static in its development. Con-
ditions of life and of upbringing can reinforce or shelter the nervous
system. Native abilities by no means determine future personality charac-
teristics." 29 Second, physiological characteristics are always referred to as
" potentialities " which sprout only in the proper environment.
Each child is endowed by nature with some individual physiological charac-
teristics which represent potentialities. The task of education is to create
favourable conditions under which these potentialities would blossom into
full development What is being transferred by heredity is not ready-made
abilities, but only the prerequisites for their development; that is, certain
physiological characteristics of the organism which demand further develop-
ment are transferred from parents to children in accordance with biological
laws of heredity. These hereditary prerequisites may develop, but they may
wilt, depending on prevailing conditions, the nature of the educational in-
fluence, and the whole system of upbringing and teaching to which a given
child is exposed.... Hereditary inclinations determine neither the whole pro-
cess of the child's growth nor the realization of his individual potential.30
Third, the continued emphasis is, in fact, on the educational environment,
rather than on innate characteristics.
In the formulation of a person's view of the world, the decisive ingredients
are the environment, educational goals, and the normal development of the
child, not biological heredity.31
Clearly, then, we can conclude that heredity does not predetermine future
character trends. Personality develops through the process of upbringing.32
And so the decisive role in the development of personality is played by pur-
poseful education in school and at home.33
The final two reasons do not purport to be " scientific " explanations, but
rather appeal to the psychological and political implications that people
often draw from the doctrine of innate characteristics. The fourth reason,
then, is the negative effect on children.
It is wrong to give children the impression that unsuccessful attempts indicate
lack of ability; they may lose belief in their strength and be unwilling to make
further effort.34
Instead of being concerned about heredity, one should strive to instill neat-
ness, obedience, concentration, purposefulness, strong will-power, and atten-
tiveness through the application of correct methods of upbringing.35
Fifth and finally, it is argued that the idea of innate differences in intel-
ligence has been used as a capitalist tool to deny equal education to
workers and their children.
29. Ibid., p. 4.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 7.
32. Ibid., p. 9.
33. Ibid., p. 20.
34. Ibid., p. 6. 35. Ibid., p. 12.
Excepting the brain-damaged, all children ideally should be exposed

to the same educational environment because all can profit from it to
approximately the same degree.86 Whether or not children will develop
new abilities and skills depends ultimately on their being exposed to
proper teaching practices. Because of the plasticity of the nervous system,
such teaching can induce qualitative changes in the children's brains.
In other words, they develop new " connexions in the nervous system "
(abilities) that they did not have before. One Soviet educational
psychologist has written:
There are inborn individual differences in higher nervous activity. But these
differences do not predetermine psychological development in an absolute
way. The individual's brain also functions under the influence of his sur-
roundings, and his mentality, being a reflection of objective reality, is also
formed and developed under this same influence.37
In other words, all mental processes (memory, perception, and so forth)
are continually being formed under the influence of the activity in which
they are utilized. Education is viewed as the rational organization of
activities so as to promote the development of various mental processes.
Therefore,
. . . education, correctly promoted, provides scope for extensive mental de-
velopment, for the fostering of children's capacities, and so for the acquisition
of knowledge. And this does not apply only to isolated " selected " children,
supposedly endowed with "natural abilities," but to all the children in
school.88
In terms of both educational theory and practice the implication of
the position just described is that proper teaching methods (through
which new " temporary nervous connexions " are formed) constitute the
key to bringing children to higher levels of learning. In the words of
G. S. Kostiuk,
Relevant researches . . . reveal the dependence of mental development upon
teaching and give a new content to the concept that teaching plays an active
role in development. When teaching sets new cognitive tasks to the pupils it
does not merely organise the activity directed to performance of these tasks;
it arms pupils with the requisite methods, mastery of which gives rise to new
mental action and qualities, to the development of mental potentialities.3'
L i n other words, as a result of the plasticity of the nervous system, proper
teaching methods are able to introduce concrete changes therein.^
36. Increasingly, this assumption has been given the practical lie in the emerg-j
ence of special schools for the mathematically talented. A major inspiration for
this phenomenon was the theory of the mathematician Andrei Kulmagorov that
unique mathematical aptitudes manifest themselves very early.
37. A. A. Smirnov, "Child Psychology," in Simon (ed), Psychology in the
Soviet Union, p. 184. 38. Ibid., p. 185.
39. G. S. Kostiuk, " Some Aspects of the Interrelation between Education and
the Development of Personality," in Brian and Joan Simon (eds.), Educational
Psychology in the U.S.S.R. (Stanford University Press, 1963), p. 37.
Certain educational psychologists, then, have asked themselves what

kind of "rational organization of activity" (teaching) is desirable in
order to introduce changes in mental activity. Some of their researches
concern how to organize practical tasks in order to induce personality
changes leading to socially approved behaviour. Others, concerned with
inducing what a westerner might call heightened intellectual abilities,
have investigated the organization of the learning activity - for example,
the presentation of new words in certain play situations, the purpose of
which is to heighten the powers of the memory, and, in another famous
study, how to present sounds to tone-deaf children.40
The thrust of the research has been directed to the questions of organi-
zation and presentation of materials. But in actual fact Soviet educators
themselves, in self-criticisms, were maintaining until the early 1960s that
there had been more romanticism about the vague role of " education "
in promoting the brain's development than clear thinking about the ways
in which teaching actually influences mental developments.41
Faith in the efficacy of proper teaching methods in bringing about
changes in mental development is based on the assumption of the plas-
ticity of the nervous system. These two positions constitute the "scien-
tific " (rationale for the ideal of uniformity in curriculum and teaching
methods for all students in the Soviet Union. Economic necessities have
permitted the continuation of specialized technical schools. However,
except for these, all middle schools in the Soviet Union are " comprehen-
sive,"Jbffering the same broad curriculum in the sciences, foreign lan-
guages, history, geography, Russian and so forth, t The curriculum is
fairly uniform throughout the country. Each school serves the entire age
group regardless of individual differences in " level of attainment." There
is no streaming; all students cover the same material at the same rate.
Although some schools are known, in fact, to be better than others, the
aim is to make a given standard uniform in all)
Thus the ideal of uniformity is theoretically linked with a belief in
plasticity and the associated confidence that exposure of all children to
the right teaching methods can bring about fairly similar success across
the board.lpbviously, the high degree of centralization of the Soviet state
and the Leninist legacy are also important factors in understanding
the ideal of uniformity, but, as we shall see in the Chinese situation,
the avoidance of uniformity is by no means incompatible with other-
wise centrist tendenciesT)The idea of the plasticity of human nature can-
not be ignored in any serious attempt to understand the uniformity ideal.
One may question how much real influence Soviet educational psycholo-
gists had on educational practice in the Soviet Union. There is no
question, however, that the Soviet theories, via the Chinese Academy of
40. A. N. Leontiev, "The Nature and Formation of Human Psychic Proper-

ties," in Simon (ed.), Psychology in the Soviet Union, p. 228.
41. Kostiuk, in Simon (eds.), Educational Psychology.
Sciences and Peking Nonnal University, had a significant impact on

