Who Are the Masters of Historical Study? Mass Mobilization, Resistance, and Teachers’ Agency in History Education During the Great Leap Forward

This paper focuses on pedagogical transformations in history education in Shanghai’s secondary schools during the Great Leap Forward (GLF, 1958-1960). The shift from expecting teachers to adhere faithfully to nationally standardized textbooks, to promoting participatory and experiential forms of knowledge production in the classroom, reflected the broader victory during the Leap of revolutionary agendas over bureaucratic ones. The emphasis on the textual authority of textbooks built on strong precedents among state officials and intellectuals in China and internationally to use history education as a way to promote a state-building agenda and instill in students new understandings of modernity, national identity, and models of citizenship. In contrast, the promotion of more radical, experience-based pedagogies subverted intellectual hierarchies to promote a much more revolutionary agenda of mass mobilization. Exploring these competing visions, this paper emphasizes that the Mao-era state was by no means a monolith: in addition to the struggles between bureaucrats and revolutionaries, state agents—including education officials and teachers—also juggled a wide assortment of state priorities that sometimes undermined one another. In such a circumstance, teachers maintained a remarkable degree of agency.