In 1970, Snow, an American journalist whom Chairman Mao called "a true friend of the Chinese people," visited China for the third time. The two sides were already very familiar, so even if Snow was an American, Chairman Mao joked with him without hesitation, and even mentioned some domestic politics-related matters. At that time, our country was in a special period, and some people gave Chairman Mao four titles: great mentor, great commander, great leader, and great helmsman.
Chairman Mao mentioned this matter to Snow, smiled and said: This is to put me on the fire and roast, I see that the 4 "great" are too annoying, all removed, leaving only one Teacher, the title of teacher is enough. In fact, I have always wanted to be a teacher, to teach and educate people, and if I don't do the revolution, or retire in the future, I will find a school to be a teacher.
Chairman Mao and Snow
As we all know, Chairman Mao is irreplaceable to the country and the people, and without his leadership there would be no liberation of the whole country, and even whether the revolution can win victory is unknown. Chairman Mao naturally knew this, so why did he still say that he only wanted to be a teacher, and whether this statement was self-effacing or the real thought of a great man?
In 1914, Chairman Mao was admitted to the Hunan Provincial Fourth Normal School with full marks, and the following year the Fourth Normal School was merged into the Hunan First Normal School. Chairman Mao studied in the Hunan First Division for 5 years and has a deep affection for it. Until many years later, when Chairman Mao mentioned the Hunan First Division, he still praised it without hesitation: The First Division is a good school, and my knowledge and learning are all based on the First Division.
In October 1917, Chairman Mao opened a workers' night school, officially starting his career as a teacher. In the classroom, Chairman Mao never said anything about the big truth, but used humor and grounding methods to make students accept the contents of the textbook. Such a teaching method was very rare at that time, and it was warmly welcomed by the vast number of students, and before long, all the students who had listened to Chairman Mao's lectures affectionately called Chairman Mao "Mao Teachers."
Chairman Mao in his youth
In June 1918, Chairman Mao graduated from the Hunan First Division and witnessed that most of his classmates went to other places or went abroad to work and study, and few of them stayed behind to continue to engage in education, which was deeply worried by Chairman Mao. After the outbreak of the "May Fourth Movement", Chairman Mao was influenced by revolutionary ideas, and Chairman Mao founded the journal "Xiangjiang Review" and served as the editor-in-chief and main contributor, publishing many articles attacking and exposing imperialist and feudal forces.
Although the Xiangjiang Review existed only for more than a month from its inception to its closure, it is still recognized as the most outstanding revolutionary publication during the May Fourth Movement. The inaugural issue first printed 2,000 copies, sold out in a very short time, and then printed 2,000 copies and sold out in a very short time. Since the second issue, 5,000 copies per issue have been printed, but the supply still exceeds the demand, which has a great influence on young students, and to a certain extent, it can be regarded as "teaching" young students.
In 1920, Chairman Mao, at the invitation of Yi Peiji, served as the chief of the Hunan First Division. The following year, when discussing the Xinmin Society, Chairman Mao said: The work I am willing to do is to teach and second, to be a journalist, and I will probably rely on these two tasks to live in the future. Soon after, Chairman Mao wrote down the three words "pedagogy" in the column of "Academics for Lifelong Desire to Study" in a "Career Questionnaire" and four words in the column of "Careers to Be Engaged in Lifelong Desires."
Chairman Mao and his family
Even after Chairman Mao embarked on the revolutionary road and launched the peasant movement, he continued to open peasant night schools, and only in 1925, during the peasant movement in his hometown of Shaoshan, he opened more than 20 peasant night schools with his wife Yang Kaihui and younger brother Mao Zemin. From these experiences, it can also be seen that Chairman Mao has a deep obsession with engaging in the educational profession.
In January 1924, after the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, Chairman Mao joined the Kuomintang in his personal capacity, and was elected as an alternate member of the Central Executive Committee at the next two national congresses, and also became the head of the Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang Central Committee, spending only 4 months to revitalize the backwater Kuomintang Propaganda Department.
In a sense, this was the first fork in Chairman Mao's life, and it was precisely this time that he entered the Kuomintang that he later "threw his pen and turned his pen to rong", and taking up the barrel of a gun to make a revolution was not Chairman Mao's original intention, mainly due to the rupture of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Looking back at that period of history now, we can be sure without any doubt what happened after the union that if both sides had been able to treat each other frankly in the period of public cooperation, Chairman Mao would have become an educator of national renown.
Chairman Mao
Unfortunately, history does not assume that on April 12, 1927, chiang kai-shek launched the "April 12 counter-revolutionary coup", which wantonly arrested and killed communists, and the first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation broke down. The next morning, 100,000 workers marched through the streets and were attacked by Nationalist troops on Baoshan Road, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.
