Text | Zhu Ronglin
The author is a regional planning consulting expert of the National Development and Reform Commission, the former director of the Shanghai Development Research Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council, a professor of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a professor and doctoral supervisor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the honorary dean of Jiaxing Development and Planning Institute.
Figure 1: Shanghai Jiaotong University Party Committee Commemoration of the Centenary of Comrade Deng Xuchu's Birth Forum
The German philosopher Hegel said: "Only when a nation has some concern for the sky can they have hope; a nation is only concerned with what is under its feet, and there is no future." ”
If this comment is applied to Deng Xuchu, the former party secretary and educator of Shanghai Jiaotong University, I think it is not exaggerated.
I am very grateful to the Party Committee of Shanghai Jiaotong University for holding a symposium to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Comrade Deng Xuchu, because nostalgia for his past is tantamount to designing the future of Jiaotong University. At that time, the reform of Jiaotong University was not only an exploration of the institutional changes of one school and one hospital, but also a bold attempt by the country and the nation after ten years of disasters to reflect on the "Cultural Revolution" and explore the road to strengthening the country and enriching the people.
Historical facts have proved that the enlightenment of the social patriarch to the times stems from his profound insight into reality.
It is precisely because Comrade Xuchu has a forward-looking outlook on the mainland's higher education facing the world and the future, leading the whole country to go abroad and importing international educational resources, that the first batch of transnational sister schools that lead domestic counterparts in the future, the research direction that leads the frontier of disciplines, and the new modes of governance such as the credit system and tutor system based on modern teaching concepts, and has accumulated a wide range of and profound international network resources of Jiaotong University with overseas alumni as the cornerstone, which in turn provides specimens for the institutional arrangements and policy design of mainland universities to internationalize.
Today's mainland is facing the "pushback" of major changes that have not been encountered in a hundred years, and the historical mission will put mainland colleges and universities in a new round of "tide standing" position, and the reform concept and innovative spirit of Jiaotong University in the past years will be given a new historical connotation.
The national characteristics of the theory of "forcing back" are derived from Mr. Lu Xun's "Scream": "When the skin whip of the Creator does not reach the backbone of China, China will always be such a China, and it will never change a single hair itself." ”
The Greek encyclopedic thinker Aristotle believed, "The ultimate value of life lies in awakening and thinking, not just existence."
In leading the reform of the university management system of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Mr. Deng Xuchu's reflection and awakening of traditional educational concepts, educational ideas and educational models manifested by Mr. Deng Xuchu did not belong only to his personal endowment, but to the collective wisdom of the leadership team of Shanghai Jiaotong University at that time, and its accumulation was a valuable asset shared by Shanghai Jiaotong University and even mainland universities.
In the spring of 1984, as the spring breeze of jiaotong university's successful reform blew all over the country, a boom of learning from a brother university came unexpectedly. Assigned by the school, I was ordered to go to Beijing, Hebei, Anhui, Shaanxi, Gansu and other places to make a tour report.
Before leaving, Comrade Xuchu called me to his office and reminded me without worry:
"You want your brother institutions to understand that the history of any school is actually the history of overcoming its own obstacles to development. The main obstacle to the current development of Jiaotong University is nothing else, but the system, which has led to the idea of reforming the management system. Therefore, it is by no means the whim of individuals, but the inevitable result of the action of the law of the development of education itself."
At that time, the reform of Jiaotong University was pushed to the cusp of public opinion, and there were two opinions and no consensus. Comrade Xuchu's reminder reflects his bitterness, that is, it is possible to distort the changes of the times in the normal university management system into a show of fame and reputation. Comrade Xuchu was obviously not worried about his personal honor and disgrace, but the future of Jiaotong University in the process of reform. He hoped to take my tour to explain to his colleagues the original intention of the reform of Jiaotong University.
In addition to the hope of winning widespread understanding in society, the reason why Comrade Xuchu repeatedly talked about the "original intention" of reform was to inspire his successors to consciously and actively try out his reform ideas and suggestions from the perspective of the development law of higher education itself.
Picture 2, Comrade Deng Xuchu (first from left) and Comrade Wang Zhen at the enlarged meeting of the school party committee discussing the reform of Jiaotong University
Those who abandon themselves cannot afford to support them, and those who are self-reliant cannot be defeated.
A philosopher once warned the world: "A country abandoned by the international community can strengthen itself, a country that has been polluted by politicians can be reborn, but a country trampled by its own people may be tearful and depressed." ”
Comrade Xuchu's words to me 38 years ago were aimed at awakening and reversing the tendency of the higher education front in the birthplace of the "Cultural Revolution" to ignore the "scars", the narcissistic status quo, and even the self-styled future.
Now that I think about it, this call sign of Xuchu in that year was like yesterday, and its reform strategy of focusing on the overall situation and starting from Jiaotong University was both bold and wise in the years when the ice-breaking journey was first launched. In the history of the development of Chinese universities, the reform of Shanghai Jiaotong University has been written into the "Government Work Report" of the Second Session of the Sixth National People's Congress for the first time in history, which is an indisputable historical conclusion.
