(This article first appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition on Aug 26, 2013)
In the second half of the 19th century, the Hong Kong government began to bring in labour from other parts of the British empire.
They recruited people from British India, including what is now Pakistan and Bangledesh, as well as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). They also brought in people from Malaya, mostly of Indian origin. Many of them joined the local constabulary; others were working as house servants, guards and the like.
Quite a few of them acquired British citizenship and they they eventually settled in Britain. But many did not; they were left behind after July 1997. That presented a dilemma for those who had been living in a sort of self-created enclave. Going back to their native land does not seem like an easy choice. What about staying here without a desire to be integrated into Chinese society? That's not a pretty option either.
For one thing, the local populace does not really care. They are not hostile, but they maintain a kind of "live and let live" attitude where you have to survive on your own.
Certainly, that is not a problem if you have money or speak English well, or manage to climb the social ladder. But what if you are not a person of means? What if you need to keep yourself afloat, just like the rest of us?
To survive, you need knowledge of the Chinese language. This is why, a few weeks ago, the headmistress of a local Islamic high school, voiced her concerns in a newspaper. According to her, minorities cannot get into the Civil Service Bureau because of the language requirement. (She did not mention the private sector.)
Another problem, she says, is minorities are usually advised to take the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) or General Certificate of Education (GCE) Chinese-language exams. But the IGCSE and the GCE are only equivalent to Form Three and Primary Six levels respectively, not to mention the course content does not deal with the society they need to understand. Besides, the link between primary and secondary schools is not smooth for them, creating a headache when there are different levels within a class.
Her solution? Writing a new set of learning materials for minorities that would fit their needs. When they have to take the public exams, make it a Form Three level, not a Form Six level, for all of them.
Years ago, a Portuguese person from Macau could come to study in our middle schools, take French as a second language (English being the first, of course) and sit for our Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. She did not have to take Chinese at all.
Today, if you enrol in an international school, you don't need to take Form Six-level Chinese. Can this be applied to our minorities? I do not know.
I agree with the headmistress when she expresses the worry that unless the "Chinese question" can somehow be resolved, there's no real future for most of them. But even if her ideas are adopted, it won't solve the problem.
Universities may be willing to take you in on an IGCSE score despite your poor Chinese-language skills, just as they admit foreigners who know not a word of Chinese. But unless you find a job that requires little Chinese skills, the prospects are not bright.
This is an issue that our education authorities have to think hard about
2013-07-29
Duty to protect student rights must come first
(This article first appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition on Jul 29, 2013)
Not long ago, a member of the Executive Council who is also a former vice-chancellor of a local university, met a few other incumbent vice-chancellors for a chat. He raised the issue of theft, pointing at the criminal nature of the act of stealing, and asked them whether they would protect any of their students if they had committed such an act.
Then he drew an analogy: if you found out your students had joined the Occupy Central movement, you should not have helped them since it was illegal. The lesson is simple: you should not help them, just as you would not help thieves who had stolen your property.
In the eyes of the law the act of joining the Occupy movement is an offence; whether it is criminal in nature is debatable. Even if it were, how a free and tolerant society should deal with it is still arguable. Protesters and thieves are not in the same category. It is questionable whether the analogy even holds up.
I am not interested in arguing the nature of the case from a philosophical standpoint, and you could make a moral case for theft under some special circumstances. What I am interested in is how educational institutions might deal with this in the present context.
We can look at this issue from different angles. During the Vietnam war there were campus protests across North America in public and private schools alike. At times, the students' actions were not entirely orderly - they occupied buildings and boycotted classes, among other things. Was the military draft legal at the time? Yes. Was the conduct of the students lawful? No. Yet, except for a few incidents which turned violent, the police were never called in. The only tragedy took place at Kent State University where the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students.
If we don't want to look at cases in far-off lands, let us look at China. Many have heard of the May Fourth Movement when, on May 4, 1919, close to 5,000 students from various Peking universities demonstrated on the streets. After a brief confrontation with the police, 32 students, mostly from Peking University, were arrested.
