From control to demagoguery

Kalkidan Yibeltal

In Mao’s China, children were instructed in the “Great Leader’s” teachings from a very humble age.  Not only that pictures of Mao were on the jackets of each text book, the contents of the subjects were intended to deepen the students’ comprehension of Mao’s acumens. As Anchee Mee relates to us in FROM MAO TO AMERICA: A WRITER’S REMARKABLE JOURNEY (2004), a typical question in first grade math would be: “During the battle to break an encirclement in a mid-mountain area, fifty of Mao’s Red Army soldiers defeated ten times their number. How many enemy soldiers were there when the battle started?”