This book is mainly about Wu Jun's investigation and analysis of famous universities in the United States and Britain in order to help her daughter find her favorite university.
What attracts me most in the book is to discuss the differences between China University and foreign universities? What exactly is a good university? How to choose a university?
I also looked at the style and history of universities that meet the three points that I am most concerned about.
The United States and Britain have two excellent university education concepts: Newman education and Humboldt education.
Newman education is also called liberal arts education or general education.
This kind of education is the educational thought of johnny newman, Archbishop of Oxford, England, in the19th century, and is highly praised by many educators in Britain and America.
This kind of education advocates that in the first three years of college, all students are required to take general courses. Such as language courses, mathematics courses, literature and art courses, historical and cultural courses, social analysis courses, moral thinking courses, etc.
In the last year of college, students begin to choose their hobbies.
The biggest advantage of this method is to increase the breadth of students' knowledge, broaden their horizons, make students have both humanistic and scientific literacy, cultivate students into "all-round development people" and achieve basic knowledge.
Especially on the premise of breadth, students can find their interests more easily and their majors can be changed.
Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Dartmouth College and Brown University are all the ideas of this kind of general education.
The educational concept of Humboldt system. Humboldt, a German educator, gradually evolved into a major in the university in order to achieve a profound understanding of a certain major when students graduated in the era of Germany's division in the19th century. This educational system quickly helped Prussia cultivate elites from all walks of life under the national conditions at that time, and turned the weak country into the strongest country in Europe.
Later, the United States and the former Soviet Union were also influenced by Humboldt education. After the founding of New China, they were unilaterally influenced by the Soviet Union. The original comprehensive universities such as Tsinghua and Peking University were split into specialized universities, such as liberal arts universities, engineering universities, political science and law universities and medical schools.
The two universities can't say which idea is better, just because the background of the times and the economic and political background are different, which can effectively promote social progress.
If we say how to let children choose universities now.
This depends on the individual characteristics of the family and children to analyze which one is more suitable.
Wu Jun, the author, said that schools with the concept of general education are more suitable for families above the middle class and should be supported by certain economic strength. After all, these good universities are all abroad. In addition, college graduation is the beginning of professional study, and further study is needed.
The middle class suggests taking a professional route, and class transition is the focus of such families.
In addition, it depends on the child's own situation. If some students find the love of life early, they can go straight to their favorite majors in college, such as Jobs and Bill Gates.
However, most children are not so lucky to find their favorite major when they graduate from high school, especially in China, where children only want to go to college in the intense examination paper and have no energy to experience what they love. Therefore, it is not conducive to long-term career pursuit and development to decide the major prematurely.
(unfinished, to be continued ...)