Upon receiving the news, Cai Yuanpei, the legendary president of Peking University, announced in the college auditorium that it was his responsibility to rescue those students. On the fifth, the authorities sought to kick out all the "troublemakers" from their respective campuses.
Fourteen university presidents headed by Cai took collective responsibility by submitting their resignations. A huge public outcry erupted across the country and, on the seventh, all students were released.
Cai was not the only one. In the 1930s, Mei Yi-qi was president of Tsinghua University. In February, 1936, after some student unrest incidents, police moved into the campus and rounded up some 20 students.
Mei, who opposed students participating in political activities, came out to rescue them, in his own words "to safeguard independence and university integrity".
In both cases, the students did commit "offences". They did something, at least according to the then government, that was unlawful. The presidents felt obligated to protect them.
For our case, there is something ironic, too. Shortly after that meeting, a few of those VCs stood up to proclaim their duty to safeguard students' right to freedom of expression. The one who conspicuously missed the event is the VC of the very same university from which the Exco member came.
On a different occasion, he also remarked that, as leader of a university, he'd do his best to protect the rights and safety of his students.
Not long ago, a member of the Executive Council who is also a former vice-chancellor of a local university, met a few other incumbent vice-chancellors for a chat. He raised the issue of theft, pointing at the criminal nature of the act of stealing, and asked them whether they would protect any of their students if they had committed such an act.
Then he drew an analogy: if you found out your students had joined the Occupy Central movement, you should not have helped them since it was illegal. The lesson is simple: you should not help them, just as you would not help thieves who had stolen your property.
In the eyes of the law the act of joining the Occupy movement is an offence; whether it is criminal in nature is debatable. Even if it were, how a free and tolerant society should deal with it is still arguable. Protesters and thieves are not in the same category. It is questionable whether the analogy even holds up.
I am not interested in arguing the nature of the case from a philosophical standpoint, and you could make a moral case for theft under some special circumstances. What I am interested in is how educational institutions might deal with this in the present context.
We can look at this issue from different angles. During the Vietnam war there were campus protests across North America in public and private schools alike. At times, the students' actions were not entirely orderly - they occupied buildings and boycotted classes, among other things. Was the military draft legal at the time? Yes. Was the conduct of the students lawful? No. Yet, except for a few incidents which turned violent, the police were never called in. The only tragedy took place at Kent State University where the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students.
If we don't want to look at cases in far-off lands, let us look at China. Many have heard of the May Fourth Movement when, on May 4, 1919, close to 5,000 students from various Peking universities demonstrated on the streets. After a brief confrontation with the police, 32 students, mostly from Peking University, were arrested.
Upon receiving the news, Cai Yuanpei, the legendary president of Peking University, announced in the college auditorium that it was his responsibility to rescue those students. On the fifth, the authorities sought to kick out all the "troublemakers" from their respective campuses.
Fourteen university presidents headed by Cai took collective responsibility by submitting their resignations. A huge public outcry erupted across the country and, on the seventh, all students were released.
Cai was not the only one. In the 1930s, Mei Yi-qi was president of Tsinghua University. In February, 1936, after some student unrest incidents, police moved into the campus and rounded up some 20 students.
Mei, who opposed students participating in political activities, came out to rescue them, in his own words "to safeguard independence and university integrity".
In both cases, the students did commit "offences". They did something, at least according to the then government, that was unlawful. The presidents felt obligated to protect them.
For our case, there is something ironic, too. Shortly after that meeting, a few of those VCs stood up to proclaim their duty to safeguard students' right to freedom of expression. The one who conspicuously missed the event is the VC of the very same university from which the Exco member came.
On a different occasion, he also remarked that, as leader of a university, he'd do his best to protect the rights and safety of his students.
