In China, the educational system is seeing a revival of Confucian principles that promote "harmony, compassion, and forgiveness," after decades of harsh communist domination of education, Nien Cheng told a general session audience at ASCD's 50th Annual Conference. Educators "are looking back to Confucius," she said, "and trying to rescue some of what was lost."
Nien was a political prisoner for six years during China's Cultural Revolution, and her daughter was killed by communist Red Guards. Now a U.S. citizen, she is the author of Life and Death in Shanghai.
Under Mao Zedong's communist regime, she said, "the teachers became teaching machines," with "no initiative," and all schools were controlled by party officials, who dictated "not only curriculum, but also the way of teaching." Although the communists needed many teachers, they also needed to control them. The result was a mix of policies that "made the life of the educators more and more difficult."
For example, after Mao encouraged criticism of the government in 1956, he later persecuted those who spoke up, saying he had been "enticing the snake out of its hole." Many intellectuals were sent to "labor reform camps," some were "reduced to the state of ordinary workers, or sent to the countryside to become peasants," Nien said.
During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards were "mostly high school students," she said. Raised in a communist China, they had "no contact with the outside world," and were "brainwashed to look upon Mao Zedong as God," Nien added. She repeated one slogan from the time: "My mother is dear. My father is dear. But Mao is the dearest of all."
Nien, a Western-educated Christian who had worked for Shell Oil, was arrested in 1966 and charged with being a foreign spy. Until her release in the early 1970s, she steadfastly refused to make a false confession, despite physical abuse and continued isolation. "For six-and-a-half years I did not see a smiling face, I did not hear a friendly voice," she said.
Since her emigration to the United States in 1980, she has published her story and used the proceeds to establish a college scholarship in the name of her daughter, "to show my gratitude to the American people." Nien became a U.S. citizen in 1983. "It was the proudest day of my life," she said, before receiving a standing ovation from ASCD conference participants.
