大学人文教育的理念、目标与模式

The Idea,Goal and Model of Humanity Education in Universities

中国大学人文教育的问题涉及到我国大学本科教育的转型问题,亦即从以往那种只注重专业教育而缺乏通识教育的本科培养模式,转向“以通识教育为基础的专业发展”的本科教育模式。文章首先提出中国大学人文教育所面临的七个主要问题,然后比较详细地讨论和分析了美国现代大学通识教育近百年的历程及其不同阶段,并指出美国通识教育的核心特点是以人文社会科学为重、采取深度阅读经典阅读的方式以及小班制的讨论课。在此基础上,作者指出了所谓哈佛模式的误导,认为我国通识教育的道路应该是在有限的学分时间限制下、精心设计少而精的几门“共同核心课程”作为第一步。文章最后强调：中国大学通识教育课程的中心任务是要把从民国以来断裂的文化传统重新作现代整理,走“中西并举”的道路,以此逐渐形成我们大学的“核心课程”传统,使中国大学成为中国文明的担纲者。

Humanity education in Chinese universities concerns a transformation in the Chinese undergrad- uate education,from a model of focusing only on specialty education without general education to a model of“specialty education on the basis of general education”.This article first raises 7 problems in the humanity education in Chinese universities,before discussing the historical de- velopment of the general education in the U.S.modern universities in the past century.The ar- ticle points out that the key feature of the U.S.general education is attaching great importance to humanity studies and social sciences,through reading classics in depth by way of small dis- cussion groups.Based on this argument,the author points out that the so-called“Harvard Mod- el”is rather misleading to Chinese universities.The Chinese way of implementing general edu- cation should be to design a small number of highly selected“common core courses”within the limited credits as the first step.Finally,the article emphasizes that the central task of general education in Chinese universities should be to modernize the disrupted cultural tradition since early 20th century,and to“combine the Chinese and Western traditions”.In this way,the Chi- nese university can form a“core courses”tradition,in order to enable the Chinese universities to shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding Chinese civilization.