2013-07-01
On Selecting a President
(This article first appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition on Jul 1, 2013 with title "The big man on campus who isn't")
It was a ‘colourful’ event. Lingnan’ University was to select a new president, and the university council held a consultative meeting at which councillors were to choose a candidate. They endorsed Mr. Leonard Cheng in the face of student opposition. It was dramatic indeed. Behind all that noise, however, we should calm down, look at the facts, and ask ourselves some soul-searching questions. After all, it’s a university in our midst.
From statements of both sides where the public could well see, we may reflect on some issues that concern us all. Perhaps a note on American practice is in order. When an American takes up the presidency of a university, it’s a well-known ritual that he would give a speech to the university community. He would present his vision and his leadership that he believes could bring the school one step higher up, as we say. As president of the university, he is his own man, he takes orders from no one, not even the US president. If institutional independence and academic freedom mean anything, they mean at least this.
The president-designate of Lingnan, Mr. Cheng, said at the event that the Central authorities were not his boss, but Mr. Bernard Chan, the council chairman, was. That was on the record. Whether Mr. Chan has had experience in higher learning, or is familiar with university operation, and so on, is immaterial here. The point is whether the president—any president—of a university should have a boss, or claim to have one. Mr. Cheng is a business professor, he knows very well what people understand to be a ‘boss’. To say that you are my boss is to say that at the end, you call the shots. For an institute of higher learning, if the president cannot be his own boss, the institute’s independence is compromised. If it be said that he didn’t quite mean it, he was only saying that half-jokingly so to speak. Well, people could question his decency and intelligence. That was not an occasion for cracking jokes, was it?
As for the students, they didn’t do it quite properly either. If we look at how other (i.e. foreign) universities select a president, we’ll very likely find that, representatives of the student union are not allowed in the board of governors (or trustees) meeting. Even when they are, they have no say in the selecting of a president, or any university official for that matter. Administration is not the students’ business. Unless there is evidence that the board is illegitimate, otherwise why should an 18 or 20 year-old youngster assume that he/she is wiser, more mature, and more experienced than any member of the board?
For one thing, the candidate’s political views should not be an issue. The question is only whether he can honestly and effectively execute the terms of office that are required of him. In a free society, everyone has a right to decide on what politics he adopts. You can blame him for poor performance as the head person—that remains to be seen, you can’t blame him for his ideology. You cannot rationally assume his ideology must interfere with his office.
Universal value should be upheld, and justice and democracy are part of that value. Yes. But do democratic principles apply everywhere, regardless? If democracy be the trumping value in this case, why not have the whole university community come together to select a president? We don’t need any board or council, just let all students vote to choose. Is that rational? Should a college dean be chosen thus? Should a department head be selected by students and not by departmental colleagues? Should students decide on whom to hire whenever there is a professorship to be filled?
There is, of course, the ‘stakeholders’ question. And the stakeholder is the person involved in the matter, or whose interests are ‘at stake’, as it were. Let’s say, we have a family of 5, the parents and 3 kids. The parents want to take the kids to try different kinds of food. The kids vote for McDonald’s. Every time. All 5 are stakeholders. Is it rational to go by the vote? Your grandmother is to hold a birthday party. The whole clan of over 30 persons is invited. All have to participate and eat at the dinner, so all are stakeholders. Do they vote to decide on where grandma’s party is to be held, or does grandma decide herself?
It was a ‘colourful’ event. Lingnan’ University was to select a new president, and the university council held a consultative meeting at which councillors were to choose a candidate. They endorsed Mr. Leonard Cheng in the face of student opposition. It was dramatic indeed. Behind all that noise, however, we should calm down, look at the facts, and ask ourselves some soul-searching questions. After all, it’s a university in our midst.
From statements of both sides where the public could well see, we may reflect on some issues that concern us all. Perhaps a note on American practice is in order. When an American takes up the presidency of a university, it’s a well-known ritual that he would give a speech to the university community. He would present his vision and his leadership that he believes could bring the school one step higher up, as we say. As president of the university, he is his own man, he takes orders from no one, not even the US president. If institutional independence and academic freedom mean anything, they mean at least this.
