The "Anti-Rightist" Movement In Primary And Middle Schools

During the "Anti-Rightist" Movement of 1957, the education system, in which intelligentsia was relatively in majority by number, was a main battle field. As one part of it, primary and secondary schools also became the worst-hit areas. Some statistics show that In the rightist group, especially at the grassroots level, primary and secondary teachers were one of the largest groups.However, there is very little published research focusing on the movement in primary and middle schools, both in Chinese and English. Based on the resources located in the Jiangsu Provincial Archives and on local newspapers published at that time, this article explores the origin, process and consequences of the movement in Jiangsu province.This paper focuses on the following issues:First, what was wrong with primary and secondary education policy before and after 1957? What the students and teachers's dissatisfied? Second, how the movement to start and eventually led to a serious expansion of Step by step?Third, what are the errors of the movement? The movement resulted in the serious consequences of what?The article is divided into several sections:As the preface, the first part explains the purpose, significance of this research, based on a review of relevant academic literature. It also introduces the main approach, resources and innovations.In the main text, the first chapter describes the status of primary and secondary schools before the outset of the "Anti-Rightist" movement, including the principal contradiction within schools, ideological trends of teachers and students and the situation of student unrest.The second chapter analyzes the process of enlargement step by step, and discusses the reasons why the "Anti-Rightist" movement in primary and secondary schools was expanded and why those right-wing teachers were convicted.The third chapter is about the official versions of the movement at that time. However, most of the versions are incorrect because that it was derived from wrong information. This chapter analyzes the consequences of "Anti-Rightist" movement in primary and secondary schools, especially about the damage to basic education and to the moral of teachers. Negative consequences caused by the "Anti-Rightist" movement is mainly focused on the damage to basic education and the harm to the soul of teachers, including the lack of qualified teachers, education policy pay more attention to class struggleThe last part is a summary of the lessons to be learned.According to the textual research and analysis in this paper, in Jiangsu province, the "Anti Rightist" Movement in local primary and middle Schools originated from student disturbances in the spring of 1957, which were, in turn, related to the drastic change of national educational policies in 1956 and 1957. In the climax of the movement, the authorities subjectively defined this kind of social problem, a product of the wrong government policy, as a serious class struggle, and accused the innocent teachers as behind-the-scene masterminds. The misunderstanding made the movement extended and brought a disaster. Primary and secondary school teachers who were classified as "rightists" were in a high proportion among their counterparts. As a consequence, all the "rightists" lost their jobs which left negative impact. After the "Anti-Rightist" movement, the shortage of primary and secondary school teachers has become a serious matter, which caused great damage to the basic education. Meanwhile, the purity of the primary and secondary school teachers did not achieve the expectations of the leaders. So, we should engrave this historical lesson on our mind.