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.

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?

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-20^th 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.

       With this, we may investigate further to see what is so unique about these institutions.

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.

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。

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.

骨肉相殘

(載〈蘋果日報〉2013年03月18日論壇版)

岳南的三部曲巨著，首部是《南渡》。在全書完卷前，他引了一個插曲。香港淪陷日寇手前一天，重慶派專機來，要接走滯港的一批重要人物，包括陳寅恪一家。結果不成事。據說是孔祥熙二小姐闖的禍；詳情到今天仍是個謎。可因為這樣，就牽涉上宋家的兩位姊姊，還有宋家上下人等的通信，又各自的觀點等。

收筆時，作者表示了自己的感慨：因為政見不同，結果幾年後，「大江大海」的來臨，使骨肉相殘。子文靄齡遠走北美，美齡赴台，慶齡留在新朝。隔海互轟；從此不相見。後來的事，大家都看到了：除慶齡外，其他的都客死他鄉。慶齡這位中華民國的國母，給「封」作中華人民共和國的名譽國家主席。歷史實在諷刺。岳君嘆道，遭此難堪下場的，又何止宋家呢！

固然不止宋家。起碼孫夫人蔣夫人沒有拿着手槍，「互射十二碼」，看誰先倒下。

近讀隋唐史，重溫「玄武門之變」。初中生大概都聽過這個名字，雖然內情都不了了。中學老師強調的，是開盛唐帝國的「貞觀之治」，其他的「中國的陰影」，只輕輕帶過。其實不好。呂思勉先生一代史家，可在他著的國史中，一字不提，只說可用《通鑑》作參考，但實情是不傳的。何故？不得而知。

按封建制度下，君位嫡長子繼承，是維持穩定的做法。不然的話，王子人眾，人人都要做太子，就麻煩了。但李世民一早覬覦帝位，已屬不妥。他要奪嫡，引起太子建成的戒心。建成和弟弟元吉聯手，份屬自然；但據史傳，他並無害世民之意。可世民卻聽信謀臣之計，認為不先下手為強，是無法登基的，就狠下了心。

玄武，是長安城北門，禁衞軍所在地。佔玄武，足以控京師。世民買通了守將，騙兄弟入朝。建成聽到風聲的，卻自恃，發覺中計要逃，太遲了。身為太子，給弟弟的伏兵亂箭射死。跟着世民與元吉拉弓互射，元吉也死。兄弟兩人的頭顱，都給割下。那還不止：他們王府中所有子弟，全給誅殺淨盡。

據說，事後世民入見父王（高祖李淵），「號慟良久」。據說，後來他主持祭事，一身白衣，站在城樓上「號哭」。然後「從善如流，知人善任」，把兄弟門下「收歸國有」。

我不知道，他是否我國古代最大的影帝；總在想：假使日後無「貞觀之治」，大家會怎樣評他？威震天下的天克汗？骨肉相殘的劊子手？