Author: Prof. Zhou Wengui
Ⅰ. Introduction
The world today is an opening world in which the tide of globalization develops rapidly. Different countries and nationalities are closely integrated in different forms of economic and cultural exchanges. Different types of economic cooperation and competition have become the theme in development of international economy. Economic competition among different countries is actually competition of education or talent competition. This situation objectively requires universities and colleges to cultivate hundreds and thousands of qualified talents adapting to desires of implementing international cooperation and competition. Only by doing so is a university or a college capable of winning the competition. Against such background it must be a life-line for all universities and colleges to elaborately foster education-running features and to fully improve education quality in terms of cultivating qualified talents who are characterized by a relatively higher comprehensive ability and can well adapt to need of labor market and requirement of social progress and economic development.
That kind of completion is actually painful and merciless generally following the law, “survival of the fitness”. Those universities and colleges accurately getting a clear understanding of competition situation, really recognize their respective comparative advantages, scientifically setting their education-running features and development targets, steadily and firmly march on toward those targets, and constantly making achievements and accumulating experiences in qualified talent cultivation could haughtily embrace a lot of real opportunities of construction and quickly drive on a track of sustainable development. While the others do not succeed in improving education quality have to receive a miserable result of losing the competition and finally they must not escape from the fate of being kicked out.
All objectives in this world realize their spiral development in a never break contradiction movement. For universities or colleges to cultivate qualified talents they are really facing different sorts of complex contradictions and diversified appeals from different groups of people in a society. Universities or colleges must enhance composure and be good at exactly grasping the principle contradiction from a seemingly complicated bundle of contradictions. They should endeavor to do everything well by focusing that key point of how to cultivate qualified talents.
In order to cultivate qualified talents so that a university or a college can take initiative and ultimately to win such competition and it can promote its construction and development, two traditional education modes, “extensive professionalism” and “parochial pragmatism”, should be abandoned without any hesitation.
Ⅱ. Why is it necessary to get rid of extensive professionalism and parochial pragmatism?
In the past long period after founding of the PRC universities and colleges in China had taken an education mode to foster technical elites or technical bureaucrats. The majority of universities and colleges implemented that traditional education mode of extensive professionalism under which students were registered in different majors when they were enrolled. Their study was rigidly restrained in learning professional knowledge of particular discipline. Finally, the students were ushered into some narrow “professional alleyways” in which they can only see something professional thus their academic view is extremely limited in a single discipline. The students are taught nothing but some professional knowledge since those “professional alleyways” are entirely separated from each other by thick and high “walls of academy”.
But we know the mission of an advanced higher learning education is to endow the students a relatively integrated knowledge structure, to help the students develop a critical thinking mode, and to foster the students’ comprehensive ability to analyze and to deal with the possible issues and problems on their path of life and in their future career. It should be absolutely decisive for modern higher learning education to lead the students up on a “knowledge highland” instead of ushering them into those narrow “professional alleyways” so that the students could develop a comparatively strong capability of flexibly applying what they have learned in class in order to give constructive solution for each issue or problem they might meet at present and in the future.
Figuratively speaking, whenever the students on such “knowledge highland” are overlooking the colorful appearance of the objective world, promptly and accurately discovering the major problems, straightly getting to the key points and having pertinently put forward workable proposals and resolutions to the issues and problems, those pitiful students losing themselves in books in the “professional alleyways” might probably taking a lot of troubles to search the existent resolutions from their beloved professional text books.
The extensive professionalism mode of higher learning education will inevitably reach the following result: the students’ knowledge structure is seriously distorted. Thus we possibly see that the students in specific major, for instance majors in economics and management, know less even nothing about philosophy, literature, art, history, mathematics, physics, and some other humanities and social science and natural science disciplines.
The students only with such a distorted knowledge structure must be very much perplexed and alarmed when they are facing a so complex real world after they graduate. It is no doubt that such a distorted single knowledge structure obviously cannot adapt to the complicated social demand. It’s hard to say higher learning education mode of extensive professionalism is rational. It must be resolutely abandoned.
Another traditional education mode that must be also resolutely abandoned is the parochial pragmatism. To take such education mode it must be a pity for us to see an inclination of parochial pragmatism in dealing with relation between theory and practice. Whenever to say theory must be combined with practice, that should have been a correct and true proposition in higher learning education, some people are bound up in putting their emphasis only on increasing the students’ operational skills. It seems that it would be good for the students in major of accounting to grasp the methods of making accounting records in specific accounting entries and statements, for those students in major of international business to be aware of how to use some documents in the overseas business activities, for those students in major of E-commerce to apply some sorts of Internet platform to market some products to the target consumers, so on and so forth.
