I think the accepted narrative now is that Mao tried to speedrun the revolutions and ended up with a tragedy.
well yeah because the right wing won out, of course they'd say that. Although its true that it would have been better with the improvement of material conditions, and that many methods (highschoolers dont know fuck all don't make them part of a political movement) were incorrect. Generally it was a good thing, and is something that should be strived for. China now is a horrible mess of neo-confucian ideology that will only fan the flames of the burgeoning petite-bourgeoisie class. If they dont have a cultural revolution of their own its very likely a gorbachev like character can start wrecking it down sponsored by the right wing.
A lot of the issues can be attributed by being too decentralized and not effectively establishing a vanguard organization. The Red guards were various in ideologies and dogmatism, and couldn't be effectively controlled when they did over correct. Harassment of people into suicide is one of the famous ones by the more dogmatist cliques that were usually lead by actual teenagers with ultraleft ideologies.
In any case, from a historical point of view, the Cultural Revolution led to the rise of liberal reformers and was a deeply traumatic event for many people including many of the post-Mao era leaders.
Didn't it literally fight against those people though. The right only rose to power because they won, they beat out the revolts, purged the gang of four, basically sidelined mao.
They don't talk about it because it would be bad to actually recognize how far right they deviated in order to fight against the cultural revolution. Its dengists who won, of course they made sure it was killed off and no alternatives exist.
i miss marxism leninism