Chinese practice during the period of borrowing.42
Chinese Theory in the Period of Borrowing

V During the 1950s, the Chinese borrowed from the Soviets the theoreti-
cal basis for the belief in the malleability of human nature, as well as the
implications of the principle for educational theory - the ideal of uni-
formity Pavlovian assumptions about the plasticity of the nervous system,
personality formation, and the moulding (tuan-lieri) of abilities were
taken over almost in toto.4S In other words, the Ministry policy, which
also constituted an eventual goal for all schools, was to provide a uni-
form curriculum in all regular schools. The same materials were to be
taught to all of the children of the same age-level at the same rate. In
addition, the same teaching plans were to be used by all teachers of the
same classes.44 The assumption of the Chinese educators was that all
children could make the grade because of the new favourable social
climate and the implementation of proper teaching methods. All students
were to develop into the same kind of "all-round man"; they were
to become fully developed (ch'iian-mien fa-chan) in the spheres of general
academic knowledge of all kinds - knowledge of production, technology,
morality, aesthetics and physical education.45 The Chinese educational
materials consistently speak of the desirability of achieving a certain
homogeneity in personality development. There was no need, so the argu-
ment ran, to give undue weight to the individual's interests or abilities;
both are malleable.
Characteristically, at this time in China and again in the early 1960s
much of the psychological research concentrated on changes in teach-
ing practices, including the presentation of materials. As in the Soviet
Union, it was believed that these were the variables containing the keys
to increasing the speed and amount of knowledge acquired by all
children. For example, one of the major topics concerned methods
whereby the learning process could be shortened. The operative psycho-
logical principle in these studies was that children go through specific
stages of development distinguished by special physiological charac-
teristics. The order of the stages and the process of change within each
stage are constant; they apply to all children. The Chinese educators
42. Based on interviews and descriptions in the media (e.g. Kuang-ming jih-pao
(henceforth KMJP) 15 August 1958) of Peking Normal University's channels for
implementing its materials on a mass scale throughout the country.
43. Chang Chih-kuang, Tsen-yang ch'ii liao-chieh hsiieh-sheng ti ko-hsing (How
to Understand Students' Personalities) (Shanghai: Hsin chih-shih ch'u-pan she,
1958), p. 34.
44. KMJP, 4 July 1956. See also Chien Nan-hsiang, "Lueh-lun Kao-teng hstteh
hsiao ti ch'iian-mien fa-chan ti chiao-yii fang-chen" (" A Summary of the Educa-
tional Guidelines for ' Full Development' in Institutions of Higher Learning "),
Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien (China Youth) (henceforth CKCN), No. 20 (1956), pp. 9-12.
45. KM1P, 4 July 1956 and 15 October 1956.
distinguished themselves from their bourgeois counterparts in that the

former maintain that the speed with which one passes through a given
stage is changeable if correct teaching methods are used. Thus the issue
that divides them is the issue of changeability or non-changeability of
the developmental process.46 This is obvious from the following example:
" They [bourgeois educators] say that youths only get true logical think-
ing after the period from eleven to twelve years old. This lowers the
function of education. This is incorrect, is harmful to practice, and must
be opposed." " The practical consequence, it was argued, was that certain
forms of mathematics could be taught sooner and more rapidly than
was previously done.
The Attack
Vfrom the official standpoint, an illegitimate attack (still viewed as
illegitimate today) on the uniformity principle was first mounted in
1955 48 and erupted strongly during the Hundred Flowers period.43 The
slogan for the attack involved adding the phrase "teach according to
the individual's abilities (yin ts'ai shih chiao)" to the previous guideline
of "all-round development." Many of the proponents of this massive
illegitimate attack were western-educated teachers. However, there is
strong evidence that certain officials in the Ministry of Education were
covertly in sympathy with it. During the period 1954-57, a select num-
ber of schools were secretly designated as experimental units to imple-
ment the principle of varying the curriculum in accordance with
individuals' differing abilities and interests. These attacks on uniformity,
coupled with their usual insistence that people take account of innate
differences in intelligence and abilities, re-emerged in the early 1960s.^
\From a negative standpoint, these critiques argued that modelling of all
people in accordance with one standard, with conformity as the apparent
46. Jen-min jih-pao {People's Daily) (Peking), 12 March 1962; Shanghai wen hui
pao, 21 December 1959; Ts'ao Jih-ch'ang, "Shih hsin-li-hsiieh keng-hao ti fu-wu
yfi she-hui-chu-yi chien-she " (" Using Psychology to Better Serve Socialist Con-
struction "), Hsin chien-she (New Construction), 1 January 1960.
47. People's Daily, 13 March 1962.
48. Article by Chang Ling-kuan in Jen-min chiao-yii (People's Education)
Peking, No. 2 (1955).
49. Chang Yeh-ming, " Ho Chiang Nan-hsiang t'ung-chih shang-ch'ueh chiao-yii
fang-chen wen-t*i" ("Discussing Some Questions About Educational Guidelines
With Comrade Chiang Nan-hsiang"), Hsin-Hua pan-yiieh-k'an (New China Fort-
nightly) (henceforth HHPYK), Peking No. 3 (101) (1957), p. 77; Jen-min chiao-yii,
No. 2 (1957), especially p. 23, and No. 3 (1957), especially p. 43.
50. KMJP, 2 December 1961. People's Daily, 3 February 1963, reports on
special tributes paid to a mathematics teacher who excelled at gearing his teaching
to individual differences in mathematical aptitude. Stories in Chung-kuo ch'ing-
nien (China Youth) for the same year make the same point concerning teacher
obligations. At this time psychologists were also being enjoined to focus their
studies on the differences between the abilities of students; see KMJP, 13 March
1962.
single aim, involved a failure to take into account personality and intel-
lectual differences, thereby smothering creativity. In spite of the variety
of kinds of universities and specializations therein, university students
blamed the uniformity principle for their having to divide their time
equally between all courses with a resultant loss of interest.51 On the
positive side, teachers in regular schools wanted permission to exercise
their own discretion in the use of Ministry-supplied teaching outlines.
They asked that students be given more freedom to choose what they
wanted to study and be allowed to proceed at their own rates, and they
wished to be allowed to spend more time themselves with "brighter
students." A corollary was the desire for licence to force more students
unable to make the grade to leave school)
In ideological terms, these critics of uniformity advocated taking
" teaching according to the individual's abilities " as the basic guideline
(fang-cheri) of education, in place of the guideline " education to be in
the service of the people." That is, they demanded that the individual's
interests and abilities occupy first place.
The official or Maoist position, in contrast, permitted " teaching accord-
ing to the individual's abilities " to serve as a " method " (fang-fa) only.52
In other words, teachers were at most permitted to take account of a
student's interests or apparent strengths as a tool in order better to imple-
ment the uniform curriculum. For example, if a student likes, or is strong
in, sciences and does not like, or is weak in, foreign languages, it is per-
missible to encourage him to work at the foreign language by speaking
of the new scientific materials that he will be able to read about when
the language is mastered. But it is impermissible to allow him to drop
the language or to spend more time on science than on the language.
$Xhis illegitimate demand for termination of the Soviet approach with
its uniformity principle was attacked in the 1950s as a continuing echo of
the John Dewey-Hu Shih educational theories. As understood by the
Chinese, such theories maintained that innate factors are crucial in deter-
mining many of the abilities that individuals can acquire and that the
primary function of education is to promote the natural growth of the in-
nate factors that vary from person to person.53 The irony is that John
Dewey stressed the malleability of human nature in opposition to the
theories of the so-called "conservative Darwinians." The dominant figure
among the latter was G. Stanley Hall, author of the famous law that "on-
togeny recapitulates phylogeny," a thesis that assumes that individuals go
through fixed and unalterable mental and behavioural stages. Although
51. KMJP, 29 October 1956.

