Chapter 58 Chapter Ten Social Revolution 1945-1990 2

2 At the same time another tendency arose in the world at the same time, as changing and as pervasive as the decline of the small peasantry; Appear.The popularization of primary education, that is, the basic literacy ability of the people, is in fact the goal pursued by governments all over the world.So by the end of the 1980s, only those governments that were hopelessly or honestly honest had the courage to admit that half the population of their country was still illiterate.Only 10 of these countries—all in Africa, except Afghanistan—admit that less than 20 percent of their citizens can read and write.The improvement of literacy rate is indeed an astonishing achievement; the achievement of the revolutionary regime under the Communist Party is even more impressive in this respect.Of course, according to what they claim, illiteracy can be completely wiped out in such a short period of time, and the speed is sometimes unavoidable.But the rate of literacy, and, not without doubt, the demand for workers in secondary or even higher education, is indeed increasing at an astonishing rate.As for the number of people who have completed their studies or are currently studying, they naturally also increased rapidly.

The surge in the number of college students has been particularly dramatic.Before that, there were very few people receiving university education, except in the United States, where education is popularized and universities are abundant.Before World War II, even Germany, France, and Britain, the three countries with the strongest national strength, the most advanced development, and the most popular education, among the combined population of 150 million in the three countries, the number of college students was only a negligible 100,000. That is, it accounts for one thousandth of the total population of the three countries.However, by the late 1980s, there were millions of students in countries such as France, West Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Soviet Union (this is just a few European countries), not to mention Brazil, India, Mexico, and the Philippines, the United States, which is a mass higher education institution. Naturally, the growth rate of the pioneers is not to mention.By this period, in all countries that have spared no effort to promote education, the number of college students accounted for more than 2.5% of the total population—including men, women, and children.In a few special cases, the ratio of college students even reached 3%.In such a country, it is not uncommon for 20% of the 20-24 age group to still be in school.Even countries that have traditionally been conservative about schooling - such as the UK and Switzerland - the ratio rose to 1.5 per cent.However, the largest ratio of student populations occurs in countries that are far from advanced economically, such as Ecuador (3.2%), the Philippines (2.7%), and Peru (2%).

All this is not only a new phenomenon, but also more abrupt. "According to a research survey conducted on Latin American college students in the 1960s, the most impressive fact is the scarcity of the number of students." (Liebman, Walker, Glazer, 1972, p.35) American scholars at that time had I have come to the conclusion that this phenomenon reflects the Latin American world south of the Grant River on the U.S.-Mexico border. Its stance on higher education follows the spirit of a small number of elites in Europe—although the number of college students in Latin American countries is actually increasing by 8 per year. % proportional growth.In fact, it was not until the 1960s that the status of students rose significantly and gradually evolved into an undeniably important political and social force. In 1968, there was a frenzy of student activism around the world, and the students' voice was far greater than their true statistical percentage of the total population.Having said that, the surge in the number of students is also an iron fact, which must not be ignored. In the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, the number of students in most countries generally showed a growth rate of 3 to 4 times in Europe, where the quality of schools was excellent.In West Germany, Ireland, and Greece, the increase was 4 to 5 times; in Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Italy, it was 5 to 7 times; as for Spain and Norway, the increase was as high as 7 to 9 times (Burloiu, Unesco, 1983, pp. 62-63).On the whole, the phenomenon of students rushing to the narrow gates of universities in socialist countries is not so obvious. At first glance, it seems curious, because they are particularly proud of the popularity of mass education.Of course, Mao Zedong's China was a major change at the time.This great helmsman of the Chinese people brought Chinese higher education to a complete standstill during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).By the 1970s and 1980s, the problems of the socialist system became more and more serious, and the number of students in higher education fell far behind that of Western countries.The tertiary populations of Hungary and Czechoslovakia are even lower than those of all other European countries.

