The verdict of history might excuse both Mao and Liu for failing to anticipate the consequences of their two-legs/two-systems strategies, because China's educational development was heading into the uncharted territory of mass elementary and secondary schooling with no real precedents for guidance. And even had anyone been inclined to heed the arcane advice of colonial development experts, Philip Foster's formulation of the parity principle at work in Africa had yet to be published, much less assessed against any Asian experience.

Tables 12.1 and 12.2 summarize the essence of the story. What failed was not the Great Leap education strategy but only its irregular work-study component. By contrast, regularity thrived. It emerged triumphant yet again, but with some important differences which finally transformed China's modern school system into one with a permanent mass base. Those differences began in turn to redefine the nature of both regular education and its irregular alternatives.

We will return to elementary schooling in chapter 16, which indicates a continuity of growth from 1958 through the 1966–1976 decade. By the early 1960s, universal elementary education had been basically achieved in urban areas, albeit with an assist from the minban formula at that time. But how to do the same for the rural majority was the ultimate challenge, pursued most systematically during the 1966–1976 years.

Higher education had been the centerpiece of educational development throughout the 1950s and remained in a holding pattern thereafter. The Sino- Soviet compromise model that evolved during the FFYP remained essentially unchanged while Great Leap quantitative increases were absorbed.