Did the Liberal Arts Education Experiment Fail in Chinese Universities?

From the author: "The cost of liberal arts education is high and does not prioritize economic returns. Students may face reduced short-term career competitiveness. However, the biggest surprise of Peking University’s Yuanpei Program is that it allows a curious young person to discover the diversity of values, aesthetics, and ideals."

Updated on December 17, 2015, 07:06

By Tian He, PhD in Chemical Biology from Rockefeller University, for the Financial Times Chinese Edition 

With the rising trend of overseas education in recent years, the concept of liberal arts education, represented by some elite American universities and liberal arts colleges, has gradually become known to Chinese people. In recent years, a number of well-known universities in China have also launched their own liberal arts education programs, such as Peking University’s Yuanpei College, Fudan University’s Residential College, and Zhejiang University’s Chu Kochen College.

So what is liberal arts education?

“Liberal arts education,” often referred to as “general education,” corresponds to the English term “Liberal Arts Education,” which is often misunderstood in Chinese as education in the humanities. In reality, “Liberal Arts” originates from the Latin “artes liberales,” meaning “the skills of free persons,” aiming to cultivate individuals capable of participating in public life. In medieval European universities, this education was summarized as the “seven liberal arts”: grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. Among them, the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was the core, while the quadrivium (geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music) were advanced courses. In contrast, professional or vocational education focuses on practical skills that directly apply to a career, regardless of whether the career is prestigious. Students who receive a liberal arts education can certainly choose to work in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, but an education specifically aimed at these goals is not a liberal arts education.

I attended Peking University’s Yuanpei College for my undergraduate studies, which was then called the “Yuanpei Experimental Class.” As the name suggests, Yuanpei was originally an experiment by Peking University to imitate elite American universities, intended to pave the way for implementing liberal arts education across the university. The admission brochure described Yuanpei’s features as general education in the early years, broad professional education in the later years, and students generally free to choose their major. In the first class, the dean urged us to remember four words: “君子不器” (A gentleman is not a tool). The liberal arts education philosophy of Yuanpei College undoubtedly had an exciting idealistic colour, but how big is the gap between ideal and reality?

Marginalization of General Education Courses

Whether it’s “general education” or “liberal arts,” the emphasis is on the breadth of knowledge. A common practice in Chinese universities when implementing liberal arts education is to require students to take courses outside their major. Peking University offers five categories of general elective courses covering mathematics and natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy and psychology, history, and languages, literature, and arts. Students must complete at least one course from each category to graduate. This approach partially references the course schedule of elite American universities, most notably the “core curriculum” for undergraduates at the University of Chicago. The core curriculum includes humanities, mathematics and natural sciences, and social sciences, emphasizing the Western classical tradition, classic readings, and critical writing. It is demanding and rigorous, not something students can easily pass with a little extra effort outside their major courses. Therefore, Chicago students typically focus entirely on their major courses starting in their third year. In contrast, a Peking University student needs to complete 140 credits to graduate, with only 16 credits from general elective courses, the rest being mandatory major courses, elective major courses, English courses, and political courses. In the early years, most of the students’ energy is consumed by major courses, and in the later years, they are busy with internships, job hunting, applying for overseas graduate schools, and writing their thesis. The effective teaching time in university is actually only three years. Peking University’s professors are highly dedicated to general elective courses, and many of them are leading scholars in their fields, but without the institutional guarantee of a core curriculum, general elective courses are at most an adjustment alongside major courses, and Yuanpei students do not receive any special treatment.

The depth of university courses is at least as important as their breadth. If the breadth of knowledge can be compensated by active self-reading, then the valuable qualities of clear, precise, careful, and coherent thinking are very difficult to develop without guidance. If professors teach superficially and students only skim the surface in class, the training effect on students is limited, whether it is a major course or a general elective course. Generally, students at top American universities need to complete three to four courses each semester, but each course comes with substantial assignments and readings, while Chinese university students typically need to study eight to ten courses in one semester. Chinese university students are not necessarily more diligent than their American peers, and doubling the number of courses can only compromise the quality of completion. Each semester, one or two general education courses can easily become formalistic.

From High School to University: Misconceptions in Language Teaching

 In the curriculum of Chinese universities, the marginalization of general education courses is not the most severe issue. The biggest deficiency in Chinese higher education is not that a math major’s curriculum lacks poetry appreciation, or that a Chinese literature major does not understand the laws of thermodynamics, but the lack of training in reading, writing, and logical reasoning.