But on further exploration, is this phenomenon even surprising?The answer may be no.As a result of the continuous expansion of higher education, by the early 1980s, more than 100,000 university teachers had been produced in at least seven countries.The expansion of Western higher education is actually caused by the pressure of demand, but the socialist economic system does not need to respond to demand.For planners and people in the government, the demand for administrative personnel, teachers and technical experts in the modern economy is naturally far higher than in any previous period.These personnel need to be trained before they can be produced, and universities and other similar forms of institutions of higher learning are traditionally the best places to provide such training, and they are the training places for public officials and special experts.The need for talent, and the general superstition of educational democracy, make the best case for the expansion of higher education, but at the same time the number of students explodes far faster than purely rational planning itself can conceive. .

The development of the fact is that all families who have the ability and the opportunity can't wait to send their children to the gate of higher education.Because only higher education is the best guarantee for children's future; they can obtain better income, and most importantly, they can be promoted to a higher social status through education. In the mid-1960s, American investigators interviewed students from various countries in Latin America. Among them, 79% to 95% believed that university education could improve their social status in the next 10 years.In contrast, only 20% to 38% of students think that a college degree can bring them a higher economic status than their family's current situation (Liebman, Walker, Glazer, 1972).In fact, with a college degree, the income level is bound to be higher than that of non-university students, and in countries where education is not very popular, a diploma is better than an iron rice bowl.Graduates can not only get a job in the state apparatus, but also gain power, influence, and money by grabbing their official career.All in all, a diploma is a golden key that opens the door to real wealth.It is true that the family background of most students is better than that of most of the population—otherwise, they are of working age to support their families, how can their parents afford their tuition for many years? ——But it is not necessarily a rich family. Usually, parents make great sacrifices for their children's education.The educational miracle in South Korea is said to be based on the proceeds of cattle sold by farm parents, and they tried their best to send their children to the ranks of distinguished scholars (8 years——1975-1983—the number of Korean students increased from 0.1% of the total population. 8% jumped to 3%).Who wouldn't appreciate the painstaking effort involved in becoming the first child in the family to go to college?The global boom has made it possible for countless well-to-do families—including white-collar workers, civil servants, shopkeepers, small businessmen, farmers, and in the West even well-paid skilled workers—to be able to support their children in full-time education.The Western welfare state, first started by the United States in 1945, provides a large amount of tuition subsidies for veterans in the form of various bursaries-but most students are still planning to live a very simple academic career.In countries that emphasize democracy and equality, continuing education after graduating from high school is regarded as a natural right of students.Take France as an example. Even in 1991, it still believed that state universities should be completely open, and that selective enrollment of students was illegal (people in socialist countries did not have such rights).As a result, young men and women flocked to the university gates, and the government had to rush to build more new universities to accommodate them—except for the United States, Japan, and a few other countries, colleges and universities are almost universally public, and private universities are rare.The upsurge of building new universities was at its peak in the 1970s and almost doubled.In addition, the former colonial emerging countries that became independent in the 1960s also insisted on establishing their own universities.Universities, like national flags, airlines, and armies, were maintained by these emerging nations as an indispensable symbol of independence.

Except for some super small countries or extremely backward countries, there are millions of young men and women students and teaching staff in various countries, and there are as few as hundreds of thousands.They were either concentrated in the vast but isolated campuses, or flooded into the university town, and many college students became a new cultural and political component.The phenomenon of college students transcends national borders. They communicate across national borders and share ideas and experiences with each other. Handy. The development of the 1960s proved that the student group not only played an explosive and radical role in politics, but also expressed their dissatisfaction with society and politics at home and abroad in an extraordinary way.In some totalitarian countries, students are the only group that can take collective political action.Thus, while student numbers in other Latin American countries continued to swell, in Chile under the military dictator Pinochet, the number of students was forced to decline after 1973, from 1.5% of the total population to 1%. .1%.Its political significance cannot but be said to be profound. Since 1917, revolutionaries have dreamed day and night, hoping that one day a worldwide social movement will erupt simultaneously in various places. In the golden age after 1945, the closest moment to this dream may be 1968.That year, students all over the world rose up to riot, from the United States and Mexico in the western world, to socialist Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Most of them were stimulated by the student riots in Paris in May 1968.At that time, Paris could be said to be the epicenter of a student movement that shook Europe.The older generation of observers, such as Raymond's generation, disapproved of the student's actions, dismissing it as a street farce, but a so-called "psychological drama" for venting emotions.However, although the student movement is not a revolution, it is by no means just a child's play as Aaron sees it.In reckoning with the ledgers of the year 1968, France has the end of the era of General Charles de Gaulle, the United States has the end of the era of Democratic government, and the communist countries of Central Europe have lost their hopes for liberal communism.With the massacre of students in Tlatelolco, a new chapter in Mexican politics has quietly begun.