52. Jen-min chiao-yii, No. 3 (1957), p. 43.
53. Ch'en Yu-sung, "Chien-ch'a Hu Shih tsai chiao-yu fang-mien ti fan-tung
ying-hsiang ho Hu Shih ssu-hsiang tui-wo ti ying hsiang " (" An Examination of
Hu Shih's Reactionary Influence in the Education Sector and the Influence on me
of Hu Shih's Thought"), in Tzu-ch'an-chieh-chi chiao-yu p'i-p'an (A Critique of
Capitalist Education) (Peking: Wen-hua chiao-yu ch'u-pan she, 1955), pp. 193-197.
Also KMJP, 15 May 1956.
Dewey believed that habits were relatively constant, the spirit of his posi-
tion is symbolized in the titles of two sections of his Human Nature and
Conduct, " Plasticity of Impluse " and " Changing Human Nature."(There
are two primary criticisms of the "illegitimate" principles/First, they
wrongly stress innate variables and deny the malleability of human
nature. Second, acting in accordance with them gives priority to the indi-
vidual's present interests and abilities rather than to the "demands of the
people," i.e., to the economic and social aspects of modernization)
There was, however, a legitimate attack on the uniformity ideal as it
affected educational institutions throughout the country and also as it
affected the teaching of individual students in any given school.(Beginning
in 1958, this legitimate attack was part of a generalized reaction against
the entire Soviet educational model. There was an attack on uniformity
without succumbing to the bourgeois (Hu Shih-Dewey) line. Out of the
struggle against Soviet educational theory and practice arose a decidedly
new dimension to the ideal of malleability, with its own implications for
educational practice. In short, this differing view of malleability became
one of a number of factors used to justify variety and difference, rather
than uniformity, in the schools^ The remainder of the present article
analyses what this means.
In Yenan in 1941, Mao, discussing the unity of theory and practice, em-
phasized the need to avoid rubber-stamping foreign dogmas and praised
the ability to apply knowledge to China's specific conditions.54 This is a
theme that re-emerges with enormous strength beginning in the late 1950s,
(in fact, one of the most important Maoist educational principles became
gearing educational practice to local conditions. This meant a Chinese
rather than Russian style, and, in the countryside, a rural rather than
urban cast to curriculum and teaching methods)
The Price of Uniformity

To be more specific, the Maoist opposition to the uniformity ideal of
the Ministry of Education was thatvit carried a pro-urban bias having two
negative consequences: it slowed the spread of educational opportunity
to the rural areas, with harmful effects on the egalitarian ideal of the
revolution; and it hindered increasing the amount of rural manpower with
basic-level training in scientific agronomy. Why did this happen? First,
the Ministry of Education (was so concerned with maintaining uniform
quality in schools that it inhibited the emergence of rural schools (and, to
a lesser degree, urban schools) that could not meet the uniform standards
of the regular urban schools^ These rural schools often could not meet the
standards for several reasons, ijn many instances the cultural background
of the children was different from that of city children at the most elemen-
tary level. This affected the very vocabulary they brought to the class-
room. Furthermore, economic conditions required most rural children to
54. Mao Tse-tung, Reform Our Study (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1962),
pp. 4-5.
work in the fields at least part time; thus the full day of school was not an
open option for them. Second, the standards in the regular schools were
such that deficient students, usually of peasant background, were often
forced to repeat or drop out. This was certainly true in urban areas. Sur-
prisingly, it was also frequently true in rural areas} where the government
might have established one regular primary school for a whole county.
There is evidence of many vacancies in these schools that were themselves
insufficient in number. Thus it was often the case that only in urban areas
could schools live up to the uniform standards of the Ministryj-The spar-
sity of lower middle schools, especially in the rural areas, hindered equal
educational opportunity for peasant children and retarded increases in
agricultural skills) (Several examples exist of Ministry attempts to impede
the growth of "irregular" schools that did not meet their standards) In
1951, the government approved the existence of independently run prim-
ary schoo&>(min-pan hsiao-hsueh). Such schools, which might operate in
abandoned temples, were financed and managed by organizations at the
village or multi-village level. They received minimum supervision from
authorities in the chain of command of the Ministry of Education. The
number of primary school children increased because of these schools,
and some of them added lower middle school grades. But Ministry
officials objected to the "irregular standards" of the schools and to the
absence of quality control. A directive was issued on 15 November 1952,
stating that they were permitted to operate only if they could collect suf-
ficient funding to guarantee continued instruction for a minimum of three
years.55 This tended to impede their development. \£here were also irre-
gular primary schools and middle schools for workers and peasants that
by-passed ordinary entry examination and promotion procedures - the so-
called "worker-peasant accelerated primary/middle schools]/* (kung-
nung su-ch'eng chung /hsiao-hsueh). The primary schools spanned two or
three years instead of the normal five, and the middle schools, three or
four years instead of the normal six) They were ordered by the Ministry
to cease admitting students in July 1955, because of their "irregular stan-
dards." ^nd the half-work/farming, half-study schools were closed in
large numbers after the initial 1958-60 spurt. Such schools had permitted
peasants to study part time and work part time) A 1962 report states that
the number of agricultural middle schools hadaropped from 22,600 with
2,030,000 students, to 3,715, with 266,000 students.56
There is another and related reason for the Maoist opposition to the
uniformity ideal. This was the(<iesire to gear the content of education
55. "Tsai ko-ming ti ta p'i-p'an chung shen-ju k'ai-chan hsueh-hsiao tou-cheng

