Poster 312-59-139

Personal Comments

There is a “harmony” scene in this poster. The story happened in a threshing ground after a big harvest. Peasants were welcoming the coming of their teacher, who maybe gave them another good news as same as the gravest. A woman teacher was handed by hand with a young girl, whose father sit in behind of them with happy smile and whose mother was busying to take a cup of hot water to teacher. Around them, there were some young boys and girls to listen the talking of them. This poster should be public after Cultural Revolution, and what the teacher took would be the good news about recovering of university entrance examination.

Cultural Revolution started from criticism for traditional Chinese value including Chinese intellectuals of course. At beginning of CCP China, in encouraging of Chairman Mao, intellectuals put forward many suggestions including some negative ones even some opposition view, which made Chairman Mao and other CCP leaders think that traditional value and intellectuals were dangerous for revolution of CCP. Therefore Mao decided to start a campaign to break out these blocks, it is well known “Cultural Revolution”.

In Cultural Revolution Chairman Mao became more and more impatient for intellectuals, and the position of them became worse and worse. Mao often said worker, peasants and soldiers were very important for CCP and China, but intellectuals were seldom said in any newspapers at that time. Another effect was for the entrance examination system of university.

Before CCP China, university of China used a similar entrance examination with current university of west countries: many universities especially famous ones provided different entrance examinations, a student must took part in many examinations to improve the possibility of success. After CCP China all universities were owned by government, therefore joint entrance examinations in all over China were possible. This system is also used in current China, and it is good for poor students who have not enough money for an examination trip.

But in Cultural Revolution, many students who came from peasant and works and CCP army, showed their dissatisfied for this examination system, because they think these examinations were based on those “non-revolution” science and cultural knowledge, not on their honest and passion for revolution and CCP, therefore those young people in bourgeois families were more easy to pass these examinations, which was corrupting the great revolution.

In end of Cultural Revolution, there was a famous “zero score hero”, he wrote a letter to protest examination in geometry examination paper, although he got zero score, but he was praised by Chairman Mao and then came into university. In support of Mao, joint entrance examinations for university were canceled instead of a recommendation system. The standard of recommendation is not the score of your class instead of your honest for CCP. In this system, those young people in bourgeois or rightist families were impossible to get chance of recommendation. In fact, they were very hard to get a job to feed themselves at that time, so studying in university is more far away than the dream of the Little Match Girl.

After the Cultural Revolution, CCP thought the ignoring for science and literature was wrong so they recover joint entrance examinations in 1977. In first three years of university examination, many participants were more than 30 years old who were impossible to get recommendation in Cultural Revolution. From 1977 to1979, almost all students who could not be recommended took the first three joint entrance examinations, and there were new students from 20 to 30 years old in many universities at that time. Many current CCP high officers had been passed joint entrance examinations in these three years, which are named famous “Old Three Degrees”.

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