Dong Ping: The way of university lies in Mingde.
"The way of a university lies in its virtue" is the first sentence at the beginning of the Confucian classic "University". The word "university" in "university" is different from the word "university" today. The word "university" in ancient times is relative to "primary school", but it still contains the meaning of higher education.
"The way of university is to be well-known, close to the people and stop at perfection." The fundamental task of ancient higher education is to enlighten the educated, realize the perfection of morality, and finally reach the perfect state of behavior. In this sense, perfection is the highest realm of life and the highest realm that society should strive for.
What is a modern "university" under the modern education system? We call modern universities learning institutions: young people receive knowledge here and university teachers impart knowledge here. But I think this statement is incomplete and one-sided. University should not only be a place to impart knowledge, but also be the undertaker and embodiment of the highest value concept of perfection. This is also a value concept that universities may lack today.
From this perspective, first of all, there should be special requirements for university teachers. University teachers should not only have knowledge, but also have perfect personality and perfect ideal values in practice.
In the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu said, "I am a teacher, so I preach and teach." Preaching is the first, not imparting knowledge; Teaching is secondary, and that is the transfer of knowledge. There used to be a saying that "teachers should be dignified", saying that teachers should first have "Tao" and inherit "Tao", which is the most dignified; If a teacher is ignorant and can't preach, what dignity is there? In this sense, we urgently need to restore the concept of "dignity as a teacher" today.
In the sense of "virtue and perfection", universities are neither vocational training centers nor vocational training bases. The purpose of going to college is not to have a good career in the future, but this so-called good career is just to earn more money. It is understandable if young students have this idea, but it must be bad if the leaders of our university also have this idea and even regard it as the fundamental task or the highest pursuit of the university.
In China's colleges and universities, there is more or less a concept that our school will run any major that society needs. This concept not only takes away the soul of the university, but also cancels the dignity of knowledge. In the old words, it is "gentle sweeping the floor". Running a school with the concept of benefiting money can only cultivate utilitarian people and people who benefit money, but can't cultivate perfect personality. This concept is not suitable for United universities.
So, what kind of young people should universities train?
Universities train people first, then talents. Talent is the talent among people, and people are the first. If people are not perfect, how can we talk about talents? According to Confucius, the purpose of education lies in adults, making people become human beings and realizing the perfection of personality. What is an adult? According to today's point of view, the minimum requirement is a qualified citizen, and universities first undertake the task of cultivating qualified citizens. Citizens must first have independent thoughts, noble sentiments, a sense of social justice and a heart for public welfare.
The school emphasizes general education, but I prefer to emphasize quality education. Universities should be quality training bases first. Citizen quality, moral quality and knowledge quality are the basic qualities that young people should cultivate in university education, not the lack of justice concept, moral practice ability and inner conscience awe.
Knowledge quality is embodied in the ability to accept knowledge and the ability to transform knowledge. Without the nourishment of good and comprehensive scientific spirit and humanistic spirit, the cultivation of this ability will be pale and powerless. From the concept of quality training, colleges and universities should reflect the fundamental concern for humanistic values and the essential pursuit of lofty values of truth, goodness and beauty, which should be the concentrated expression of humanistic spirit, humanistic value and scientific spirit.
In this sense, colleges and universities should not make themselves pursuers of general social values, but should become guides of general value orientation in public life.
Personally, universities should not be excessively involved in society, but should keep a certain distance from society. To some extent, this alienation is a kind of transcendence of utilitarian value. Only when the university is alienated from the society to a certain extent can it maintain its relative independence, play its leading role in values, scientific knowledge and cultural spirit, and better play its mission.
The discipline education in modern universities makes knowledge more and more specialized, which leads to the division of disciplines in the knowledge system. With the application of modern social knowledge in different occupations, utilitarian value judgments of different disciplines have emerged. Traditional disciplines such as "philosophy", "literature" and "history" are regarded as useless disciplines, which are ignored not only by the general public, but even by the leaders of some colleges and universities!
In my opinion, humanities plays a more important role in the overall cultivation of citizens' quality, moral quality and knowledge quality. The overall cultural quality of a university is mainly reflected by the development degree of humanities, and the guiding role of a university in general social values is mainly reflected by the influence of humanistic quality on society shown by college teachers and students. Therefore, attaching importance to the humanities is not only a balanced problem in the development of disciplines in colleges and universities, but also a problem related to how to improve the quality of citizens in the whole society. In essence, it is how to express the contemporary mission of universities. Today, with the popularization of higher education, this is actually more obvious.
There is a misunderstanding today that the popularization of higher education seems to have got rid of the original elite education model of higher education. In fact, every member of Zhejiang University is a social elite, so we should advocate the concept of elite again. Only by gaining self-recognition can you become an elite. Universities not only export instrumental talents for the society, but also cultivate talents with good moral quality and knowledge quality for the society.
This question is worth pondering.