p'i-kai" (" In the Great Decisions of the Revolution, Wholeheartedly Begin the
Struggle to Correct the Schools "), Chiao-yii ko-ming (Educational Revolution),
No. 4, 6 May 1967), pp. 2-3.
56. This is described in more detail in Donald J. Munro, " Egalitarian Ideal and
Educational Fact in Communist China," in John M. H. Lindbeck (ed.), China:
Management of a Revolutionary Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1971), pp. 256-301.
more to local production needs. This meant varying the curriculum be-H
tween city and countryside, and between differing rural areas\ Too many>3
middle school graduates were studying the same foreign languages,'
science, mathematics and so forth, but emerging unequipped with know-
ledge applicable to production tasks. There were insufficient jobs for city; |
students, and they had forcibly to be sent to the countryside, again ill-
equipped for rural production. This complaint is by no means unique to
China. One of the chief themes of the early stages of the "progressive j
movement" in American educational reform is described by Lawrence A.
Cremin as the charge that "rural education was unimaginative and irre-
gular, that it dealt too much with books and too little with life, that it
educated away from the country and toward the city, and that only a mas-
sive infusion of agricultural studies could save it from complete decay."57
In 1908, "Uncle Henry" Wallace, editor of the influential Wallace's
Farmer, wrote,
It is hard for many a middle-aged farmer to get a clear idea of what is
meant by protein, carbohydrates, nitrogen-free extract, and so forth. Now
these terms are no harder than many which the pupils learn and which are
of no earthly use to them in their everyday lives.58
In America at that time the school curriculum, with its requirements of
Greek and Latin and rhetoric, was largely the product of urban education-
alists. The Maoist insight is no more original than that of " Uncle Henry "
Wallace, but, at the same time( it is as crucial to China's rural economic
development as Wallace's kind of insight was to that of the United States.
vThese abuses, then, were the result of copying the Soviet principles dis-
cussed above. It is illuminating to note in this connexion that the Soviets
themselves have begun to feel the negative effects of the uniformity ideal.
Serious shortages of blue-collar workers and technicians are already being
felt, and the projection is that they will increase. A major cause pin-
pointed by the Soviets themselves is the insufficiency of specialized
secondary schools.59 >
(thus both in 1958 and again beginning in 1964 one notes changes in
regular schools away from uniformity and the positive encouragement of
" irregular schools " in line with the considerations just discussed) A con-
crete case of what happened in some regular schools is illustrative. Obvi-
ously under some official pressure, educational authorities at the county
level in Anhwei Province began to make some attempt in 1963 to encour-
age dropouts to return to school and otherwise increase enrolments by
such methods as public announcements of openings and increasing the
number of classes. Statistics gathered by the county educational office in
57. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in

American Education 1876-1957 (New York: Vintage, 1964), p. 43.
58. Ibid., p. 44.
59. Ann S. Goodman and Murray Feshbach, Estimates and Projections of
Educational Attainment in U.S.S.R. 1950-85 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Census,
1967); New York Times, 20 July 1969, and 20 June 1971.
Tang-shan county indicated that 20 per cent, of .primary school-age

students still had no opportunity to attend school. The failure of these
attempts to solve the problem caused a major reform of teaching tactics
and school organization in all of the regular schools beginning in the
spring of 1965. The spirit of all these reforms was consistent with the
policy of diversity rather than uniformity. Fjrst, regular schools offered
students a choice of attending on a full-time or half-work/half-study
basis. VThis was made possible by combining classes having vacancies,
thereby freeing a number of teachers to conduct the "half-study" kind of
courses for students in the afternoons. Second, flexibility was permitted
with regard to age of entry and facility foTshifting from one type of class
to another, e.g., from half-half to regular. .Third, the school calendar pre-
viously followed throughout the province had scheduled holidays during
the time when there was little farm work to be done and had scheduled
school during the harvest period. Appropriate adjustments were made.
FjnaJJy, variation in curriculum was permitted. For example, students
Could elect to take only language and mathematics. All of these reforms
in the direction of the encouragement of variation were publicized in the
name of the "Seven Alloweds." The aim of these reforms, coupled with
the elimination of a required tuitioniwas to increase peasant enrollment.60^
^)f course, at the same time that these changes were beginning in regular
schools every kind of experimentation was going on in the newly rein-
vigorated irregular schools, in many of which work and study were com-
bined) For example, mathematics courses might teach abacus and rural
accounting rather than the regular school mathematics subject-matter,
and language courses might stress rural administrative writing rather than
literature.
New Dimensions to Malleability

We have identified the ideological underpinning of the Soviet uniform-
ity policy as the idea of malleability of man based on the belief
in the plasticity of the nervous system and entailing opposition to such
bourgeois theories as that of innate I.Q. differentials. What happened to
that particular underpinning in China when the uniformity policy was
attacked? {The answer is that the idea of malleability endured the anti-
Soviet reaction. But it took on new meaning at the same time^jBeginning
in 1958, pace-setting younger Chinese psychologists and educators did not
reject the idea of the plasticity of the nervous system. They simply re-
directed attention to " changeability " in a new sense, maintaining that the
Pavlovian focus was leading people's attention away from the concrete
60. Tang-shan hsien wen-chiao chu (Tang-shan County Office of Education),

" Wo-men shin tsen-yang kuan-ch'e liang-t'iao t'ui tsou-lu pan-hsiieh fang-chen **
(" How Should We Thoroughly Implement the Educational Guideline of Walking
on Two Legs "), An-hui chiao-yii (Education in Anhwei), April 1965.
social conditions in which mental phenomena develop. Peking Normal