We admit that to master those above mentioned operational skills should be helpful for the students. However, we know obviously combining theory closely with practice is never equal to parochial pragmatism!
It must be of much greater significance for the students in major of accounting to perfectly apply accounting principles into decision making process in enterprise management since that is indeed the key function of accounting, for those students in major of international business to profoundly foster an international vision and to closely grasp the basic laws and practices to do overseas business and to be experts in cross-culture communication and interchanges, for those students in major of E-commerce to thoroughly understand and recognize the general development tendency of information science and computer technologies, including hard-wares and soft-wares, in the “Internet +” era and thus they are capable of keeping up with the momentum of E-commerce, so on and so forth.
Undoubtedly, it is one of the most important principles that should be adhered in teaching process of majors in economics and management as well as in the other majors to closely combine theory with practice. The instructors are responsible to help the students form an initiative, creative and innovative thinking and master basic theory, fundamental knowledge and general skills in relevant disciplines. The students are required to be capable of applying what they have learned in class in observing, analyzing, thinking, discussing and dealing with the particular professional issues and problems. That is the true essence of combining theory with practice in higher learning education and talent cultivation.
Ⅲ. How to cultivate qualified talents?
If an agreement could be reached on getting rid of slipping the leash from extensive professionalism and parochial pragmatism it is possible for us to probe into how to cultivate qualified talents.
All roads lead to Rome. But there should be one straight road with the highest efficiency. In order to cultivate qualified talents different universities or colleges will take different strategic concepts and relevant approaches. However, in my view the answer is very much simple and straight: Learning languages should be the inevitable route for cultivating qualified talents.
(1) The students should earnestly learn philosophy language.
Philosophy is science dealing with mode of human thinking. The word philosophy comes from ancient Greek, “philosophia”. It is composed of two parts, “philo” and “sophia”. As a verb in Greek, “philo” means for “loving and pursuing”. While “sophia” is a noun and it means for “wisdom and intelligence”. Great ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras (580-500 BC) firstly created the terminology “philosophy” and he termed a “philosopher” as one loving and pursuing wisdom and intelligence. In view of Pythagoras and philosophers in his age there must be inherent laws for movement of the nature. It should be the responsibility of philosophers to reveal those laws by rational and critical thinking in accordance with rules of logic.
Basically at the same time with Pythagoras several ancient Chinese philosophers had emerged in Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC). Among them Laozi (571-471 BC), Confucius (551-479 BC), Motse (476-390 BC) and Zhuangzi (369-286 BC), were outstanding representatives. They constructed different schools of Chinese ancient philosophy trying to show the people how to understand the objective world. For instance, Laozi once stated in Chapter 42 of his Tao Teh Ching that “Tao gives birth to one, one to two, two to three, and three begets all things of the world”. The ancient Chinese philosophers simultaneously put their emphasis on the mode of thinking when they endeavored to explain the natural appearance of the world. For example, Confucius repeatedly admonished his students “Knowledge is recognizing what you know and what you don’t.” “Learning without thought means labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.” In a long history of more than 2500 years thoughts of those ancient Chinese philosophers had influenced thinking and behavior of the Chinese people from generation to generation.
Focusing on the original meaning for philosophy both in the western world and in China, it is very obvious that for the university students to be cultivated as qualified professionals it is important to learn different sorts of knowledge. However, they should develop a rigorous thinking habit and a critical thinking ability. Here the mode of thinking serves as the foundation. Suppose that the students could well master laws of thinking and realize the unification of thinking content and thinking mode they would be able to have an unhindered induction, deduction and reasoning by using specific language. As the result they could keep a cool head and straightly go to the key points of particular issues, comprehensively observe, discover and analyze anfractuous manifestations of those issues, and finally put forward effective approaches to deal with them.
(2) The students must be perfect enough to learn and to utilize language in science and specific academic field.
We know the human being acquires experiences from their production activities. The accumulation of those experiences gives birth of understanding and realization of the objective world. Reflection, induction, comprehension and abstraction make it possible for the human being to have different kinds of knowledge. After utilization and application in generations the knowledge has been testified as the truth widely received and practiced by the human being and gradually has been developed into knowledge systems in scientific sense. Continuous evolution and development of those knowledge systems finally bring about different academic disciplines.