The president-designate of Lingnan, Mr. Cheng, said at the event that the Central authorities were not his boss, but Mr. Bernard Chan, the council chairman, was. That was on the record. Whether Mr. Chan has had experience in higher learning, or is familiar with university operation, and so on, is immaterial here. The point is whether the president—any president—of a university should have a boss, or claim to have one. Mr. Cheng is a business professor, he knows very well what people understand to be a ‘boss’. To say that you are my boss is to say that at the end, you call the shots. For an institute of higher learning, if the president cannot be his own boss, the institute’s independence is compromised. If it be said that he didn’t quite mean it, he was only saying that half-jokingly so to speak. Well, people could question his decency and intelligence. That was not an occasion for cracking jokes, was it?
As for the students, they didn’t do it quite properly either. If we look at how other (i.e. foreign) universities select a president, we’ll very likely find that, representatives of the student union are not allowed in the board of governors (or trustees) meeting. Even when they are, they have no say in the selecting of a president, or any university official for that matter. Administration is not the students’ business. Unless there is evidence that the board is illegitimate, otherwise why should an 18 or 20 year-old youngster assume that he/she is wiser, more mature, and more experienced than any member of the board?
For one thing, the candidate’s political views should not be an issue. The question is only whether he can honestly and effectively execute the terms of office that are required of him. In a free society, everyone has a right to decide on what politics he adopts. You can blame him for poor performance as the head person—that remains to be seen, you can’t blame him for his ideology. You cannot rationally assume his ideology must interfere with his office.
Universal value should be upheld, and justice and democracy are part of that value. Yes. But do democratic principles apply everywhere, regardless? If democracy be the trumping value in this case, why not have the whole university community come together to select a president? We don’t need any board or council, just let all students vote to choose. Is that rational? Should a college dean be chosen thus? Should a department head be selected by students and not by departmental colleagues? Should students decide on whom to hire whenever there is a professorship to be filled?
There is, of course, the ‘stakeholders’ question. And the stakeholder is the person involved in the matter, or whose interests are ‘at stake’, as it were. Let’s say, we have a family of 5, the parents and 3 kids. The parents want to take the kids to try different kinds of food. The kids vote for McDonald’s. Every time. All 5 are stakeholders. Is it rational to go by the vote? Your grandmother is to hold a birthday party. The whole clan of over 30 persons is invited. All have to participate and eat at the dinner, so all are stakeholders. Do they vote to decide on where grandma’s party is to be held, or does grandma decide herself?
2013-06-03
What Is Liberal Education Anyway?
The term studia humanitatis may be
unfamiliar to most people. What about artes
liberalis, the mediaeval name for liberal arts? At least it ‘looks’ familiar. It means the arts (i.e. learning) that were
appropriate for a free man (in the classical Greek sense: a man who is not a
slave). That is the opposite of artes
mechanicae, a vocational training that prepared young men to become
weavers, blacksmiths, nevigators, etc.
At the time, the liberal arts were not aiming at gaining a livelihood
but for further study of law, theology, and medicine.
If that is not modern enough, we
may go to Webster’s Third. Under
the heading of Liberal Arts, it says ‘of, belonging to, or befitting a man of
free birth, also, of, belonging to, or befitting one that is a gentleman in
social rank.’ If that did not suffice,
try another entry: ‘the studies especially in a college or a university, that
are presumed to provide chiefly general knowledge and to develop the general intellectual
capacities…as opposed to professional, vocational or technical studies.’ That should give any common-sense person a
general idea on what liberal arts education is and what it is not.