University was the centre of much of this ferment, and the activist mem-
bers of its staff were widely hailed in the media. It will be remembered
that one of the major themes of the present study is the Maoist correction
of a scientifically invalid Marxist position. Classical Marxism overstresses
the degree to which members of the same class share the same psycho-
logical characteristics. To say this is not to denigrate Marx's great contri-
tribution to our knowledge about the economic variables involved in
forming human nature. But the Maoist approach takes the matter a giant
step forward for a Marxist in its recognition of the great differences in the
social environments even of people within the same class. The officially
commended reorientation of these psychologists and educators represents
an introduction into the scientific sphere of the Maoist insight. Instead of
speaking of the plasticity of the nervous system or the scientific study of
how to present facts to all students, the new approach was to talk about
changeability in two senses.
Malleability of Thought
In 1958 there was a general reaction against officials and intellectuals
at all levels who preached a doctrine of a universal human nature, sup-
posedly as an argument in favour of mitigating domestic class struggle.
The most often vilified symbol of this error was the writer and former
ambassador Pa Jen (Wang Jen-shu). Pavlovian-oriented psychologists and
educators came under attack because the physiological phenomena they
study are class transcending. Young teachers in these fields took the lead
in providing the theoretical basis for the first new sense of changeability -
not of the nervous system, but of people's values, beliefs, desires and
intentions. In short, all of the internal events that make up "thought" or
social nature. The Soviet error, as understood by the Chinese, was to con-
centrate on the malleability of pan-human physiological features rather
than on the varying social natures of men.
The educator's primary obligation in China changed in concert at this
time. It became the manipulation of his students' social natures. In com-
parison with the situation in the Soviet Union, what we have here is a
matter of emphasis. Soviet educational psychologists, for example, do not
verbally accept the position that learning involves only a child being
manipulated by " right teaching methods." The Chinese do not accept the
position that such internal phenomena as "desire" to learn and "correct
motive for learning" are the only important matters, feut the relative
stress in the Soviet Union has been on correct teaching practices, whereas
the Chinese emphasis has been on moulding the right though^. This con-
trast is not the result of any official dogma in the U.S.S.R. Indeed, during
the 1930s there was a shift in Soviet ideology away from deterministic
mechanical materialism towards a new portrait of man as a purposive
actor capable of freeing himself from the immediate moment by formulat-
ing goals which he can then pursue. The notion of autogenetic movement
was introduced into Soviet psychology.61 This was developed on the basis
of the Leninist theory that man perceives the universe by acting purpos-
ively on it. Obviously, these new discussions frequently referred to the
individual's ideas and the individual's consciousness. Unlike the situation
in China, however, much of the talk of the individual as a purposive actor
was in the context of holding the individual person responsible in a legal
or moral sense for his socially unacceptable conduct, thereby absolving
the Party, which had created a new socialist environment, of that respon-
sibility.'Mn any case, these new trends never had the effect on education
in the Soviet Union that similar phenomena have had in Chin^. The
Soviet emphasis is revealed in a critique by a Russian specialist. G. S.
Kostiuk has condemned the following situation, prevalent in the Soviet
Union: " The child's mental development is described as a simple succes-
sion of different educational influences, as though his own qualities exer-
cised no influence on the process of education." 63 The Chinese approach
that began to be stressed in 1958 focused specifically on some of those
qualities of the individual himself.
Malleability of thought now dominated the stage, and it did so from
two perspectives. One centred on the student or individual being manipu-
lated by any kind of instructor. The Maoist sanction most often quoted
in support of this first aspect of the changeability of thought is from
On Contradiction:
The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but in-
ternal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal con-
tradiction in every single thing; hence its motion and development . . . and
[materialist dialectics] hold that external causes are the condition of change
and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become
operative through internal causes.84
From 1958 to 1960 and since the spring of 1964, the trend among
educators and educational psychologists, especially the young pace-setters
glorified in the media, has been to stress the malleability of these " internal
causes." 65 Although educators and educational psychologists may have
given token admission to the fact that the internal causes include physio-
logical factors (such as the brain) and psychological laws (for example,
those governing remembering), in practice they generally referred mainly
to "thoughts." 66 In discussing internal causes, educational psychologists
paid special attention to such matters as the "wish " to learn.67 During the
first half of the 1960s the new orientation focusing on the differing social
61. Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, J959), p. 96.
62. Ibid., pp. 133, 144-145, 149, 180.
63. Kostiuk, in Simon (ed.), Educational Psychology, p. 45.
64. Mao Tse-tung, On Contradiction, pp. 4, 6.
65. The first major public discussions took place in the pages of KMJP, 15
August 1958.
66. KMJP, 23 June 1959.
67. KMJP, 6 July 1959.
environments of students and their effect on students' differing "thoughts "

was not universal among professionals. Psychologists whose approach
reflected a western training continued to publish their views as late as
1965 but were clearly subject to attack from colleagues representing the
new vision. A prominent psychologist was attacked in the pages of Hsin-
li-hsueh pao (Acta Psychologica Sinica) for a comparative study of moral
psychology which did not focus enough on the differences among
families, schools and other dimensions of the social environment as they
variously affect students' varying capacities for mental judgment.68 (As
one might expect, beginning in the early 1960s the models of correct
implementation of the new approach to teaching were model teachers
within the ranks of the PLA. 6 ^
In any case, malleability was now discussed primarily in terms of faci-
litating the resolution of struggle between " contradictory thoughts " in the
person's mind. The facilitation of this resolution is a primary task of the
educator,jachieved, among other ways, through the reinforcement of so-
called "positive points" within the contradictory situation. When the
struggle is over the change has occurred. Man has been changed. The term
"contradiction" is extremely vague in Chinese Marxism. It can refer to
matters that are mutually incompatible (if one applies, the other cannot
also apply). In the matter of concern to us it could refer to mutually
incompatible beliefs, desires, or needs. The resolution of the contradiction
involves the conquest of one of these by the other. The term can also refer
to tension between two positions, a situation resolved by an alteration in
one or both poles. For example, in the educational situation this might
involve a conflict of goals where both are to some degree acceptable, but
the implementation of one is seriously hindered by the pursuit of the
other.
The teacher is supposed to apply the method of "one divides into two"
(i fen wei erh) from Maoist dialectics. In every individual there are both
positive and negative points. The instructor's job is to discover the posi-
tive and build on them in order to overcome the negative, or to detect
negative thoughts and aid the individual to deal with them. For example,
a model teacher was cited in 1959 for recognizing and redirecting the vir-
tue of bravery certainly present in a delinquent who terrorized his class
with a snake.70 Even "advanced people" have negative thoughts, and so
the educational work carried out on a model worker in a weaving plant
involved constant attention to her mental "defects.""(An instructor of
some kind is regarded as absolutely essential in the manipulation of
68. Ssu-ma Feng, "Te-ytt hsin-li ti yen chiu pi-hsii kuan-ch'e chieh-chi fen-hsi
yuan-tse" (" Research on Moral Psychology Must Thoroughly Implement the
Principles of Class Analysis "), Hsin-li-hsiieh pao (Acta Psychologica Sinica), No. 2
(1965), p. 119.
69. "Chiao-hsfleh fang-fa ti chung-ta ke-hsin" ("Important Innovations in
Teaching Methods "), Kuo Hsing-fu chiao-Hsiieh fang-fa (Kuo Hsing-fu's Teaching
Methods) (Shanghai: Jen-min ch'u-pan-she, A965), p. 22.
70. Pei-ching jih-pao (Peking Daily), 8 January 1959.
71. Kung-jen jih-pao (Workers' Daily) Peking, 8 July 1962.
thought in order to accomplish change in the individual. The change does

not come "spontaneously." Obviously, to deny the possibility of a person
spontaneously changing is not to remove all burden of self-effort from the
individual and place it on outside agencies. The term " self-reform " (tzu-
wo kai-tsao) appears in discussions of the changing of the individual's
thoughts?) It bears some points of resemblance to traditional Taoist and
Confucian descriptions of "self-cultivation" (hsiu-sheri) and "self-trans-
formation " (tzu-hua). The major difference, other than the content of the
idealized change, is in the degree of submission to formal outside instruc-
tional agencies required in contemporary China. The traditional concep-
tion left far more leeway for the individual to carry his own burden of
personal educational reform.
In addition to the manipulative activities of the instructor, there is an-
other variable in understanding how thoughts are subject to change. (They
are remoulded when the individual participates in certain forms of " social
practice." The usual references are to manual labour as the great furnace
that forges proletarian thoughts in students and others. This is extremely
important, and it is used to justify productive farm or factory labour for
all in China today as it was by Khrushchev in 1958 in the U.S.S.R.*)
However, although manual labour is at the centre of many discussions
of legitimate " social practice," there are relevant forms of social practice
in all occupations, and this leads us again to the teacher. In addition to its
warning against verbalism or word magic (acting as if knowing the words
amounts to understanding the fact), Mao's On Practice underlined the
dangers of not adjusting methodology to local conditions (i.e., the foreign
technique to Chinese conditions, and the urban approach to rural condi-
tions). Herein lies the ultimate sanction for the position that, for the
teacher qua teacher, the realm of social practice is coextensive with the
so-called " concrete " (particular) characteristics of any given geographical
area and its unique social features. The Maoist insistence on describing
the social environment in terms of diversity as well as pan-class features
is operative at this point. We are told that " It is man's social being that
determines his thinking."72 "Social being" changes from place to place
and, especially, from city to countryside. Since the social being reflects
variety and uniqueness, so does the thinking of one who is part of it. A
teacher who involves himself in the life of a given area sufficiently to
know its features is engaging in social practice. His own thoughts are
thereby remoulded. In brief, he no longer thinks of children in general; he
thinks of children with specific cognitive localized vocabulary problems
and knowledge needs, and particular attitudinal problems. His teaching
approach is varied accordingly. The end result usually is spoken of as the
resolution of a contradiction between desire to teach and those factors
previously impeding success.73 The theses of practice and dialectics con-
72. Mao Tse-tung, " Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?" in Four Essays on
Philosophy (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963), p. 134.
73. KMJP, 3 April 1966.
verge when we remember that the resolution requires "the concrete