Every discipline, with a relatively independent knowledge structure, has its own academic discourse system which consists of concepts, terminologies, theorems, axioms, principles, descriptions, and conclusions. A particular discipline with its specific research objective, focuses on specific issues and problems in a particular area either in natural science or in human and social science, and executes colorful research on those issues and problems by employing specific tools and approaches.
For cultivating qualified talents we firstly emphasize on providing the students with a wide and broad knowledge background. As a result the students should have constructed a comprehensive and mixed knowledge structure. However, the students will of course receive professional training in specific discipline. In the end we will reach a situation in which the general education and professional education could be perfectly integrated and they are actually complementary with each other.
For students in major of economics and management, for example, they should not only grasp fundamental concepts and terminologies, basic theories, general principles and conventional research approaches both in economics and management but also widen their knowledge vision by dabbling in the other related areas, philosophy, history, psychology, culture and literature, arts, sociology, mathematics, and etc..
In order to reach this goal, the students must endeavor to well learn and to be perfectly aware of particular academic discourse system in some specific academy, natural science or human and social science. With such kind of an appropriate knowledge structure, a wide and broad knowledge background together with a solid and excellent professional knowledge, the students are bound to become some sorts of intellectual generalists and specialists. That will be greatly helpful for the students to have their business development in their future career either in some specific professional area or in the other related areas.
(3) The students should learn their native language well.
Languages are important vehicles of communication of the human being. Any nationality has developed its own culture in a long history. All of those achievements of human civilization have been actually preserved and transferred from generation to generation by employing languages as carriers and media. In this sense, language itself is an important part of culture and civilization. Even we can say there is no culture and civilization without language.
Specific nationality should have developed its own language which has taken its shape, been passed and conventionally used in particular language environment. That is the native language of particular group of people living and procreating in a given geographical area of the world, named national country. In a long history of evolution each language has developed standard pronunciation and intonation for oral communication and a set of grammatical rules for speaking and writing. By using the native language people in a country can fluently express their ideas and freely communicate with each other.
Even though in an era in which we are living in a global village the younger generation will have more chances to contact with the foreigners or to probably have their future career in the other countries, it must be a logical corollary that the majority of the young people will live and have their business at the home country. Actually, they will engage in different business activities, they will have different occupations, and they will take different professional positions. To be successful in their future career, however, it must be absolutely decisive for them to collect and utilize all the necessary information and to employ all the possible resources via communication with the other people and institutions in order to do their business by using the native language.
For Chinese university students to well learn the native language, Chinese, has at least three implications: Firstly, the students with higher education should be fully aware and proud of Chinese splendid traditional culture and be capable of applying the essence of that culture in observing the objective world and in dealing with their business; Secondly, the students must be perfect in using the standard Chinese language in reading and writing and to have barrier-free oral communication with the other fellow countrymen by speaking the standard mandarin. That implies they must be able to speak mandarin in standard pronunciation and intonation on one hand and to write according to the basic grammatical rules of Chinese on the other hand; At the third, in particular occasions they should be capable of communicating with the specific group of people by using the dialects. For instance in Hong Kong, Macao, Guangzhou and the vast land of the South China as well as in China towns all over the world, in New York City, London, Paris, Toronto and Sydney, Cantonese, even though it is a dialect prevailing in Guangdong Province, is widely used especially in business and commerce.
(4) The students must well learn mathematical language.
Mathematics is science to research quantities, structures, changes, space relations and information exchanges. The word mathematics also comes from the ancient Greek “mathema”, which means for study, scholarship and science. The ancient Greek philosophers held mathematics as “the origin of philosophy” and “foundation of knowledge”. Mathematics has a specific system of professional terminologies, termed as mathematical language, which consists of a set of theorems, axioms and models exactly describing the existence and relationship among all things in the objective world. Just as Pythagoras said “All things are numbers”.
Preciseness is absolutely the most essential and fundamental characteristic of mathematics. In view of mathematicians any theoretic assumption, any research achievement, any conclusion, any statement or any description should not involuntarily become truth unless it can be exactly testified by using that rigorous mathematical language.
Another development in science of mathematics of great significance is the emergence and gradual maturity of a sub-discipline, applied mathematics, in line with a wide application of mathematics in the other scientific research areas, for instance in science, engineering, medical science, economics, management, and etc.. To some extent it can be said a deep integration of mathematics with those natural and social science disciplines has brought about profound revolutionary changes of the latter. Economics and management could be good examples of that development.
