"Education Should be Oriented to Modernization, the World andthe Future"
After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Com-mittee of the CPC, the focus shift of the whole Party's tasks and theconstruction of modernization presented new demands and posed newchallenges to education in China. In the early 1980s, the educationaldevelopment and socialist construction were severely disengaged fromthe reform and opening up. There were serious problems in educationin terms of the quantity and quality of students as well as the mixtureof talents, which made clear that "without reform, education gets no-where.'' On October 1 st, 1983, when asked how to reform educationin the new era at Beijing Jingshan School, Deng Xiaoping answeredthat "education should be oriented to modernization, the world and thefuture.'' The "Three Orientations" was proposed by Deng Xiaopingas the national strategic guidelines for China's contemporary educa-tion. The three aspects were integral as a whole. The core concept ofthe guidelines was the "orientation to modernization," which meant education should be adjusted to the needs of modernization, nationaleconomic development and the provision of talented people for the pur-pose of socialist construction. The "orientation to the world" was thespatial extension of the "orientation to modernization," which focusedon the needs of the opening-up strategy for economic development. "Itis necessary to learn from the capitalist developed countries to acquirebeneficial experience in science, technology, business management,culture and other fields." "We should utilize the advanced technolo-gy worldwide and enjoy the fruits of human civilization, aim to equipstudents with prerequisite knowledge to face globalization and focus onthe opening up of education in order to catch up with the world-classeducation and to be internationally-recognized.''The "orientation tothe future" was the temporal extension of the "orientation to modern-ization," which was intended to gear education to the needs of long-term economic strategy of the socialist development and the socialdevelopment in the future. The "Three Orientations" was the essenceof Deng Xiaoping's educational thought, which embodied the educa-tional guidelines of the CPC for the socialist development of China atthat time. Deng Xiaoping's educational thought showed the generaldirection and stipulated the strategy for China's educational reform anddevelopment in the future. Therefore, Deng Xiaoping's educationalthought was of epochal characteristics and strategic instructiveness.
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