Perhaps the staunchest advocate
for liberal education in America before the mid-20th century was
Robert M. Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago. The world got to know about the ‘Great Books
Project’ under his leadership as well as that of Mortimer Adler, an editor of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For
Hutchins, liberal, from liberalis (from which the English word liberty
is derived), means free; so liberal education is a ‘free education’, or ‘an
education that can set you free.’ If the
question is: Free from what? His reply
is: Free from ignorance. So the most
succinct statement of liberal education is:
it is an education that sets you free from ignorance. How can we achieve that? We learn from the past experience and wisdom
of the great minds of over 2,000 years in history. Hence the ‘Great Books’.
Why is liberal education not
widely publicized, if it is such a good thing?
Very little has been written about those institutions and their
programmes, especially in this part of the world. Perhaps it is because they are small in size
and number; perhaps their commitment to college (i.e. undergraduate) teaching
is not in the main stream; perhaps research laboratories, prestigious
professional and graduate schools, famous scholars are all at well-known
universities; perhaps most of us only care for the big names: Harvard,
Princeton, Berkeley, and know little if at all about Williams, Swarthmore,
Pomona. Given our exposure or the lack
thereof, and our faith in the marketability of ‘big-name graduates’, no wonder
we do not know what we have missed.
So what is a liberal arts
college like? In one stroke Hugh
Hawkins, retired professor from Amherst—one of the best colleges in that
category—describes thus, ‘a four-year institution of higher education, focusing
its attention on candidates for the B. A. degree who are generally between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-one, an institution resistant to highly specific
vocational preparation and insisting on a considerable breadth of studies…[that
hopes to develop] interests and capabilities that will enrich both the
individual learner and future communities.’
From this brief introduction, we
may gather a few common characteristics among liberal education
institutions. They are small,
residential, not located in urban area for the most part. They devote themselves primarily to the
education of the undergraduates. They
usually have a small student body; as a result, students get to know each other
and faculty members inside as well as outside of the classroom. Because classes are small, and because
instruction is mostly provided by professors themselves, and not by teaching
assistants, frequent interaction between students, between students and
teachers, is a normal state of affairs.
That environment, and the
learning atmosphere it creates, can hardly be found in big universities with
huge campuses.
If we understand what
liberal arts education really is, and are honest with ourselves, then we have
to say there is nothing like that in our higher education today. The fact
that everybody uses the phrase 'liberal education' all the time does not mean
we have it. All nations on earth claim they have a rule of law in their
legal systems. Do they? Not only do we not have that kind of
training, our universities have shown no sign of any aspiration towards that
lofty goal. Lingnan was set up to be one. It did not make
it. Ask her former vice chancellor, who has just retired.
2013-04-29
Roots of liberal studies
This article first appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition on Apr 29, 2013 as "June 4 raises liberal studies issue".
The liberal studies exam in this year's Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination, under way until early next month, contained the previously taboo topic of the June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. It caught some by surprise. But then, a sense of bewilderment surrounded the whole idea of liberal education.
"How can liberal education be a course?" was a question many of us raised years ago. Isn't it a way of learning? A way of training? A thing that belongs to college (meaning undergraduate) education? How is it to be defined, anyway?
These are legitimate questions, and I do not propose to deal with them in one column. But I believe they are important to the future of this community, so I'll try to explain. But first, let me clarify the "state of confusion" we are facing today.
Part of the problem stems from the very term "liberal education" and its Chinese translation. The University of Hong Kong has a lib ed department and calls it tongshi in Putonghua. At Chinese University, the tong shi department is called "general education" in English. At the University of Science and Technology, they don't have a department, only a few electives taken as tongshi. At Lingnan University, the lib ed programme is called by a different, but appropriate name - boya. In Taiwan, it's called tongshi, but on the mainland, the term most often used is suzhi (literally, quality education).
Each university, therefore, has its own approach, and although each is doing its best under the present system, it's far from desirable. Lib ed is being defined arbitrarily because there is no consensus on what it is. What's more, it also tells us - so it seems - that most of us, including those in the higher education sector, don't know what lib ed really is. It's hard to blame them, though. Just a few decades ago, we had never heard of such a term.