In almost all universities and colleges to have majors of economics and management the students must learn a compulsory course, econometrics. In this course the students are required to master principles and methods of establishing specific models by utilizing mathematical and statistical approaches and computer technologies based on fundamental theory of economics and management as well as the necessary panel data in order to have quantitative analysis of rational and logic relationship among the related variables, to reveal the objective operational laws of those variables, to uncover the particular relationship among them, and finally to provide the solid basis of decision making.
In this sense it could be appropriately concluded that without mathematics economists and managerial personnel would accomplish nothing! Instead of that the students in majors of economics and management will obtain benefits in all their life if they can learn mathematics well and be able to closely grasp and flexibly utilize the basic approaches of establishing mathematical models and general tools of mathematical proof and argument.
(5) The students should master the basic computer language.
From the middle of the twentieth century especially since 1970s the human society has gradually entered into a computer era. Based on Information Super High Way Program firstly initiated in the United States of America in the early of 1990s Internet technology has rapidly developed and matured. It is exactly a fact that the world is embracing the years of big data, cloud computing and “Internet +”. Now it could be said without exaggeration that the whole world has been covered by that Internet. Nobody will be an exception.
The widely utilized Internet has been subversively changed the mode of working and the living style of the people at all corners of the world. Every day right after getting up people are facing the mass information. For the university students, no matter what kind of professional occupations they will take after graduation, it should be critically necessary to be capable of proficiently utilizing the matured computer technology in collecting, screening and dealing with those mass information so that to reach the situation in which they can obtain the valuable, useful and true information to execute specific business and commercial activities.
In doing so the students must be very much aware of and closely grasp computer language and be perfect in applying the conventional hard-ware devices and soft-ware tools in their studying today and in their future career.
The so-called computer language stands for language used to realize information exchanges between the human being and computers. It is the medium by which the human being can transmit orders to computers which operate according to those orders and finish all the designed tasks. Taking such a special language system, which is composed of digits, characters and computer grammatical rules, makes it possible to write different programs which could be received and followed by computers.
We argue that the students, excluding those in majors of computer science and technology, should learn computer language well never means that they would be some sort of computer specialists. They do not need to be sophisticated in programming, designing computer hard-wares or developing computer soft-wares. They even need not to be capable of computer repairing. The only requirement for them is to skillfully use computer and the relevant database entries. That is just like we are all drivers. The major and fundamental implication of cars for us is a vehicle for riding instead of walking. Therefore, it is enough for us to skillfully drive according to the traffic rules and regulations concerned. It is generally not necessary for us, the common people, to know how to design and produce cars. Automobile producers, GM, Ford, Toyota and Honda will do. Whenever something wrong with our cars we usually do not need to repair but to send our cars to proficient engineers in professional maintenance shops.
(6) The students should master one or two foreign languages.
We are now living in an opening world in which a tendency of economic globalization is rapidly developing. Such tendency has profoundly changed the appearance of the world and life of all different generations. In the years of globalization all countries in different parts of the world and all peoples in different nationalities have been closely linked with each other. Different forms of cultural and economic interchanges among them have been rapidly developing and have really brought benefit for the ordinary people in different social classes. The “China Miracle” which has been made by China in the past three to four decades in its economic reform and opening up to the outside world since the end of 1970s should be the best example with great persuasion.
Against such social and economic background any country must be active and positive enough to participate into the process of economic globalization if it indeed does not want to be marginalized from the world economic system and if it indeed wants to be actually benefited from the bilateral and multilateral economic relationship with other countries. For the same token, any person, especially the younger generation, should directly face the challenges and opportunities going along with development of globalization. They also have to make their choice!
In the current time of globalization materials and information about the advanced scientific research achievements are usually taking international common language, English, as the carrier. In the internet, for example, the most websites are in English. Foreign language, as tool of communication, has got an ever-increasing significance and importance.
The qualified graduates from universities and colleges should assiduously foster an important ability. That is the students can directly use foreign languages to acquire knowledge, to collect information, and to deal with different business activities in their future career or the possible professional issues in particular academic area. That is also means the young people can construct their own independent ideas by an earnest analysis and a precise thinking based on a full collation and scientific systematization the related information from different sources by using foreign languages. In this way they are able to have an in-depth discussion, communication and exchange with the foreign experts and specialists about all possible issues and problems by using proficient foreign languages.
In general, it is absolutely a must for the young people in the years of globalization to grasp at least one or two foreign languages.