analysis of concrete conditions."
Malleability of Skill
A second sense of malleability, related to the first, arose in this period
of reorientation. Human nature is also changeable in that, as a result of
changes in an individual's "thoughts.'i^new abilities and skills can be
forged where they had not previously existed,.
However, there is a muddle in this case. There is said to be a necessary
connexion between "thought" and "behaviour." The latter is spoken of
as piao-hsien (lit., manifestation). It is the manifestation of thoughts. By
changing thoughts one changes behaviour. The muddle is a result of
the fact that piao-hsien can refer to two things; so the question that arises
is: what behaviour? On one level it is the " selfless," " persevering " and
"courageous" behaviour that manifests correct internal values, desires
and attitudes. But on another level it is being adept at various technical
skills. The first change that an individual undergoes (in thought) is the
sine qua non for evolving new skills and abilities in the course of pro-
duction or technological practice.7* (Thus man is changeable in
this second sense\in that skills and abilities following from right thoughts
can be induced!)
It is maintained that most skills can be forged in anyone who does not
have any basic physiological damage. The following illustration pertains
to the capacities needed for becoming a good pilot.
To learn flying well one must first be adept in the control of one's feelings,
and struggle against certain incorrect ideological trends. To do so one needs
strong will power. . . . Thus the excellent will power possessed by the prole-
tarian fighter makes it easier for him to become an outstanding flier. . . . The
various psychological dispositions which are closely related to aviation are
rapid and correct sensual judgment, flexibility of reaction, etc. . . . These
qualities are not pre-natal, and much less are they immutable. They are
gradually evolved and developed in the course of the accumulation of experi-
ence. For example, certain sports activities (such as ball games, sprinting, ski-
ing, parachuting, and gliding) can train a person's flexibility, courage, and
capacity for sensual judgment.75
^Furthermore, creativity (ch'uang-tsao-hsing), or the ability to make
inventions and innovations, can also be forged.Jas the following quota-
tions attest:
74. Compare the discussion in Benjamin Schwartz, " China and the West in the
"Thought of Mao Tse-tung'" in Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou (eds.), China in Crisis,
Vol. I (The University of Chicago Press, 1968).
75. Lin Chung-hsien, "Psychological Disposition Necessary for the Study of
Flying," Hang-Kung chih-shih (Aviation Knowledge), No. 3 (8 March 1960), pp.
24-25, in Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) (Washington), No. 2973 (6
July 1960), pp. 9-10.
Having investigated the laws of creative thinking, the psychologists have not
only smashed the heresy of bourgeois psychology, which regards creation and
invention as the products of accidental " inspiration," " sudden comprehen-
sion," and the like, but have also been instrumental in promoting creation
and invention, as well as in encouraging the movement for technological
reform.78
The findings of these researches of labour psychologists smash the bourgeois
psychological heresy regarding creation and invention. The psychologists of
spiritualism have maintained that creation and invention are the privileges
of a few " genii," and that enlightenment is due to " inspiration," which is
" to be met with but not sought for." "
An analysis of model workers, selected for, among other things, their
innovations,(consistently attributes this creative ability to various educa-
tive processes^ For example, the following statement concerns a carpenter,
credited with 97 kinds of technical innovation, who is a representative of
the All-China Federation of Advanced Persons in Industry and Trans-
portation : "All innovations are created by the labourers in their produc-
tion struggles and scientific experiments. None emerge only from the
empty thoughts of the inventor's Heaven-sent brain." 7S The theoretical
framework in which this phenomenon was often discussed during the mid-
1960s was in elucidations of the doctrine of the "Four Firsts." The most
detailed of these, published in Shanghai in 1965, analyses the link between
political education and technological work: " The fact that political work
is done well is manifested in doing technical work well." 79
taiese positions on the inducing of creativity should be compared with
those operative during the mid-1950s under Soviet influence.^The Labour
Laws and Regulations of the People's Republic of China (1956) provided
a system of monetary rewards and administrative methods for evaluating
innovations in order " to develop workers' and researchers' initiative and
creative ability." 80 The Provisional Regulations Governing Science
Awards to be Made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (1955) estab-
lished monetary and honorific awards aimed at "inspiring the positive and
creative talents of scientific research workers . . . for serving the construc-
tion of the country." 81 The same new educational principles regarding
creativity are applicable in the schools.
76. Chen Ta-jou, " How Psychology Can Be of Service to Socialist Construction,"
Hsin-H hsiieh-pao (Ada Psychologica Sinica), No. 3 (August 1959), pp. 142-145, in
JPRS, No. 3424 (21 June 1960), p. 5.
77. Ts'ao Jih-ch'ang, and Li Chia-chih, " Industrial Psychology in China," Hsin-
li hsiieh-pao (Acta Psychologica Sinica), No. 4 (September 1959), pp. 204-213, in
JPRS, No. 3424 (21 June 1960).
78. JMJP, 20 February 1966; see also JMJP, 9 November 1959.
79. Ssu-ko ti-i (The Four Firsts) (Shanghai: Jen-min ch'u-pan she, 1965), p. 32.
80. Quoted in Charles Hoffmann, Work Incentive Practice and Policies in the
People's Republic of China, 1953-1965 (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1967), p. 31.
81. Quoted in ibid., p. 32.
Diversity Replaces Uniformity