However, the turmoil of 1968, whose turmoil continued into 1969 and 1970, could not turn into a revolution in the end, and in fact never had the tendency to develop into a revolution.The reason is that the perpetrators are students.Because no matter how many students there are, no matter how great the mobilization force is, this group of talents alone cannot accomplish anything.The role that students can play in politics is mainly to act as a signal or detonator for another larger but highly explosive group-the workers.So in 1968-1969, the student unrest triggered a huge wave of strikes in France and Italy.But for 20 years, the economic beauty of full employment has brought unprecedented improvements to the lives of the working class. Although there is a strike at this moment, the "revolution" is the last thing on the minds of these working people.It was not until the 1980s that the student movement reappeared—but this time, it took place in several countries that were not less than thousands of miles away from each other, such as China, South Korea, and Czechoslovakia.And this time, the resistance movement of the students is no small matter, and it seems that there is indeed a posture to detonate the revolution.At least, their momentum is so great that the government has to face it squarely and treat them as a real threat, so incidents such as Beijing's Tiananmen Square have occurred. After the failure of the great dream in 1968, some radical students did resort to small groups to carry out terrorist activities for revolutionary purposes.Although this type of activity has created quite a sensational effect in propaganda (at least one of their main motivations has been satisfied), it has seldom had a significant impact on actual political development.And, if there is any sign of real impact, the government will do what it says, often immediately. During the so-called "dirty war" in the 1970s, some South American governments used all means to systematically persecute and kill students.In Italy, there have also been scandals of behind-the-scenes bribery negotiations.The only escapees from this tragic end in the last decade of this century were the Spanish Basque nationalist terrorist group ETA, and the Peruvian peasant guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). ).The latter is still coming into being by the gifts of the teachers and students of the University of Ayacucho, a terrible gift from them to the people of the country.

Here, we feel a bit confused.Among the many social factors in the golden age, why did this new social group—students—choose a radical leftist path?Until the 1980s, even the students of the nationalist faction loved to sew the red head of Marxism-Leninism-Mao on their flags (the only exception was the student riots against the Communist regime). This phenomenon clearly goes far beyond social class.The emerging student group basically belongs to a group of teenagers, that is, a period of short stay in the long journey of life.Among the students, there is a rapid increase in the number and a large proportion of female students.School time is a period of pause between a woman's fleeting youth and her permanent sex.Later, we'll explore some of the particular phenomena of teenage culture that connects students not only with other groups of their own age, but also with the consciousness of a new woman whose reach reaches as far as outside the university campus.Young people, who have not yet settled down in the adult world, traditionally have full of high spirits, and are even more frenzied and disorderly. If you ask the president of a medieval university about his impression of young students, the answer must be the same.So generation after generation of bourgeois European parents exhorted generation after generation of sons (and later daughters) who were full of distrust of their elders: At the age of 18, a person is certainly full of revolutionary enthusiasm, but when he is 35, he will be full of revolutionary enthusiasm. That's not the case anymore.In fact, the idea that enthusiasm fades with age is so ingrained in Western culture that certain countries—perhaps mostly Latin countries on both sides of the Atlantic—don’t even take students’ belligerence to heart at all, sometimes even The actions of the younger generation of armed guerrillas are also understated.A young heart is lively and excited.There is a good joke: Students at the University of San Marcos in Lima (Peruvian capital), before entering the society to engage in middle-class majors that have nothing to do with politics, must first be in the ranks of some radical Maoists "for the revolution." military service"—but this was in the years when so-called normal life could still be carried on in this hapless country (Lynch, 1990).Mexican students also learned two lessons: one is that the institutions recruit newcomers are often college students, and the other is that the more intense the revolutionary performance in the student days, the better the job they will get after graduation.Even our venerable French Big Brother had a certain ex-Maoist figure who rose to prominence in the government in the early 1970s and became a household name.