Ⅳ. The awkwardness troubling Chinese students in studying foreign language
The world today is an opening world, in which people clearly see the two trends, information technology revolution and economic globalization. These two trends are mutually interacting and have profoundly changed the mode of production and way of life of the human being finally making the whole world to become an ever closely integrated “global village”. With the forty-year economic reform and opening up China, as “the most excellent student” actively following the trend of globalization and fully integrating into the mainstream of the world economy, has created the world-renowned “China miracle”, developed into the world second largest economy and become one of the most important engines to lead and drive development of the world economy. On one hand, rapid growth of China’s national strength and steady rise of China’s international status delivers an inexhaustible “positive energy” into the world economic system and provides its trade partners an unprecedented development opportunities. On the other hand, China itself indeed has benefited a great deal in cooperation and exchanges with the rest of the world. Recently, China is strongly initiating the “B & R” (One Belt and One Road) construction in order to establish and strengthen partnerships connectivity with countries along the “B & R”, to build an all-directional, multi-tiered and complex connectivity network, and to achieve diversified, independent, balanced and sustainable development of countries along the “B & R”. Such a development will certainly construct a more compact and harmonious community of shared interests and future covering China and all the other relevant countries on the basis of mutual benefit and win-win result.
English, as the most important and widely used international language is playing an irreplaceable key mediation function in years of globalization in which the world is witnessing unprecedented deep and frequent social, economic, scientific, technological, and cultural interchanges among different countries and regions. Research of the famous England linguist and educator David Crystal shows that 85% of the major international organizations take English as official language, English takes at least 85% in the world movie market, and around 90% of academic research papers are published in English. According to Crystal’s estimation in 1975-2000 English population in the world increased from 1/5 to 1/3 of the total world population. At the present more than 2 billion people in the world speak English in their life and business every day. But in China only a small group of Chinese can smoothly speak English. Even less people can use English in particular professional areas. Such a situation is not commensurate with China’s status as a great power. It is required for China to make a national strategy to cultivate foreign language, especially English, talents.
However, we see a great contrast between that requirement and the current situation of English teaching and learning in China. In usual in China we see our students spend so many years on English study. They started to learn English even when they were in kindergartens. But, actually Chinese students are victims of the exam-oriented education mode and the elite education mode. They would be so good in different types of English examinations. But whenever it is required to have face to face communication with English speakers most of them suddenly fall into an awkward situation. They cannot understand what their partner say and cannot fluently, exactly and completely express what they themselves indeed wants to say. In one word we can only see a group of “the deaf and the dumb”. In other occasion some Chinese students actually can speak good English even with so beautiful intonation and standard pronunciation. But they are not capable of having an in-depth professional discussion just because they basically do not have enough knowledge accumulation in academies of natural science, humanities and social science. Whenever it is required to have communications with foreigners toward some specific issues and topics in particular academic areas it is so pity for us to see another group of “the deaf and the dumb”.
That situation absolutely is far from commensurate from China’s great country status and does not match Chinese national strategy. That must be completely turned around.
If we term teaching students to speak English in general communication occasions as some sort of the low level target of English study the high level target is of course determined as a free utilization of English as working language in observing, thinking, discussing, analyzing, studying and solving professional issues and problems in particular academies and professional business areas based on a comprehensive application of specific professional knowledge in a given major or discipline and the relevant professional knowledge of the other majors or disciplines concerned.
According to this standard we can firmly assert that situation in which students cannot freely express their ideas and have an in-depth discussion toward professional issues and problems is completely not adapted to development of the new era.
Ⅴ. Conclusion
On the whole, the two traditional education modes, extensive professionalism and parochial pragmatism, had prevailed in higher learning education in China for a long period. Their disadvantages are so obvious. Taking these two education modes it is impossible to cultivate qualified talents adapting to need of the new era. Therefore, these two modes must be abandoned without any hesitation in order to reach the goal of increasing the students’ comprehensive ability and to cultivate qualified talents on the basis of the accurate understanding of the mission of higher learning education.
Based on the agreement of getting rid of extensive professionalism and parochial pragmatism in a traditional higher learning education, we should have an accurate and rational understanding and recognition of higher learning education quality and of how to increase the comprehensive ability of the university students. By encouraging the university students to earnestly well learn the above-mentioned philosophy language, language in science and specific academic field, native language, foreign language, mathematical language and computer language it is hoped to cultivate the students into qualified talents characterized by a wide international vision, a valuable initiative, creative and innovative thinking mode, a broad knowledge background, a solid professional accomplishment, and a high and strong ability to have cross-culture communication and interchanges. Those talents, possessing such kinds of characteristics and surely being capable of direct participating international cooperation and competition, are bound to be more competitive and well received by the whole society.
November 19, 2016