First, is the adjustment of colleges and departments the result of copying the model of the former Soviet Union?
The adjustment of colleges and departments is the result of copying the model of the former Soviet Union. This statement can be traced back to Ma Xulun, the former minister of higher education, who summarized the development of higher education in China since 1949 in the mid-1950s: "The central people's government carried out a large-scale faculty adjustment in the summer vacation of 1952, and according to the higher education institutions of the former Soviet Union, the first-level faculty was cancelled from the complicated old universities. Adjust the departments of industry, agriculture, medicine, teachers' colleges, politics, law and finance to build independent colleges or merge with the original similar colleges, and generally set up various majors according to the needs of cultivating various specialized talents for national construction and the teachers' equipment conditions of each school, which fundamentally changed the situation that the old colleges and universities were chaotic, the departments overlapped and the teaching was divorced from reality, and made the establishment of school departments become a new way to effectively serve the national economic construction.
As for the "institutions of higher learning in the former Soviet Union", Hu Jianhua summarized the "socialist university system in the former Soviet Union" in "The Origin of Modern University System in China: University Reform in the Early 1950s" as: (65,438+0) a university system composed of a single university and a comprehensive university of arts and sciences; (2) University-Department, which has professional and teaching and research groups; (3) A teaching system focusing on specialties and carrying out teaching activities according to a unified teaching plan; (4) Pay attention to the teaching of politics. Curriculum system with the basic goal of cultivating specialized talents.
However, is the former Soviet model really like this? Compared with the American comprehensive university model referred to before the liberation of China, the university setting in the former Soviet Union is indeed more professional and theoretical-because of the different religious traditions, there was no church university similar to that in Western Europe in medieval Russia, so Russia established its own national university in the way of imitating Western Europe in the18th century, and Moscow University in 1755, with three departments of philosophy, law and medicine, which only trained Orthodox priests. In the next century or so, due to the development of the academic itself, on the basis of the original philosophy department, history, mathematics, physics and other majors gradually became independent departments. Starting from 1930, the medical department was separated from the university and established independently. Therefore, according to the setting of departments in China before liberation, the subject setting of most universities in the former Soviet Union is roughly equivalent to the scope of the three colleges of literature and law. In the early 1950s, the adjustment of departments in China also separated a large number of medical, industrial, agricultural, commercial and normal colleges from universities or merged them with similar colleges to form schools, only retaining the disciplines of literature, law and science in the original comprehensive universities. Nature is considered to be entirely out of consideration of imitating universities in the former Soviet Union.
In fact, it seems that the former Soviet Union did not rigidly stipulate that universities should be divided into comprehensive universities of arts and sciences and single-subject universities. For example, although most universities in the former Soviet Union did not set up medical departments, 1940 was merged into universities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the former Soviet Union, and the medical departments have been kept. However, in East Germany, universities with original medical departments, such as Humboldt University in Berlin, did not carry out reform and adjustment under the guidance and control of the former Soviet garrison and commissioners, according to some hypothetical principle of "a university system consisting of a single university and a comprehensive university of arts and sciences" in the "democratic reform". In a word, although the independent medical college led by the Ministry of Health is the main body of higher medical education in the former Soviet Union, a small number of medical departments remain in comprehensive universities.
And from another angle, we can also see the attitude of the former Soviet Union towards the "comprehensive" boundary of universities. The tradition of higher education in Germany is to train industrial technicians by higher industrial specialized schools, while "classical universities" focus on academic and theoretical research. However, the University of Rostock established agronomy in 1949, and the School of Shipbuilding Engineering was established the following year, which was the first time that the German classical university established an engineering department. Although the German Democratic Republic was established in June 1949 10, the Soviet occupation authorities continued to exist in the name of "Soviet Supervisory Committee". Considering the political and ecological environment in Eastern Europe in 1950s, it is unlikely that the education reform in the German Democratic Republic was carried out without the permission of the "consultants" of the former Soviet Union.
In a word, although the universities in the former Soviet Union are mainly composed of comprehensive universities of arts, science and law and single-subject universities, and some domestic experts have introduced this form into China as the main feature of higher education in the former Soviet Union, from the actual situation, this feature is not an insurmountable absolute law in the former Soviet Union. At that time, China did not seem to be unaware of this situation. In the early 1950s, in China, a university teacher pointed out that there was no engineering department in Moscow University of the former Soviet Union, but recently a physics and technology department with engineering nature was established, questioning the one-size-fits-all approach in the adjustment of departments. At the same time, although experts in the former Soviet Union defined law as "not belonging to universities" when introducing the higher education in the former Soviet Union, single-subject colleges should set up departments. Peking University and Fudan University, like Moscow University and Leningrad University in the former Soviet Union, continued to set up law departments after the actual adjustment of departments.
Therefore, the adjustment of colleges and departments in China in the early 1950 s did draw lessons from the situation of the former Soviet Union, but it seems not entirely appropriate to simply summarize its reasons as "transplanting" and "copying" the model of the former Soviet Union. The principle of "comprehensive university of arts, science and law+single university" was the result of educational decision-makers in China at that time.
Second, does the adjustment of departments destroy the university spirit?
The evaluation of department adjustment was fully affirmed in the middle and early 1950s, and it was reconsidered from 65438 to 0958. From 1980s to 1990s, the general view was that the adjustment of colleges and departments was generally affirmed, which played a more active role in expanding the training of higher professional talents to meet the needs of national economic construction. At the same time, however, it is pointed out that many mistakes have been made because of hasty or random adjustments in specific departments, majors and personnel. Nowadays, the school history written by universities generally holds this attitude towards the adjustment of departments in their own schools. Just for their own units, they usually tend to emphasize the losses suffered by their own units in the adjustment of departments, while the departments transferred from other schools are often diluted in strengthening their own teaching and scientific research strength in this field.
