"Universities should set up various disciplines and cultivate various types of talents. Zheng Ke attaches importance to generalist education, but does not neglect its application. Professional courses focus on professional education, but don't ignore the foundation. The advantage of a comprehensive university is that generalists and professionals can adjust each other, so that generalists will not be idle and professionals will not be narrow-minded. All college students should be honest and approachable founders. "
—— Guo Bingwen, a famous educator
"A wide range of knowledge should not be too narrow, so as to have a balanced concept of the so-called outlook on life. I also have a good understanding of the cultural changes in the world trend. This will not only add interest to our lives, but also improve service efficiency. "
—— Mei Yiqi, a famous educator and former president of Tsinghua University.
The question of whether to implement "generalist education" or "junior college education" in university education has always been a controversial point. Some people say that the disadvantage of "specialized education" lies in making "talents" instrumental. Some people say that "generalist education" can only cultivate talents with half a bucket of water.
The "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee clearly stated that "the national unified examination will reduce subjects, regardless of arts and sciences". This decision has been hailed as a weather vane for the transformation of talent training mode from "specialist" to "generalist".
What kind of teaching mode should universities adopt and what kind of talents should they cultivate to adapt to the ever-changing society? What is the dialectical relationship between generalist education and junior college education?
Professional education is the ultimate concern of universities.
Lianhongyang
Since the birth of medieval universities in Europe, there has been a dispute between general education and vocational education (later general education and specialist education), and so has China. Since the introduction of universities, there has been a debate about the direction of educating people. In the early 1950s, professional talents were badly needed for national construction, so university education copied the Soviet model and favored professional education. In recent years, more and more people reflect on the bias of junior college education, so there is another tendency in society to advocate generalist and generalist education and deny junior college and junior college education. Although general education is necessary, it is not a good thing for society, schools and students to replace junior college education with general education. In the final analysis, universities should pay more attention to professional education.
On the level of social demand, under the background of social science and technology, humanistic environment technology, subtle branches of science and technology and internationalization of industrial structure, every industry in emerging industries needs specialized talents, and even basically relies on professional talents. For example, the Internet field, which is the most widely used at present, brings together all kinds of high-tech talents, rather than the so-called generalists. Scientific research itself, scientific development is changing with each passing day, and every subject is infinitely subdivided. Medieval Europe's masters who spanned architecture, music, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, geology, botany and other disciplines like Leonardo da Vinci are gone forever. Even the same science now, it is difficult to achieve general knowledge now. Someone has done statistics. In the field of physics, even a physicist can't read and understand the articles of three world-class physics magazines at the same time.
On the personal level, on the one hand, due to the refinement of social division of labor, a large industry is divided into many small industries, and the practitioners in each small industry perform their duties, leading the way and being brilliant. It is impossible for a person to master his major. Even with this talent and ability, it is difficult to have the energy to engage in multiple industries at the same time. On the other hand, this society needs professionals, and a large number of competitive intellectual elites have gathered in various industries, rather than "all-round" generalists. Unless he is really capable and proficient in all walks of life, it is difficult for a person who knows everything and knows nothing to be competitive in society. In the era of differentiation, some so-called general education often obliterates individuality in the name of "broad caliber", weakens students' competitiveness and pushes students into the quagmire of "learning is useless"
From the relationship between general education and junior college education, general education is the foundation of university education-focusing on cultivating social elites' comprehensive knowledge system, sound personality and scientific way of thinking at the beginning of their careers, while junior college education is the core of university education-cultivating senior talents with comprehensive quality foundation and mastering a certain professional knowledge. In view of this, some scholars suggest that university education should cultivate "T-type talents", who have broader and more solid knowledge in the horizontal direction and deeper professional knowledge in the vertical direction, so-called "specialization in technical fields". Therefore, it can be seen that the general education is ultimately to serve the general direction of junior college education. "Specialization" instead of "refinement" and "refinement" instead of "specialization" are unsustainable, and the significance of university education will be greatly reduced.
Only generalist education can cultivate compound talents.
Zhangzhang
From a personal point of view, general education also has a name called "holistic education". If a person wants to develop mentally, he has to learn all kinds of knowledge, only know one field, and not dabble in other fields. Such a person's knowledge structure is problematic, and the shaping of personality temperament may be biased. However, under the current education system, senior high schools began to separate arts and sciences, and a certain professional education was implemented after entering universities, which led to a series of problems such as lack of humanistic quality, poor expression ability, and difficulties in interpersonal communication, while liberal arts students lacked some basic scientific knowledge and the ability of rational thinking and logical thinking. With the implementation of general education, college students receive all kinds of education in a balanced way, which not only consolidates their knowledge structure, but also is very beneficial to the cultivation of people's temperament. There is a "barrel theory" in sociology. The shortest short board determines the water capacity of a barrel. Only students trained by general education will have no obvious shortcomings in knowledge. In fact, many famous artists are proficient in Chinese and Western arts, such as Chen Yinque, Gu Hongming and Lin.
From the perspective of school education, students who can become masters are few after all, but even at the level of employment, there are fewer and fewer employment modes for professional counterparts at present, and compound talents with one specialty and many functions are most favored by employers. Social development is changing with each passing day, and new industries and occupations are constantly emerging. These positions are exactly what college students with high comprehensive quality need to do. However, school education often lags behind the social reality, such as the popular animation production, new media and internet finance in recent years, which not only makes it difficult for colleges and universities to keep up seamlessly, but also has interdisciplinary characteristics. In the future, there will be more and more such compound jobs. Therefore, university education should also change the thinking that it is better to teach people to fish than to teach them to fish, and more importantly, teach students how to learn a certain skill. General education does not seem to emphasize a certain knowledge, but it is this broad-caliber and thick-based education model that brings more space for self-improvement after graduation. In the United States, Yale, Harvard and other famous schools have so-called "core courses" for all students to learn, involving humanities, history, science, philosophy, nature and other fields. The level of science and technology and the number of research talents in the United States are leading in the world, which is not unrelated to this all-round education to lay a good foundation for talents.
Up to the social level, the world has become more and more complicated. From personal life to the formulation of public policies, it is impossible to make a correct judgment only by relying on one aspect of knowledge. No matter what kind of work the members of society trained by general education are engaged in, because they have the same "educational gene", there are fewer obstacles to thinking collision and reaching consensus among them; In contrast, professionals may be good at one aspect, but they lack a common knowledge background and exist in isolation, which is not conducive to promoting the overall progress of society. For example, the current development of science and technology urgently needs the guidance of humanistic spirit. While science and technology bring greater convenience to mankind, it also brings the possibility of doing evil, such as atomic energy, cloning technology and artificial intelligence. Only by allowing humanistic quality education to provide humanistic guidance for natural science can science and technology be used by us to promote development rather than destroy the future.