Even after we have borrowed the concept from American higher education, we pay it only lip service. The phrase tongshi is high sounding, but the people who started these programmes at our colleges never received proper lib ed training themselves.
To have a better understanding of what it truly is, let's go back further to the roots of the story.
Modern liberal education, known as liberal arts education in the United States, is an American phenomenon, though its heritage comes from the Renaissance of 15th-century Europe. To bypass learning institutions controlled by the Roman Catholic church, secular scholars in Italy created studia humanitatis, which is Latin for the studies of human knowledge. The subjects were rhetoric, history, mathematics and astronomy, logic and philosophy, and Latin. For the next five centuries, knowledge of those subjects was the basis to judge whether a person was cultivated.
But classical culture was also involved, as people believed the works of philosophers Aristotle (ancient Greece) and Cicero (ancient Rome) were vital, as that's how one learned to read and write, and to have morality and wisdom. That's how they nurtured a people with "liberal" learning.
The liberal studies exam in this year's Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination, under way until early next month, contained the previously taboo topic of the June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. It caught some by surprise. But then, a sense of bewilderment surrounded the whole idea of liberal education.
"How can liberal education be a course?" was a question many of us raised years ago. Isn't it a way of learning? A way of training? A thing that belongs to college (meaning undergraduate) education? How is it to be defined, anyway?
These are legitimate questions, and I do not propose to deal with them in one column. But I believe they are important to the future of this community, so I'll try to explain. But first, let me clarify the "state of confusion" we are facing today.
Part of the problem stems from the very term "liberal education" and its Chinese translation. The University of Hong Kong has a lib ed department and calls it tongshi in Putonghua. At Chinese University, the tong shi department is called "general education" in English. At the University of Science and Technology, they don't have a department, only a few electives taken as tongshi. At Lingnan University, the lib ed programme is called by a different, but appropriate name - boya. In Taiwan, it's called tongshi, but on the mainland, the term most often used is suzhi (literally, quality education).
Each university, therefore, has its own approach, and although each is doing its best under the present system, it's far from desirable. Lib ed is being defined arbitrarily because there is no consensus on what it is. What's more, it also tells us - so it seems - that most of us, including those in the higher education sector, don't know what lib ed really is. It's hard to blame them, though. Just a few decades ago, we had never heard of such a term.
Even after we have borrowed the concept from American higher education, we pay it only lip service. The phrase tongshi is high sounding, but the people who started these programmes at our colleges never received proper lib ed training themselves.
To have a better understanding of what it truly is, let's go back further to the roots of the story.
Modern liberal education, known as liberal arts education in the United States, is an American phenomenon, though its heritage comes from the Renaissance of 15th-century Europe. To bypass learning institutions controlled by the Roman Catholic church, secular scholars in Italy created studia humanitatis, which is Latin for the studies of human knowledge. The subjects were rhetoric, history, mathematics and astronomy, logic and philosophy, and Latin. For the next five centuries, knowledge of those subjects was the basis to judge whether a person was cultivated.
But classical culture was also involved, as people believed the works of philosophers Aristotle (ancient Greece) and Cicero (ancient Rome) were vital, as that's how one learned to read and write, and to have morality and wisdom. That's how they nurtured a people with "liberal" learning.
