Reform in Shanghai Schools: Chairman Mao replaced by Chairman Bill Gates

High school students in Shanghai are in for a surprise when they open their history textbooks. History is something you don’t deal with in China, let alone think about changing it or leaving something that defines national character out. But that is exactly what has happened, and all I can say about it is “It’s about time!”

You know, lets skip all the hoop-la over the Tang and the Ming dynasties, because well, personally no one cares anymore. The world is changing and so are Chinese textbooks. New history texts dropped dynasties changes, peasant struggles, ethnic rivalry and wars and Communist revolutions to make room for information on economics, technology, political stability, respect for diverse cultures, social harmony, foreign trade, innovation and globalization. Wait! It gets better! Chairman Mao is even replaced by the Chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates. Mao, founding father of Modern China, is mentioned only once — in a chapter on etiquette. The theory of Socialism has been reduced to a single short chapter in the textbook version for senior high school students.

The authors say these changes are part of a broader effort to “promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today’s economic and political goals.” But lets be realistic, someone at the head of the Ministry of Education finally realized how dry history books are and made a change citing the need to modernize and broaden historical horizons to the present. Kudos to him. This is another sign of the abandonment of official ideology, which would have people to look to their past to find their future.

Before we get too excited though, I regret to tell you that this radical change in education is limited to Shanghai. I guess they feel that high school students in Shanghai are more metropolitan and able to accept the change. But the elite urban region of Shanghai has leeway to alter its curriculum and textbooks, and in the past it introduced advances that the central government then instructed the rest of the country to follow.