To Be a Teacher Is a High Honor

Abstract

Comrades Zhang Dawei of Liaocheng, Shandong province, Ling Fengyun of Jinzhou, and Yang Xiaolan of Dandong:

Your letters said that after passing the entrance examinations for normal schools, you feel as if something heavy were weighing on your minds. You think that to be teachers after graduation is inferior to others and therefore you cannot keep your.minds on your study. You should not have such a thought. We know that science and culture develop very fast today and are based on education. In recent years, the Communist Party and the government have paid great attention to educational work in order to raise the scientific and cultural level of our people. This testifies to the important role played by education in the development of the national economy. Teachers are entrusted with the glorious task of training a new generation of people equipped with progressive ideology and also knowledge in modern science and technology. They are praised as "engineers of man's soul" and "gardeners" and are universally respected. Many teachers who have distinguished themselves in their work have been accorded high honors by the state and the people. Thus it can be seen that educational workers are in no way inferior to others in social status.