2013-04-08
是因為背了
(載〈蘋果日報〉2013年04月08日論壇版)
日前，與出版社總編輯共膳。席間，談起他準備進幼稚園的兒子，在家中怎樣輕鬆地背誦唐詩。有沒有唸口簧成分？也許有。但何妨？我們小時候讀「三字經」，「千字文」，何曾明解？還不是日後才「反芻」，重新咀嚼的？如果幼時不記下，一天長大了，希望吐出重新理解，也辦不到的。
今天，不少父母認為，你要我的小孩背書，即是要他們「死記」，沒有教他們理解。讀書應該明理，不該死記。那是假定了背誦是囫圇吞棗，不經咀嚼的。使老師強制學生背書，又不給他們講解課文，那是老師的失職。很難想像，這是一般老師的作法。從「岳飛字鵬舉」到「臣本布衣躬耕於南陽」，有哪一課是老師不解課文的？
多年來，不少家長跟我說，他們不擔心兒女考試，卻不明白為什麼辭彙那麼貧乏，成語典故無法信手拿來，應用在作文上。我問：又不要背書，又不看課外書，終日與機為伍，你能怎樣？都無以對。
記得當年學文學導論，一位本科教授引經據典，莎翁十四行詩背出，那流利，那鏗鏘悅耳，教大家五體投地，佩服極了。後來他告我們，功力，是練出來的；能出口成文，因為他年輕時參加演劇，諸多詩文妙句，都靠牢記。不背何來？
有外國學成回來的教授，說詩人萬中無一，你要的資料，網上找尋十分便利，隨手一翻就到，何必浪費時間背誦？那是假設了千百年來的經典文章，詩詞歌賦，就像統計用的資料，只須查找，不必記憶的。
可文化傳承，尤其豐厚的文化傳統，並不是機械營運。一個社會，要百姓具有最起碼的運用和鑑賞能力，使他們有最基本的文化素養，就不能把活的遺產看作「一批資料」而已。
還有。背誦，不只能使人記得牢，更可使人明白文字韻律之美。就是最簡單的唐詩元曲，得琅琅上口，感覺全不一樣。你能背出馬致遠的《秋思》，你就知道什麼叫詩畫。中國文字音樂感特別強。不訓練背誦，怎樣捕捉它？
最愛用的例子，是「床前明月光」。告年輕同學：我給上句，你接下句，接對有獎。說「床前明月光」。差不多全班都爭着舉手，因為都接得上。我問：你何以接得上？然後人人明白。
是因為背了。
日前，與出版社總編輯共膳。席間，談起他準備進幼稚園的兒子，在家中怎樣輕鬆地背誦唐詩。有沒有唸口簧成分？也許有。但何妨？我們小時候讀「三字經」，「千字文」，何曾明解？還不是日後才「反芻」，重新咀嚼的？如果幼時不記下，一天長大了，希望吐出重新理解，也辦不到的。
今天，不少父母認為，你要我的小孩背書，即是要他們「死記」，沒有教他們理解。讀書應該明理，不該死記。那是假定了背誦是囫圇吞棗，不經咀嚼的。使老師強制學生背書，又不給他們講解課文，那是老師的失職。很難想像，這是一般老師的作法。從「岳飛字鵬舉」到「臣本布衣躬耕於南陽」，有哪一課是老師不解課文的？
多年來，不少家長跟我說，他們不擔心兒女考試，卻不明白為什麼辭彙那麼貧乏，成語典故無法信手拿來，應用在作文上。我問：又不要背書，又不看課外書，終日與機為伍，你能怎樣？都無以對。
記得當年學文學導論，一位本科教授引經據典，莎翁十四行詩背出，那流利，那鏗鏘悅耳，教大家五體投地，佩服極了。後來他告我們，功力，是練出來的；能出口成文，因為他年輕時參加演劇，諸多詩文妙句，都靠牢記。不背何來？
有外國學成回來的教授，說詩人萬中無一，你要的資料，網上找尋十分便利，隨手一翻就到，何必浪費時間背誦？那是假設了千百年來的經典文章，詩詞歌賦，就像統計用的資料，只須查找，不必記憶的。
可文化傳承，尤其豐厚的文化傳統，並不是機械營運。一個社會，要百姓具有最起碼的運用和鑑賞能力，使他們有最基本的文化素養，就不能把活的遺產看作「一批資料」而已。
還有。背誦，不只能使人記得牢，更可使人明白文字韻律之美。就是最簡單的唐詩元曲，得琅琅上口，感覺全不一樣。你能背出馬致遠的《秋思》，你就知道什麼叫詩畫。中國文字音樂感特別強。不訓練背誦，怎樣捕捉它？
最愛用的例子，是「床前明月光」。告年輕同學：我給上句，你接下句，接對有獎。說「床前明月光」。差不多全班都爭着舉手，因為都接得上。我問：你何以接得上？然後人人明白。
是因為背了。
2013-04-01
Edward Chen's liberal arts dream is still alive
(Printed on South China Morning Post, 1 April 2013)
More than a decade ago, Professor Edward Chen Kwan-yiu was appointed president of Lingnan University. In a press conference, he announced that Lingnan was to be a liberal arts college different from the others locally. Many people in the education field were excited.