In the Chinese education system, training in reading and writing is mainly arranged in the middle school stage. Middle school English courses are limited to basic language teaching, so in essence, only Chinese courses involve substantive reading and writing. In a certain sense, it can be said that middle school Chinese language teaching lays the foundation for the way people think and their intellectual habits in China. A major misconception in our Chinese language teaching is the emphasis on literary style far outweighs logical reasoning. Of course, Chinese language teachers should guide students to appreciate the beauty of words, but besides expression and aesthetics, students should also master how to use articles to seek knowledge, think, and debate. Chinese language textbooks in middle school include too many beautiful prose pieces like “Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng,” which are rich in imagery and rhythm, resulting in students spending a lot of time pondering poetic eyes and memorable sentences, but not learning how to read an article critically. Teachers show such reverence for the text, almost like preachers expounding the Bible. Texts are assumed to be perfect, even a punctuation mark might hold profound meaning. When I was in middle school, one of the texts was Lu Xun’s “On the Fall of the Leifeng Pagoda.” One of the key points in teaching this text was analyzing why the article ends with a period rather than an exclamation mark to reflect the author’s attitude. You must know that “On the Fall of the Leifeng Pagoda” is first and foremost an argumentative essay. No matter how ingenious the use of punctuation is, can it be more important than the ideological content of the article itself? Homework and exams repeatedly require students to analyze punctuation marks, but never guide students to think about the ethical principles underlying Lu Xun’s criticism of Fahai and whether his arguments are reasonable, which is truly missing the point.

Without learning to read articles, naturally, one cannot write articles, especially argumentative essays. When I went to university, I gradually realized that the argumentative methods taught by middle school Chinese language teachers were fraught with pitfalls, and it took considerable effort to break free from old habits.

For example, one of the most commonly taught methods of argumentation in middle school is the citation method. Unlike citations in academic literature, the “citation method” taught in middle school refers to quoting widely recognized common sense, famous sayings, aphorisms, and proverbs as evidence in arguments. This method of argumentation is deeply problematic. Firstly, what constitutes “widely recognized”? The world has believers and atheists; some believe in equality, while others think hierarchical systems are reasonable; some advocate violence, while others love peace. Generally speaking, a person only knows what they and certain specific groups believe, but it is unlikely that they know the common beliefs of all people. Secondly, the so-called “widely recognized” theories can also be wrong. For example, someone with racist views may genuinely believe that the superiority of their race is universally acknowledged. Students using the “citation method” often rely on reference books like “Anthology of Famous Quotes,” but why should the words of philosophers or experts necessarily add weight to an argument? In fact, a common logical fallacy is “appeal to authority.” Many people often ridicule “amateur scientists,” but isn’t this method of argumentation a continuation of the frequent “Confucius says” and “Marx says” found in middle school essays?

Although the above analysis focuses on middle school Chinese language teaching, the issues discussed persist into the university stage. If middle school teachers are pressured by standardized exams and have no energy to guide students, then universities continuing to turn a blind eye to this can only be described as dereliction of duty.

Chinese universities aiming to implement liberal arts education must break through resource bottlenecks and genuinely emphasize teaching. Furthermore, the high cost of liberal arts education and its lack of focus on economic returns mean that students may face reduced short-term career competitiveness, a reality that students from affluent families are more capable of bearing. Therefore, liberal arts education indeed presupposes economic development.

Given that we should not be overly optimistic about the development of liberal arts education in China, has the Yuanpei College experiment failed? Not necessarily.

The education at Peking University has indeed benefited me intellectually. The most enlightening course during my university years was a seemingly dull major course—Electromagnetism. Professor Chen Bingqian did not directly give us conclusions but recreated the development trajectory of electromagnetism: starting from nascent concepts and conjectures, what theories scientists proposed, and how the fierce competition among these theories stimulated the development of experimental and theoretical tools. This process naturally included failures and chaos, as well as moments of clarity. The physical formulas that now occupy less than a page in modern textbooks were actually refined through two centuries of work. Later, I chose to major in chemistry instead of physics, and at the doctoral stage, I transitioned to research related to biology. However, Professor Chen’s electromagnetism class was the first to make me vaguely realize that to master a theory, one must return to the origin of the problem, examine the sources and evolution of concepts, and analyze the critical empirical facts that prompted the establishment and transformation of the theory, rather than being satisfied with the accumulated existing knowledge. Later, when taking elective courses in history, art, and other humanities, I further understood that learning any discipline requires examining the history of knowledge development. In my view, this is one of the most important differences between high school and university learning.

Previously, Chinese students had to simultaneously select their university and major when filling out college entrance examination applications. Imagine an eighteen-year-old young person, only able to make a crucial life decision based on their own or their teacher’s partial understanding of universities, and the common competitive mindset in Chinese society pushing many young people towards a few popular majors under pressure from elders. Many students, even if they loathe their major, can only endure four years to obtain a diploma, which is very inhumane. Yuanpei allows students to choose their major through trial and error after entering university, meaning we need to answer these questions: What kind of person do I want to become? And does my ability match this goal? Yuanpei lacks a meticulously designed curriculum, instead forcing many students to face the consequences of each choice directly. The original intention of Peking University in establishing Yuanpei was actually to cultivate academic talents who can bridge disciplines, but the emergence of academic masters is undoubtedly a low-probability event. The biggest surprise Yuanpei brought to us “experimental subjects” was outside the classroom: in an environment more open than most professional faculties, a curious young person would naturally discover the diversity of values, aesthetics, and ideals. For students who have come through the one-dimensional evaluation system of college entrance exams or competitions, this is not an insignificant gain.

(Author: Tian He, PhD in Chemical Biology from Rockefeller University, currently engaged in research in New York. The article only represents the author’s views. Editor’s email: haolin.liu@ftchinese.com)