Year: at the second session of the first CPPCC National Committee held in 1950

Proposal No: 0055

Proposers: CPPCC National Committee members Chen Heqin, Xu Guangping, Ba Jin, Zhou Yang and Zeng Zhaosen

Content: 

1. Only a top-down campaign waged by strong organizations can manage to educate all of the country's illiterate, who make up 80 percent of the total population. 

2. The teaching materials and methods used should conform to the new educational policies and political realities and meet adults' psychological and practical needs. The teaching methods must be supported by ample experimental evidence.   

3. We need to learn how to tackle illiteracy from the Soviet Union, which created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Eradication of Illiteracy to educate its illiterate adults who accounted for 70 percent of its total adult population. At the early stages it adopted teaching methods designed for children, which proved to be ineffective. Then a teaching methods bureau was created to experiment with materials and methods that catered to adults and real life scenarios. An "army of intellectuals" consisting of 2 million people was formed to aid the campaign. 

(1) We propose that a Central Commission for Universal Literacy be established (under the Ministry of Education) to lead the literacy campaign. 

(2) We propose that a Central Bureau for Teaching Methods be created to develop and test teaching materials and methods. 

(3) We propose that an "army of intellectuals" be assembled in different regions across the country.