However, the above phenomena still cannot explain why this group of young students who have a better future than their parents and their non-student peers are strongly attracted by the radical political line—— There are only very few exceptions.Of course, in fact, the vast majority of students are studying in peace, they have nothing to do with the radical political line, they are single-minded, and only want to obtain a degree that will help them succeed in the future.However, the obedient majority of students received far less attention than the troublesome minority—but although the proportion of the latter is small, its absolute number should not be underestimated.These politically active minorities often monopolize the focus of life on university campuses through various public discussion activities. They plaster the walls with posters, write graffiti, and hold a series of meetings and parades. , Strike, impressive.This level of left-wing radicalism is not uncommon in backward countries, but it is extremely new to developed countries.Because back before the First World War, most students in Central Europe, Western Europe, and North America were usually either right-wing or politically indifferent.

The nature of the increase in the number of students may provide an answer to this matter.At the end of World War II, there were fewer than 100,000 French students.By 1960, it had doubled to more than 200,000 people; within 10 years, it jumped again to more than 651,000 people (Flora, p.582 Deux Ans 1990 p.4) (in the past 10 years, learning The number of students in the humanities has increased by almost 3.5 times, and the number of social sciences has increased by as much as 4 times.) The first and most direct consequence of the sudden increase in students is the conflict between students and the school.Batch after batch of students pouring into the gate of the university, many of them are the first college students from a family in several generations.The school was caught off guard, no matter in terms of hardware facilities, software, teachers, or school management concepts, they were unable to cope with this surging torrent.In addition, with the increase in the number of people in this age group who continue to study-in France, it was 4% in 1950 and 15.5% in 1970-going to university is no longer a privilege and reward. The restraints on these young (usually unassuming) "little adults" are naturally unbearable.The students' hatred for the authority of the school can easily be expanded and extended into a psychology of resistance to any kind of authority. Therefore, (Western) students tend to tend to the left.It is not surprising that the 1960s became the era of student riots and "par execellence" performances.Coupled with various other specific reasons in each country, the student unrest intensified—such as the anti-Vietnam War trend in the United States (in fact, anti-military service); 32-37)——However, the phenomenon of student turmoil is so common that individual explanations are superfluous.

Looking at it from another broader perspective, this new group of students is opposed to other ethnic groups in society in a rather embarrassing angle.Compared with other classes or communities with a long history and established status, students have no established status in society, and there is no fixed relationship with society. Students, at most, are just adolescence in the life of the middle class That's all - this new wave of student explosion was pitifully insignificant before the war (Germany, which claimed to have a good education level in 1939, had only 40,000 students).In many respects, the existence of the student mass hints at problems in the society itself that gave birth to this new mass.From question to criticism, but a running distance.How do these new humans adapt to society?What kind of society is this society? Belonging to the post-war generation, their parents can't forget the pain of the past, and they are always ungrateful to compare; the current beauty is far beyond their imagination. However, in the hearts of young people, they lack the personal experience and gradual improvement of the post-war astonishing growth. Consciousness; the dissatisfaction in their hearts, there is no room for buffering. The new world, the new era, is all these young men and women on campus have experienced and everything they know. Their thoughts on the status quo are completely opposite to those of their parents. They just feel that everything should be better and different - even if they themselves don't know how to rebel to achieve this goal. And their older generation, used to the old days of unemployment scare - at least never forget - now the situation is very serious. In order to improve, there is naturally no interest in large-scale riots. The uneasiness of the student group just broke out at the climax of the global depression; because in the minds of the students, the events they want to resist, although vague and blind, are It is the peculiarities of the existing society, and not the lack of progress of the old society. Paradoxically, the instigators of this new passion are originally a group of academics who have no connection with economic interests. But the result of their disturbance , but moved another group of people who have always used economic motives as the starting point. The latter found that they could ask for far more things in this society than what they are currently getting under the tumult of the students. Therefore, the European student movement The immediate impact was a series of strikes by workers demanding higher wages and better working conditions.