The slogan used by professional teachers and even some Ministry
officials in opposing the uniformity ideal from the Soviet model was
" teach according to the individual's abilities " (yin ts'ai shih chiao). That
is, educational materials should be tailored to fostering the growth of an
individual's unique native abilities (mathematical, verbal, artistic and so
forth) and special interests. But this illegitimate attack, which owed much
to the American progressive educational movement in its post-First
World War period, was identified as\^ the bourgeois educational road."
(The new official slogan associated with the legitimate attack on the uni-
formity ideal was "teach according to the man" (yin jen shih chiao).*2
This meant two things: first, that teachers must be sensitive to the varying
thought configurations of their students, and second, that teachers and
educators must be sensitive to the varying cognitive backgrounds of their
; students.N
Regarding the first of these, instructors should investigate the whole
complex of a student's desires, goals, and so forth, paying attention to the
struggles occurring between them and how this affects the skills the
student already has or is trying to acquire. Thus, "People's thought is
always concrete, varied, and continually changing and developing. Our
educational work can only be efficacious if we implement a variety of
educational works, meticulously contrived in accordance with the thought
conditions of each individual." 83~(rhis general principle applies to both in-
school and extracurricular thought moulding. A popular maxim was
called forth to identify it: " every lock has its own key/ (i-pa yao-shih
i-pa so).*\rhis meant that teachers were encouraged to vary their presenta-
tion of material in accordance with the attitudes of people in the areas in
which they teachi The curriculum can change from place to place. For
example, in some regions peasants may not wish their children to go to
school, feeling that what is learned is impractical and that the children's
labour is required in the fields. Model teachers are praised for concen-
trating their lessons only on those matters that peasants can find immedi-
ately useful and meaningful.84 It is assumed that parental attitudes are
absorbed by students and affect their work, so it is necessary to go to the
heart of the matter. Or the pupils, some of whom may be adults, may have
" feudal attitudes," such as not wanting to study with a young teacher or
not wanting a woman teacher.85 Teachers ought to adjust the curriculum
in order to meet the problem. In the classroom itself the principle means
that the teacher should constantly strive to relate the content of a book
under discussion to the specific thought situation or family background
of the individual student, or assign work with this in mind.86
82. Kuo Hsiang-fu chiao-hsiieh fang-fa, p. 22.

83. Chang Hao-po, " Yao shan yii ch'i-fa ch'ing-nien kai-tsao ssu-hsiang ti tzu-
chiieh-hsing" ("Must Be Skilled at Englightening Youth in the Rebuilding of
Thought Consciousness "), Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien {China Youth), No. 2 (1962), p. 8.
84. Wen-hui pao, 8 May 1964 and KMJP, 15 May 1964.
85. Chiao-shih pao (Teachers' News), 7 March 1958. 86. Ibid., 7 March 1958.
\It is interesting to note that although educators are expected to take

account of the complexities of a student's internal contradictions, artists
and writers have been explicitly condemned for portraying characters with
this same complex mental condition^ This was one of the factors in the
widely publicized attack on the writer Pa Jen (Wang Jen-shu) during the
late 1950s, and in the attack during the 1960s on those who described so-
called " middle characters " (that is, those who are not ideal heroes or total
villains).87
The slogan "teach according to the man" (yin jen shih chiaofylso sen-
sitizes teachers and educators to the differing cognitive backgrounds of
prospective students stemming from their differing social environments. A
frequently encountered situation is caused by the differences between the
vocabulary of urban authors of textbooks sponsored by the official chain
of command and that of the rural student. A specific case follows. It con-
cerns textbooks, furnished by county educational authorities to a half-
farming/halPstudy primary school in Anhwei Province. The authors had
extrapolated passages from well-known texts used in regular city schools,
losing in the process the structure of the original text. The text's vocabu-
lary itself was of little use. It was a modern version of the "Selections
from the Hundred Names " (pai-chia hsing hsiiart). Obviously, the authors
had infrequently been in the countryside, for they failed to realize that
there are only a few surnames in a village. Furthermore as a guide to pro-
nunciation they did not use pin-yin romanization but han-tzu, which was
little help to students who did not know the characters in the first place.
Attempting to be up to date, the authors paired pictures and words, but
few of either had anything to do with life in the countryside. The result
was that even after learning 400 characters none of the students could
keep even simple records of farm implements or activities.88(The differing
perspectives of urban educators and rural people are clearly shown in this
kind of an example. The corrective is not necessarily to abandon the ser-
vices of the former, but rather to ensure that their teaching materials are
compiled in consultation with the latter]
In theory, the Maoist educational guideline insists that we cannot speak
of educating men; we must speak of educating members of X class, or
farmers in a given region, or longshoremen, or a specific child from a
87. Yao Wen-yuan, " P'i-p'an Pa Jen ti ' jen-hsing lun ' " (" Criticizing Pa Jen's
' theory of human nature' "), Wen-i pao {Journal of Literature and Art), 26 January
1960, p. 36.
88. Ting-yun hsien ch'en-t'ou li sheng-ch'an tui keng-tu hsiieh-hsiao (Half-
farming half-studying primary school production brigade from Ch'en-t'ou li, Ting-
yun county), " Tui shih-yung min-pan hsiao hsiieh k'o-wen k'o-pen ti i-tien chien "
("A glance at using textbooks in independently-run primary schools"), An-hui
chiao-yii (Education in Anhwei), February 1965, p. 11. This phenomenon occurred
in other provinces as well; see Ying-hsiu hsien yeh-ytt chiao-ytt shih-tien kung-tso
tsu (The task force of Yung-hsiao county for making experiments on a point in
spare-time education), " Chiao i-hsieh yen mien-ch'ien ti tzu " (" Teaching com-
monly encountered characters"), Chiang-hsi chiao-yii (Education in Kiangsi), No.
12 (1965), p. 12.
specific background.89 Some aspects of educational content, therefore, will

