Factors underlying the Red Guards' participation in "class struggle" and their compliant aggressiveness during the Cultural Revolution, and implications for Chinese education.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze factors underlying the Red Guards' destructive behaviors during the Cultural Revolution and to point out implications for Chinese education. Philosophical and historical analyses were conducted to address the following questions: What were the political, educational and psychological factors that influenced the Red Guards' obedient behaviors toward their Chinese communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, and their aggression toward various groups of Chinese people categorized as "class enemies"? What implications may be drawn for Chinese education if such a movement is not to happen again? The study found that it was non-democratic thinking that led the Red Guards to destructive behaviors. This non-democratic thinking stressed equal treatment and justice for just one group of people, namely the so-call "proletariat," and inhumane treatment and discrimination for the other, the so-called "class enemies" who constituted 10-20 percent of the Chinese population. This thinking served to support the "dictatorship of the proletariat," a notion used to legitimize the totalitarian control by the Chinese Communist Party, ruthless oppression of "class enemies" and a total mobilization and control of the masses. It was in this political context that the purposes of Chinese education, school curriculum and teaching methods were geared wholly to serve "proletarian politics" and to inculcate absolute loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Through school curriculum, experiences of "class struggle," national role models, student organizations and family influences, absolute obedience toward Chairman Mao and destructive aggression toward "class enemies" were fostered in an exclusive, continuous and consistent manner. The political environment plus the kind of education provided resulted in the Red Guards' unquestioning minds and aggressive habits, which plunged them into destructive participation in the Cultural Revolution without reflection as to consequences. The study suggests that if the Cultural Revolution is not to happen again, democratic ideals of equality and justice for all, and provision for freedom of speech, of political belief and property ownership have to be institutionally supported and promoted, that Chinese education needs to shift from and emphasis on political indoctrination to the teaching of reflective, creative and constructive thinking.