pe | a po

One of the hundreds of Af-
teans being deported from
South Africa to the British
|Motectorates under the Na-
tionalist government’s apart-
Ieid Jaws. Nathaniel Molaoa
Hla a crowd of African Na-
tional Congress supporters as
te left for Basutoland: “I am
Mot being exiled. I am merely
"ing transferred to organize
Na different area One day
We_will deport the real ‘for-
"gn native’ back to Holland.”

53 204 x

| Speaking on the University
“Washington campus, Rock-
|Well Kent, 76-year-old artist,
| Tehitect and author, reported
jMat during his recent visit to
ihe Soviet Union he had been

Idded about U.S. efforts to

Unch * satellites.

He said some of his Soviet

OSts asked him: “Why do
74 Americans spend such
ormous sums trying to get
ur satellites off the ground?
|, "Y not send them over, a
/*W at a time, and we'll just

et a few into each one of

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New first for Dulles?

ours and send them up for
you?”

“I told them,” said Kent,
“that. we’d show them. In-
stead of a sputnik that can
earry only a little dog, we'll
soon have one ready to send
a man aloft. Then we'll launch
John Foster Dulles in it and
be assured of peace on earth
for evermore.”

bes seg x

Are the monitors appointed
by U.S. courts ‘to watch over
the funds of the Teamsters
union more interested in loot-
ing the international union
treasury than in. safeguard-
ing it?

This is the question posed
by the reveation that
Godfrey P. Schmidt, one of
three court-appointed moni-
tors, has tried to tap the union
treasury for $250,000 in legal
fees and expenses. Schmidt,
who is supposed to represent
the “rank-and-file” group, is
nonetheless continuing to rep-
resent employers in collective
bargaining with the union.

$04 xt es

Dmitri Shostakovich, famous
Soviet composer, has written
his first comic operetta. Des-
mond O’Donovan, British film
producer, has reached agree-
ment with the Soviet ministry
of culture for a joint British-
Soviet production to be en-
titled Operation Icebreakter,
featuring Tatania Somoilova,
star of The Cranes Are Fly-
ing.

% t xt

Footnote to history: Statues
of Field Marshal H. H. Kit-
chener and General C. G. Gor-
don are being removed from
the streets of Khartoum, Su-
dan, to be placed in a museum.

Chinese revolution in education’

-impresses teachers’ union leader

(Here, as told to Alan Winnington, Peking correspondent for the London Daily
Worker, G. C. T. Giles, former president of the British National Union of Teachers and
a former school principal, gives his impressions of what he himself describes as a “revolu-
tion in education” in China, which he visited in 1956 and again this year.)

PEKING—In 1956 it was two hours hard going over mountains to get to the tiny
village of Pei Chun, tucked away in a beutiful valley among the grim hills west of Peking.

Now a good road takes the bus to within a few minutes’ walk of the village school.

There was the familiar school, its beaten earth playground under three magnificent
trees, the same paper-covered windows and an tediluvian desks, But of the five classes only

one was in session.

The others were out doing
practical work. At noon the
youngest class — six-year-olds
— marched in singing, to have
their dinner in th canteen.
Two years ago no child under
seven was accepted — and
there were no school dinners!

Everywhere we went around
the village we met parties of
children, boys and girls, with
their teachers doing all sorts
o f useful jobs. Some were
carrying iron water - pipes
which would bring water to
the village and to a nearby
small coal mine.

Others were gathering wild
plants which are good for
making, a sort of linen. There
were piles of fruit and wal-
nuts which had been gathered
by the children.

An experimental plot of
winter wheat has been deep-
plowed to a depth of five
feet and the aim is to produce
by close planting a per-acre
crop equal to China’s best
crop this year and many times
higher than anywhere else in
the world.

Ata nearby secondary school
one group was building a new
classroom, another digging a
well and still another — boys
and girls — under the super-
vision of a teacher and a cook,
preparing the evening meal.

As an ex-teacher, I probed
to find out whether academic

standards could be raised
when half of school time is
given up to production.

Naturally I compared the
present with what I saw in
1956, when the school had far
more material difficulties and
one of the major problems
was poor attendance of older
children, many of whom were
needed in the fields.

At that time, too, the cur-
riculum was academic and ill-
adapted to a farming com-
munity.

Now I found that school time
spent in productive labor is
made up by the tendency for
the children to spend more
time in school and they will
stay longer — from six to 16
now and.from six to 18 within
the next few years.

All the teachers I spoke to
were eonvinced, after only a
short time with the new learn-
and-produce method, that .the
improved attitude of the
children toward study, deriv-
ing from greater interest, was
having a marked effect on
their ability to learn.

The head teacher told me
that in the first term this year
one class covered twice as
much of the arithmetic course
as Was expected. At a second-
ary school in the same area
97 percent of the pupils passed
the end-of-term examinations
successfully — far more than
previously.

In one Peking secondary
school which has just built 20
small steel furnaces’ in: the
playground, all academic re-
sults showed marked improve-
ment.

Study results are checked
by a very elaborate system of
examinations set and marked
outside the schools, and may
be taken as objective.

As to the response of the
children, there cannot be the
slightest doubt. It is only nec-
essary to see them at. outside
work and im the classrooms to
know that they are thoroughly
enjoying life and going all out.

I called this policy of com-
bining education with produc-
tive work “new” because this is
the first time in human history
that it has been put into op-
eration on a big scale. The
theory has always been an in-
tegral part of Marxism, of
course,. but until recently the
attempts to put it into prac-
tice have been rather tentative
and limited.

What I have seen in form-
erly remote little Pei Chun
village has left me without the
slightest doubt that this is the
beginning of a revolution in
education.

It will. have results as.far-
reaching and decisive as the
more tangible achievements in
agricultural and industrial pro-
duction. And that is saying
quite a lot.

British co-ops to challenge
big monopoly chain stores

By MONTY METH

LONDON — Power to the
British co-op movement to
challenge the monopoly chain
stores was voted by elated
delegates to a special congress
of the Cooperative Union at
Blackpool last week.

Delegates decided on a card-
vote majority — against the
determined advice of their
executive — to set up a com-
pletely new Co-op Retail De-
velopment Society.

This will be armed with per-
mission to launch a network
of chain stores in specialized
commodities that will rival the
monopoly chains.

In addition, the new society
will offer a service to existing
retail societies advising them

on store siting, layout, selling
technique and~ market re-
search.

With all-round ultimate ben-
efits tothe consumer, it Will
seek to raise the efficiency
of the movement by placing

co-op capital where the need.

and benefit will be greatest
for the movement’s 12 mil-
lion members.

R. Southern, Co-operative
Union secretary, estimated the
cost of providing a develop-
ment service outlined by the
independent commission, but

excluding the chain stores, at-

$150,000°a year initially, and
$300,000 later.

Other speakers said the cost
of buying sites for 50 special-
ized chain stores in-busy shop-

ping areas throughout Britain
would run into millions of
dollars.

Delegates, however, were
aware that the Cooperative
Wholesale Society has $900
million invested in govern-
ment bonds and additional
sums placed with private con-
cerns.

The retail societies them-
selves have some $300 million
invested with the wholesale
societies

Delegates kept . prodding
the executive. on. the urgent
need for. the. co-ops. to break
cut into.open competition with
the giant chains, which are
advancing their share of na-
tional trade.

December 5, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3