A Study of the Literacy Education in the People’s Republic of China of Jiangsu Province (1949–1956): Why Literacy Education Became a Mass Movement

Abstract

  Immediately after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, vast rural areas faced the urgent task of reforming the quality of people’s education and enhancing the cultural level of the peasants. In this context, people across the country carried out a massive educational literacy campaign. This paper examines why peasants in the 1950s, who were not considered to be in need of literacy education, were willing to participate and make literacy education a mass movement.

  The study attempts to understand the methods of literacy education by analyzing historical material and interviews with participants at the time in Jiangsu province. First, peasants’ participation in literacy education heavily relied on the mobilization of the government. Second, literate middle-class and poor peasants with a sense of duty as the protagonists of the new society, were obliged to teach illiterate peasants to read and write, thus becoming the driving force in literacy education. Lastly, the choice of time, place, and the content of literacy education are all closely associated with the actual life and needs of the peasants, hence ensuring the survival of literacy education.