Selections from the Elementary-School Readers Used in the Left-Wing Private Schools of Macau during 1975-76

Abstract

The following selections are largely from post-Cultural Revolution Chinese primers. An attempt has been made to include only those extracts from the Macau readers where internal or other evidence suggests the material is of recent Chinese origin. Some of the enclosed selections, for example, refer to the Little Red Soldiers, which is the post-Cultural Revolution title for a children's organization that before the Cultural Revolution was called the Young Pioneers. The Macau readers are compiled in a slipshod manner, and when using pre-Cultural Revolution materials they continue to refer to the defunct Young Pioneers. To ferret out other pre-Cultural Revolution materials, the assistance was secured of a former teacher from Canton who, as a "substitute teacher," had variously taught all six grades of pre-Cultural Revolution reading classes. None of the lessons that he recognized from his pre-Cultural Revolution experience are enclosed here.