After entering the 2 1 century, some new viewpoints have emerged, and the adjustment of departments and colleges has been almost completely negated. For example, they think that the adjustment of departments and colleges "has greatly weakened the cultural foundation of university education in China, resulting in the lack of understanding of domestic and foreign cultures and basic cultural literacy and artistic sentiment of China university graduates ..." They even call the adjustment of departments and colleges "the end of the university" and think that "the university in a complete sense" has basically disappeared from the history of China. The so-called university in the world is essentially just a vocational training and technical training school. "Undeniably, after 1950s, college students in China didn't receive enough humanities education, and the curriculum in colleges and universities was too narrow and one-sided. However, I think it is unfair to blame these on the adjustment of departments.
There is no doubt that college students in science, engineering, agriculture and medicine also need to receive a certain degree of humanities education. However, it is lack of basic logic to attribute this failure to the lack of humanities and social sciences departments in single-subject colleges.
Similar logic has been popularized and applied in the separation of engineering colleges and universities in comprehensive universities during the adjustment of departments. It is believed that the establishment of comprehensive or single-discipline engineering colleges aimed at training engineering technicians not only leads to the lack of humanistic quality of engineering technicians, but also leads to the lack of natural science foundation for engineering students. But in the former Soviet Union, cross-school classes were actually very common. Among the students who studied in China in 1950s, Song Jian, later director of the State Science and Technology Commission and academician of China Academy of Engineering, studied at Bowman Institute of Technology and the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of Moscow University Evening School. Bai Sihong, a translator, studied Soviet literature and drama in the Chinese Department of Leningrad University while attending the drama department of Leningrad Theatre Academy. However, after the adjustment of departments in China, many liberal arts universities and comprehensive engineering colleges are often separated, and some are even separated by a wall, but they are not connected. So, is it a division in education or something else?
For another example, there is a view that independent medical schools not only lack the environment of humanities and social sciences, but also lack the support of scientific research, thinking that only American medical schools affiliated to comprehensive universities are perfect. However, after the Flecknier report was put forward, the United States regarded professional medical education as postgraduate education, and the enrollment target of medical schools was college graduates who completed the basic education of arts and sciences at the undergraduate level. This kind of organization did not exist in China before the departmental adjustment. Before liberation, China's medical education was still a medical education model based on the European continent, that is, it decided to study for a doctor at the undergraduate stage. Before the adjustment of departments, even medical schools affiliated to comprehensive universities often had considerable autonomy because of the geographical location of school buildings and affiliated hospitals, which were not in the same place as other departments of universities. Take the Medical College of Central University between 1928- 1932 as an example. With the efforts of Dean Yan Fuqing, the college assumed the responsibility of the board of directors in the form of "economic committee", and actually independently mastered the financial and personnel power of the college. Like the structure of the Economic Committee, the medical school is relatively independent of the headquarters of Nanjing University. Because the geographical location is relatively independent, these independence are more prominent. " From the perspective of consequentialism, among the highest medical teaching institutions in China at that time, Concord Medical College, Xiangya Medical College and Shanghai Medical College were all independent medical colleges. As for the cultivation of doctors' humanistic quality and scientific foundation in the future, according to Zuo Qihua, the pioneer of pediatric neurology in China, his memory of studying in the Soviet Union is that "medical teaching in the Soviet Union is not limited to medicine itself, but extended to a wide range of disciplines such as biomedicine, psychology and sociology. For example, the school requires medical students to take humanities courses, which plays an important role in cultivating the comprehensive ability of medical students. " Obviously, at least the independent establishment of medical college itself is not enough to cause doctors' intellectual or spiritual narrowness.
In fact, as the source of modern universities, missionary universities have long been the four departments of theology, philosophy, law and medicine. Only in the19th century, and only in the United States for a long time, did universities incorporate engineering, commerce, agriculture and other fields into their own courses, forming a "comprehensive university" in our general sense. However, if we think that only comprehensive universities can give students full humanistic influence and cultivate masters instead of craftsmen, how can we explain the leading edge of France and Germany in science and the brilliant stars in various fields in the 18 and 19 th centuries? In other words, do the engineers, agronomists and teachers trained by the engineering colleges, agricultural colleges and education colleges of American comprehensive universities really have more humanistic qualities and a more comprehensive knowledge base than their colleagues who graduated from higher industrial, agricultural and normal schools in France, Germany and later the former Soviet Union?
In other words, when the problem is simply attributed to the adjustment of departments and colleges, the university is no longer comprehensive, does it lead to the neglect of the real cause of the problem? For example, is the simplification and narrowness of university courses the result of "imitating the former Soviet Union" to adjust departments, or is it the result of compressing the five-year courses in the former Soviet Union into four-year courses when professional courses cannot be reduced and political courses are increasing? Paying attention to political teaching is considered to be one of the main characteristics of the former Soviet model. However, in the 1950s, China students studying in the Soviet Union recalled the political education of universities in the former Soviet Union. One of my good Soviet classmates often says to me,' Your political study is like our dance, and your dance is like our political study' ... I sometimes talk about political study and dancing with that good Soviet classmate. Once I asked,' Why do you seldom study politics? ……"