vary in accordance with each of these types of differences. One of the
reasons for the decentralization orientation in the Maoist policy is to faci-
litate this kind of variety in content by giving local people a voice in
curriculum.
(In sum, the new orthodoxy in Chinese educational theory takes special
note of precisely those " internal causes " that G. S. Kostiuk had criticized
his Soviet colleagues for neglecting. It advocated an education in which
special attention is paid to people's thoughts (forging correct values, goals
and attitudes) and which takes account of their varying cognitive levels
and probable knowledge needsN
Eventually the spirit of the changes which led to the new conception of
malleability began to affect even the older, more physiologically oriented
psychologists in China. Thus, by 1965 Ts'ao Jih-ch'ang was criticizing
bourgeois scholars for maintaining that man's memory can reach a " satu-
ration point" and arguing that "the experiential content of the human
memory " is infinite and limitless.9ol\In the end, the gap between activists
in the formulation of a new dimension to malleability and their senior col-
leagues was narrowed in favour of the former^
Conclusion
The new orientation in the concept of malleability and its associated
educational policy introduce a range of complexities into the problem of
egalitarianism. *rom one standpoint, the acceptance of diversity is in-
tended to promote equality of opportunity. The elimination of the taboo
against " irregular schools " has indeed opened more places for children
in rural areas, and the elimination of the previously used examinations
and promotion procedures has ensured more mobility for such children,
who were the most frequent casualties under the old system. From another
standpoint, however, there is a built-in danger that the new approach may
accentuate the cultural variation between city and countryside by permit-
ting a differing educational content in the two areas) The cultural gap can
be the basis for continued status differentials separating residents of the
two areas, furthermore, schools that have trimmed theoretical content of
courses in order to make the curriculum production oriented are also
schools that may not be providing students with the background necessary
for attending advanced level studies in some institutions of higher learn-
ing^^These universities may try to curb the high proportion of children of
89. Kung-jen jih-pao, 21 July 1960.
90. Ts'ao Jih-ch'ang, " Translations on Communist China's Science and Techno-
logy: Several Problems Concerning the Physiological Mechanism of Memory,"
K'o-hsueh tung-pao (Sciential, No. 11 (November 1965), pp. 969-972, in JPRS,
No. 33,759 (17 January 1966), p. 63. Ts'ao was the deputy head of the Academy of
Science's Psychology Research Unit and one of the most influential of the older,
physiologically orientated scientists.
urban " bourgeois " families in their enrollments by accepting only youths
who have had several years production experience and have recommenda-
tions from their work units. But they may still draw these successful
entrants from a small pool of students fortunate enough to attend a middle
school offering a more sophisticated curriculum than that found in many
areas. An examination of the localities from which regular model teachers
were selected during the period of the uniformity ideal reveals that in the
past the schools with which these exemplars of professional excellence
were associated were concentrated in certain areas.91 There is some pre-
sumption that the previous superior equipment and teaching standards of
those schools will endure and ensure a better than routine primary and
middle school education for their students. Hence, again the danger of
increasing the rural-urban dychotomy or the differences between some
rural areas (where such schools have existed) and others, with obvious
implications for the egalitarian ideal.
The centrality of the idea of malleability in Chinese Marxist theory
can be viewed in part as a product of revolutionary optimism. Just as it
may be believed that a people can rapidly be transformed from being
"poor and blank" to being advanced, so may individuals be similarly
changed. The optimism needs the tempering of caution. The Soviet ex-
perience after their 1958 educational reforms and the history of the Pro-
gressive Education movement in the United States point to hazards that
may impede or significantly alter Chinese attempts to create the institu-
tional means for realizing New Men.
On the other hand, extrapolated from the context of the specific pro-
blems China has encountered since 1949, the enduring importance of the
idea of malleability is not to be found in any dimension of the idea itself.
Rather, it lies in the psychological effect that belief in malleability pro-
bably does have (and, in China, is officially required to have) on those
who subscribe to it. '(The belief that people are educable is a self-fulfilling
prophecy which may produce the effort or the climate that makes some
change for the better in individuals possible. The importance of such a
psychological attitude can be illustrated by an example from the United
States. Discussing the impediments to prison reform and the continued
high rates of recidivism that demonstrate the failure of American pen-
ology, a leading psychiatrist isolated what he has come to realize is a key
to the failure of so many attempts at reform:
91. The number of model teachers selected from different areas in 1956 is sug-
gestive of which areas had advanced and which had relatively backward primary
and middle class schools: Peking, 64; Tientsin, 46; Shanghai, 72; Hopeh, 82;
Shansi, 46; Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, 21; Liaoning, 94; Kirin, 41;
Heilungkiang, SO; Shensi, 42; Kansu, 23; Tsinghai, 9; Sinkiang minorities, 17;
Shantung, 83; Kiangsu, 94; Anhwei, 53; Chekiang, 50; Fukien, 39; Honan, 84;
Hupeh, 60; Hunan, 68; Kiangsi, 42; Kwangtung, 88; Kwangsi, 45; Szechwan, 110;
Kweichow, 21; Yunnan, 26 (from Wen-hui pao (Shanghai), 28 April 1956). Note
how the totals for certain provinces increase when the three cities, independently
tabulated, are added to their figures.
We do not really believe, most of us, that they can be rehabilitated, that they
can change for the better, or that it is worthwhile making the effort.92
It is natural for the public to doubt that [rehabilitation] can be accomplished
with criminals. But remember that the public used to doubt that change
could be effected in the mentally ill. Like criminals, the mentally ill were only
a few decades ago regarded as definitely unchangeable - " incurable." No
one a hundred years ago believed mental illness could be curable.93
Would a self-fulfilling prophecy of malleability make some difference in
the matter of penology?
In the realm of education, there is a well-known study entitled, Pygma-
lion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupil's Intellectual
Development,9* that examines increases in the learning of ghetto children
in the United States as a function of their teachers' high expectations. Al-
though the data in the study have been criticized as defective,95 the affirm-
ative answer that the authors give to the question "whether a teacher's
expectation for her pupils' intellectual competence comes to serve as an
educational self-fulfilling prophecy"96 has been increasingly supported
by other studies.97 Many teachers have never seriously examined one of
their basic assumptions, i.e., that certain children have innate or otherwise
unchangeable limitations in their abilities, and that it is of no use for the
teacher to expect more of them. The psychological implications of the
doctrine of non-malleability are as powerful as those of the opposing
position.
92. Karl Menninger, The Crime of Punishment (New York: The Viking Press,
1968), pp. 242-243.
93. Ibid., p. 258.
94. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968).
95. See the review by Robert L. Thorndike in the Teachers College Record, Vol.
70, No. 8 (May 1969).
96. Rosenthal and Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom, p. xii.
97. James S. Coleman, " The Concept of Equality of Educational Opportunity,"
in Harvard Educational Review, Equal Educational Opportunity; Charles E. Silber-
man, Crisis in the Classroom: the Remaking of American Education (New York:
Random House, 1970), p. 83 et seq.

The Malleability of Man in Chinese Marxism : Donald J. Munro

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The Malleability of Man in Chinese Marxism : Donald J. Munro

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The Malleability of Man

The Marxist and Confucian Background

1. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Third ms. "Private

Productive labour in pursuit of survival is man's unique form of inter-

4. Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, p. 76.

response to social and natural forces, as described by Marx and Engels.

If there is a departure from the Chinese tradition in the idea of mal-

The Social Nature as Mental Phenomena

and "individual background" (ko-jen ch'u-sheri) were determined by

12. "Some Concrete Policy Formulations of the Central Committee of the

16. "Some Concrete Policy Formulations of the Central Committee of the

the contrary, the greatest attention is paid to the influence of regional

Variations within Social Nature

Malleability and Uniformity

method and materials. The resultant strains on agricultural manpower

Soviet Theory in the Period of Chinese Borrowing

Excepting the brain-damaged, all children ideally should be exposed

Certain educational psychologists, then, have asked themselves what

40. A. N. Leontiev, "The Nature and Formation of Human Psychic Proper-

Sciences and Peking Nonnal University, had a significant impact on

Chinese Theory in the Period of Borrowing

distinguished themselves from their bourgeois counterparts in that the

51. KMJP, 29 October 1956.

The Price of Uniformity

55. "Tsai ko-ming ti ta p'i-p'an chung shen-ju k'ai-chan hsueh-hsiao tou-cheng

57. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in

Tang-shan county indicated that 20 per cent, of .primary school-age

New Dimensions to Malleability

60. Tang-shan hsien wen-chiao chu (Tang-shan County Office of Education),

social conditions in which mental phenomena develop. Peking Normal

61. Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge:

environments of students and their effect on students' differing "thoughts "

thought in order to accomplish change in the individual. The change does

verge when we remember that the resolution requires "the concrete

Diversity Replaces Uniformity

82. Kuo Hsiang-fu chiao-hsiieh fang-fa, p. 22.

\It is interesting to note that although educators are expected to take

specific background.89 Some aspects of educational content, therefore, will

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