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Changing Chinese Education
I believe there is something wrong with our way of education.
American universities, in recruiting new students, set great store by their social work and inventive ideas, in addition to their performance in scholastic aptitude tests (SAT). It is this sense of comprehensive quality and ability, instead of just book knowledge, that matters.
When I once visited the family of Kurt Watkins, a roommate of mine, in Dayton, Ohio, I found something like a kite in one of the rooms and I asked my friend what it was. He told me that it was his sister’s work as part of the students’ inventive efforts in senior high and was slated for a competition in the Dayton area. She later applied for the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Tenology and was admitted, partly on account of the success of her invention.
This recruitment policy ensures that students are good at thinking on their own, instead of just copying ideas from books. This makes it easier for them to cope with life beyond university.
Lin Yu-tang, the renowned Chinese essayist and philosopher, once said that he hoped to see liberal education in China. He was taking American education as a contrast to the Chinese form that stressed uniformity of ideas and study from books.
As an educator, I felt extremely sorry when I saw my niece, an 18-year-old girl, studying until midnight every day before taking the national university examination, the single-plank wooden bridge to college, so to speak. In the last year of senior high school, she spent almost all her time learning by rote politics, history and other subjects. The girl who should have been lively and active had no time for games, fun or sports.
It’s different in America. Though it still calls for hard work to get into the Ivy League universities, the students can have their fun as well, attending footbal or baseball games and weekend student parties if they wish. The students are generally more relaxed and comfortable before they enter university.
At college, the students are allowed to grow freely in terms of intellectual study. They live in a scholastic environment with the choice of a wealth of seminars on a great variety of topics. For instance, on any given day, students might be able to choose between attending seminars on Sappho’s odes, Swedish film or Indian architecture. American universities seek to make their student body as international as possible. Consequently, the campus is a testing ground for all kinds of ideas. For instance, Kofi Anan, the UN secretary general, Nelson Mandela, the former South African President, and George Soros, the international financier, have all come to Harvard to deliver speeches, as have many other international statesmen, scientists and artists. There is no final moral judgment of any of the statements or ideas expressed.
I was given to understand that in addition to book learning, the students should be taught to cultivate an innovative mind. When Neal Rudenstein, then the president of Harvard University, said that Harvard is devoted to training artists as scientists and scientists as artists, I came to fully understand the meaning of a liberal education. The borders of academic departments are not strictly marked as a forbidden city. Students may choose courses beyond their own department of learning. Those who major in sciences may attend classes in drama, film or arts and vice versa. I once attended a performance of a play by Pirandello at the Experimental Drama House in Cambridge, Massachusetts by students of sciences as well as humanities. The performance was superb.
Such liberal education paves the way to a wider vision and horizon for the students in the future. The students are exposed to a great variety of activities, instead of sticking to rigidly defined subjects. Trained in such a liberal environment in their formative years, they may have great opportunities to develop intellectually on their own and are more determined and resolute in character and more innovative in mind.
参考文献：http://bjtoday.ynet.com/
