1950年代初期中國大陸教科書統一制度的歷史意義與現實教訓

Mainland China’s Unified Textbook System of the Early 1950s: Historical Significance and Practical Lessons

1950 年代初期中華人民共和國政府對比較混亂和分散的教科書市場進行規整，嚴格控制和統一中小學教學用書。為此，採取了分步走的辦法：頒布教科用書目錄，成立教科書統一編審出版機構，確立了教科書全國統一供應的方針。高度統一的教科書是灌輸新國家意識形態的重要手段，有利於確保教科書的基本品質。但這樣做弱化了課程標準或教學大綱的威權性，過度強化了教科書的作用；導致教科書難度不一，無法適應千差萬別的地方和學生差異，教育部被這個問題糾纏了半個世紀。

Following liberation, regulating the confusing and decentralized textbookmarket, strictly controlling and unifying teacher’s books used in primary andsecondary schools was a top priority for the new political regime. For thispurpose, a step by step approach was taken which included issuing textbookcatalogs, setting up publishers, and framing a national unified textbook policy.The fact that the highly unified textbooks were an important means to indoctrinatingthe populace with the national ideology helped ensure the fundamentalquality of the textbooks, but the inevitable weakening of curriculum standardsand the authority of the syllabus overemphasized the effects of textbooks,making them unsuitable for use with students and localities characterized bydiversity. This created a problem with textbooks that the Ministry of Educationwas unable to resolve for half a century.