Due to different status, different perspectives and different values, it is very normal for people to have different cognitions and judgments about the same thing, which is conducive to a comprehensive understanding of things and is in line with the basic views of "Behavioral Science".
But I have always believed that I should try not to artificially elevate one of these different views to the mainstream perspective, because it is inevitable that it will be biased.
I agree with a passage made by the French Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu in On the Spirit of the Law. He said: "Injustice to one person is a threat to everyone." Because, injustice to a person, what is shown is the logic of the system. This logic can be used to treat everyone, and no one can guarantee that they will be spared. ”
Looking at the history of Western countries to catch up later, the reason why they will be strong and surpass all the ancient civilizations in the world one by one comes from a kind of educational spirit of the university. Strictly speaking, Comrade Deng Xuchu is not an educational theorist and cannot fulfill the mission of the university from the perspective of the spirit of university education. Skeptics inside and outside the school are also demanding an explorer of school system reform from this perspective.
However, there is an interdependent relationship between the spirit of the university and the school management system.
As the famous scholar Chen Yinke said: "The most important thing in studying scholarship is to have free will and an independent spirit." This spirit of free will and independence is not unrelated to the modern university management system.
The school system advocated by Comrade Deng Xuchu is to respect the role of teaching laws and stimulate the enthusiasm of teachers as the main body of teaching, aiming to encourage schools to follow the philosophical giant Plato's proposal to let "students find the logic, mathematics, and geometry behind all things, and explore the harmonious order and law of all things from these abstract concepts and concepts." ”
In other words, the whole significance of Comrade Deng Xuchu's reform lies in the institutional soil for cultivating the spirit of modern universities. From Comrade Deng Xuchu's exploration of the reform of the management system of mainland colleges and universities, I thought of Lin Yutang. This famous modern Chinese writer, scholar, translator, linguist, and representative figure of the new Taoism was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice in 1940 and 1950.
He believes that there are two "word mines" in the world: one is the old mine and the other is the new mine. The old mine is in the book, and the new mine is in the language of ordinary people. Inferior artists dig for materials from old mines, while higher artists dig materials from new mines. There are also two mines in management and education in colleges and universities, the old mine exists in libraries and traditional textbooks around the world, while the new mine is scattered in the scattered data pile of folk practice, waiting for management masters to practice, to examine, to recognize.
Comrade Deng Xuchu was an outstanding representative figure among the mainland management masters at that time, and after decades of crawling and rolling in the old mines, he knew that it could not solve the leapfrog development of China's colleges and universities, so he decided to find another way to stimulate the inherent potential of Jiaotong University, and only then did he have the reform paradigm of the national colleges and universities in the 1980s.
It is no wonder that people cannot find Deng Xuchu's name in the list of "everyone" taken from the old mine, and they are very dismissive of the head who is called "educator". For a long time, in the minds of mainland scholars, educators must be full of foreign ink, gold glasses on a high frame, good at quoting scriptures, and accustomed to following the steps, which will be a scholar who rides an "old tank" to and from work, graduated from Yan'an "Shaanxi North Public School" in 1938, and Zhangkou Guangdong Kaiping dialect of a cloth?
The style and soul of a school is largely influenced by the head of the school. During the Republic of China period on the mainland, masters appeared frequently, all relying on the educational philosophy and standard of the heads of colleges and universities.
In September 1938, I was impressed by a small incident that Long Yun, then the chairman of Yunnan Province and had made great contributions to the establishment of the Southwest United University, when his favorite daughter applied for the Attached Middle School of Southwest Union University, she fell out of the list.
Long Yun asked the secretary general to go to the principal Mei Yiqi to dredge up, and the secretary general responded quietly: "I have inquired, and Mei Zufen, the daughter of principal Mei, has not been admitted." Long Yun was stunned, never mentioned this matter again, and let his daughter go to an ordinary middle school. At this point, I really understood President May's interpretation of the university: the university's logo is the master, not the building. I have a thorough understanding: what kind of principal, what kind of talent will be produced.
Figure 3, the author is thinking about the close shadow of life
Whenever the lights first went on, I watched from the east window of my office Comrade Xuchu dragging his tired body out of the gate of the General Office of Jiaotong University and cycling back to the Wanping Road Apartment in Shanghai after work, I always had an inexplicable thought in my chest.
I think that when an elderly person who is over the age of a flower armor has long been unable to extricate himself from the role of a social person entrusted by the mission of political life, he may wish to alternately experience the role of natural man, because it is the protector of your physical life. This kind of alternation is even one or two days, but Comrade Xuchu really does not have this opportunity, because every weekend is the best time interface for him to think about the work arrangements of the school for the next week.
If you have the opportunity to go to his house at this time, I guarantee that you will either see Comrade Xuchu looking for someone to talk about, or you will be making a "long-legged" phone call.
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