Chen has since retired from that position and is now an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong. He probably didn't achieve his aim at Lingnan, at least in the eyes of those who do not believe in "outcome-based" evaluations to judge performance.
Almost a year and a half ago, Chen wrote a book review in which he not only told us what the author thought, but also what he himself thought.
He used a rhetorical title: "Why should we care about liberal arts education?" To say "why should we care" implies either that we don't care, or we don't care enough. So there's a lot for us to digest.
Structurally speaking, if we want a genuine liberal arts college, then we would have to build a small, residential and highly student-orientated institution.
The distinctive feature of that institution would be an emphasis not on professional/vocational training, but on the teaching and learning process.
That process leans heavily on a teaching-focused approach, which is regarded as more important than the content. Most of our universities today, of course, pay no attention to this.
According to Chen, interaction, interdisciplinary studies, intracurricular activities, and international horizon are the four I's that embody that process. Interactions between students and teachers in the pursuit of knowledge, inside and outside the classroom, are frequent. Student-professor relations are close.
Interdisciplinary courses offered as seminars are important - not just multidisciplinary, but cross-disciplinary. This is possible because class sizes are small and teachers are more dedicated. This is not easy in a large university, where professors work more like manufacturers than devoted nurturers.
In a small residential environment, student activities can be related to the curricula, and thereby provide experiential learning.
Small colleges can also engage students more easily in international exchange.
We can say that Chen's criteria have not been matched by any of our institutions. His dream lives on.
More than a decade ago, Professor Edward Chen Kwan-yiu was appointed president of Lingnan University. In a press conference, he announced that Lingnan was to be a liberal arts college different from the others locally. Many people in the education field were excited.
Chen has since retired from that position and is now an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong. He probably didn't achieve his aim at Lingnan, at least in the eyes of those who do not believe in "outcome-based" evaluations to judge performance.
Almost a year and a half ago, Chen wrote a book review in which he not only told us what the author thought, but also what he himself thought.
He used a rhetorical title: "Why should we care about liberal arts education?" To say "why should we care" implies either that we don't care, or we don't care enough. So there's a lot for us to digest.
Structurally speaking, if we want a genuine liberal arts college, then we would have to build a small, residential and highly student-orientated institution.
The distinctive feature of that institution would be an emphasis not on professional/vocational training, but on the teaching and learning process.
That process leans heavily on a teaching-focused approach, which is regarded as more important than the content. Most of our universities today, of course, pay no attention to this.
According to Chen, interaction, interdisciplinary studies, intracurricular activities, and international horizon are the four I's that embody that process. Interactions between students and teachers in the pursuit of knowledge, inside and outside the classroom, are frequent. Student-professor relations are close.
Interdisciplinary courses offered as seminars are important - not just multidisciplinary, but cross-disciplinary. This is possible because class sizes are small and teachers are more dedicated. This is not easy in a large university, where professors work more like manufacturers than devoted nurturers.
In a small residential environment, student activities can be related to the curricula, and thereby provide experiential learning.
Small colleges can also engage students more easily in international exchange.
We can say that Chen's criteria have not been matched by any of our institutions. His dream lives on.
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)