The Dead Professors Library returns! This bit below is probably the most sensible page in the whole pamphlet. Why did this guy have this book????
Some of it is certainly echoed in today's universities. Some of it is pure propaganda (wait 'til I show you the bits about politics in science!), but is education over-commercialized now? Is expertise valued above experience? Discuss.
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Strive to Build a Socialist University of Science and Engineering
by the Workers' and People's Liberation Army Men's Mao Tsetung Thought Propaganda Team at Tsinghua University
Foreign Languages Press
Peking, 1972
Smash Slavish Comprador Philosophy and Doctrine of Trailing Behind at a Snail's Pace, Compile New Proletarian Teaching Material
The transformation of teaching material is a serious political struggle. It is a question of vital importance to the bringing up of a generation of new people. The slavish comprador philosophy and the doctrine of trailing behind at a snail's pace constitute the very core of the old system of the teaching material for colleges of science and engineering. They pervade every line of the teaching material. Today, they are still the yoke shackling the minds of a small number of intellectuals. Thus to eradicate the slavish comprador philosophy and the doctrine of trailing behind at a snail's pace is the key to thoroughly transforming the teaching material.
'A given culture is the ideological reflection of the politics and economics of a given society.' (On New Democracy.) Though in content they deal with natural sciences, the textbooks in science and engineering in the imperialist and social-imperialist countries are stamped with the brand of exploiting classes, because they are summings-up of the development of science and technology made according to the bourgeois world outlook to meet their political, economic and military needs. Liu Shao-chi and company frantically trumpeted the slavish comprador philosophy of trailing behind at a snail's pace, introduced this stuff into China lock, stock and barrel, and allowed the foreign bourgeoisie to continue their dictatorship over the Chinese people through the old teaching material. Take a series of old textbooks on electronics for example. The much advertised 'compact' system for subjects in this scientific branch is nothing but an epitome of the development of electronics technology in the capitalist society. However, the textbooks claim that this system is an eternal and absolute truth and if one is to develop the electronics industry and master electronics technology one can only trail along this old road at a snail's pace. This fully reveals the slavish and backward character of the old teaching material. The old teaching material reverses history, plagiarizes inventions and creations by the labouring people and advertises 'experts above everybody else' in order to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie in monopolizing science and technology; it advertises 'theory above everything', commercializes education and artificially raises its prestige by turning simple matters into mysteries to serve the interests of the bourgeois intellectuals in ruling schools; it advertises that 'material and technical conditions decide everything', denies that man is the decisive factor and stifles the infinite creativity of the masses.
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This week brought to you by the letters a a a a a a h and the number 6.