After that, Chiang Continued to instruct his subordinates to arrest and kill the Communists, and in just 3 days 300 people were killed, 500 arrested, and 5,000 missing. On April 18, the National Government in Nanjing was formed, and the liquidation and suppression of our party became more frequent, and quickly evolved into a superficial, open anti-communist action.
On May 21, 1927, Xu Kexiang, commander of the 33rd Regiment of the 35th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, launched a counter-revolutionary rebellion in Changsha, gathered more than 1,000 mergers and acquisitions, and launched attacks on the Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, the Provincial Peasants' Association and other departments.
Capture and kill
In addition, anti-communist incidents occurred not only in Nanjing and Changsha, but also in all parts of the country, and countless outstanding members of our Party and innocent people were brutally killed by reactionaries. Witnessing such a tragic situation, Chairman Mao's heart was like a knife, and while risking his life to resettle our Party members and revolutionary cadres, he racked his brains to think of countermeasures and find out the reason: The reason why the enemy dared to wantonly slaughter our Party members was because we lacked the means of self-preservation and the lack of armed forces.
In 1927, our Party held the "Eighty-Seven Conference", at which Chairman Mao expounded on the importance of the "barrel of the gun" and left behind the most reasonable saying: The power is obtained from the barrel of the gun. After the meeting, Qu Qiubai, who presided over the work of the Central Committee, originally wanted Chairman Mao to go to Shanghai to preside over the work, but since Chairman Mao proposed an armed revolution, he would certainly do it himself, saying: I do not live in high-rise buildings, I want to make friends in the green forest. On September 9 of the same year, Chairman Mao led the Autumn Harvest Uprising.
Many years later, when Chairman Mao met with the American journalist Anna Louis Strong, he said: People like me have never been able to fight at all, and they have never even thought that I want to become a fighter or organize a team to fight, but the reactionaries have killed so many people that I have to do so.
Autumn Harvest Uprising
Chairman Mao, who originally only wanted to engage in education, was pushed to the forefront by the torrent of history, led the revolution composed of workers and peasants, fought a war for decades, and finally liberated the whole country. In the process, Chairman Mao's identity has been changing, from Commissar Mao to Commissar Mao to Chairman Mao, and finally became the leader of the people. As the people's expectations of him grew, so did his responsibilities, and it became less realistic to want to be another "teacher."
On June 21, 1960, Chairman Mao once again said in a meeting with the Delegation of Japanese Literature: People are not born to engage in communism, and my mother never taught me to engage in communism. After saying this, Chairman Mao smiled and said: When I went to school, I went to a normal school, and I was bent on becoming a teacher, but I did not expect that I would lead the team to fight after that. It can be seen that until this time, Chairman Mao was still worried about his "teacher dream."
However, although Chairman Mao did not eventually become a teacher, what he did was highly similar to that of the teachers: educating, guiding, and stimulating the invincible force that already existed in the hearts of the people. In that battle for the founding of the nation, the world's most powerful nation, confident of melting everything with thermonuclear weapons, led 16 of its allies to fight the group of people who were known as the "Sick Men of East Asia" a few years ago in the small and barren land of North Korea.
Literacy campaigns
But the great powers were astonished to find that the same group of people born in the same land, armed with a certain ideology, was completely unafraid of the artillery fire that was enough to cover the sky, and no matter how hot the weapons were, they could not destroy the will of the Chinese, and under the leadership of Chairman Mao, every Chinese learned how to use that innate and incomparable spiritual force. The great powers gradually realized that this new country could not be defeated, so they began to compromise one after another and choose cooperation.
We can also see from a set of data that Chairman Mao was still "engaged" in the work of teachers after becoming the leader of the people of the whole country. At the beginning of the founding of New China in 1949, the literacy rate of the whole country hovered around 10%, and it has been so for thousands of years, whether it is a feudal dynasty or the Republic of China, reading and reading is a treatment that only rich people are entitled to.
After the founding of New China, through the 30 years of the "literacy" campaign, China's literacy rate exceeded 70%, and the person who vigorously supported the "literacy" movement was Chairman Mao. As early as April 24, 1937, the predecessor of xinhua bookstore under the Central Propaganda Department, "Shaanxi Yan'an Xinhua Bookstore", was established, and Chairman Mao personally wrote down the "Xinhua Bookstore" store sign on September 1 of the same year. Chairman Mao's reason is simple: to enable more people to read and write and get the opportunity to receive education.
These changes, coupled with Chairman Mao's strong support for education, can prove that Chairman Mao has never been out of the category of teachers, but his behavior has far exceeded the height of teachers. At this point, we can be sure that Chairman Mao's statement that he wanted to be a teacher was not self-effacing, but the truest thought in his heart. But for the sake of the country and the people, he had to stand in the position of leader, and ultimately failed to achieve his desire to "retire to school as a teacher."