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Shocked to hear that Mr. Cheng Youxin passed away, the past emerged when he was sad, and a text was abrupt in a trance to comfort Mr. in the spirit of the sky.
I have never listened to his lectures, nor have I been a student of him, but I first "met" him from reading his "Comparative Education Course", and the understanding of the dispute between academics and teachers, and the fact that a master's degree is a transitional degree still echoes in my mind. Later, when I went to Beijing Normal University (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Normal University") to study, I had the opportunity to contact him. During the master's degree, I went to the doctoral forum organized by Mr. Cheng Youxin and Mr. Sun Xiting whenever I had the opportunity. At that time, most of the people who participated in the forum, such as Lao Kaisheng, Zhang Binxian, Xiao Chuan, Tan Chuanbao, Zhou Zuoyu, Hong Chengwen, Mao Yaqing, Chu Hongqi, Shi Zhongying, etc., are now leaders in the field of education. At that time, I didn't know the height of the sky, and with the spirit of a newborn calf that was not afraid of tigers, I believed that everyone in the academic world was equal, and occasionally I had the courage to speak out and raise some questions such as "how is education possible" and "who is the master of the university". Rather than ignoring me because I was a master's student, he smiled and repeated my questions and asked everyone to discuss them, which encouraged me. Over the years, education and research have made great progress, but I still miss the naïve, innocent, ignorant and fearless days of my student days, and the era when I was penniless but full of ideals. I used to think that the academic world has always been like this, but now I understand that the reason why the education discipline of Beijing Normal University can have a brilliant era is because there are a group of heavy, open and tolerant masters like Mr.
Mr. is a native of Wenshui, Shanxi. Wenshui borders my hometown of Pingyao, and I lived with my grandmother in Wenshui as a teenager. Therefore, every time I hear Mr.'s accent, I feel very kind. Mr. once told me that the old county seat of Wenshui is called Phoenix City, which is comparable to the ancient city of Pingyao before it was removed. When I was studying for my Ph.D., my husband retired to serve as the director of the Education Committee of the Association of Old Professors. In 2001, my husband went to Shenzhen to participate in the demonstration of a new school, and wanted to bring a student to assist, and it happened that I had a background in school management, and I was fortunate to be selected to study for a doctorate in the School of Economics. At that time, the transportation was not as developed as it is now, so we first took the train to Guangzhou. On the way, Mr. forgot the password of the suitcase, I didn't know how to help for a while, I only wanted to think of a way after arriving in Guangzhou, and Mr. actually opened the box through trial and error, which made me admire Mr.'s wisdom even more. Along the way, my husband and I talked a lot, and when I talked about my past studies at the Lenin Pedagogical Institute in Moscow, I felt that although China and the Soviet Union have the same social system, their cultural traditions are very different, and the actual operation of education and society, as well as people's lifestyles, are also quite different.
He is one of the "Five Tiger Generals" of the Department of Education of Beijing Normal University, and the only scholar who received an associate doctorate degree in the Soviet Union. In the 80s of the 20th century, he published three high-level papers in Chinese Social Sciences, discussing the relationship between education and production and labor, the status of intellectuals, and the characteristics and essence of modern education. Such academic achievements and influence are unprecedented in the domestic education circles, and in terms of the level of publications, there are few people in the domestic education circles who can compare with him.
He advocated that "reading is not too much" and "there must be articles and works that can be passed down to the world". My husband once told me that during his stay in the Soviet Union, he worked Das Kapital, and this painstaking work laid a good foundation for him in social sciences, and he was able to look at education beyond education. At that time, there was a group of scholars who seriously studied Das Kapital, and my doctoral supervisor, Professor Wang Shanmai, was one of them, and he told us that Japanese society and academia were greatly influenced by Marxism, so the gap between the rich and the poor in society was relatively small. At that time, due to the constraints of conditions, the classics that could be read were far less abundant than now, but the gentlemen really loved scholarship and worked the reading of classics. Once, I went to audit the doctoral dissertation defense in the Department of History. The dissertation, entitled "A Study of Cynicism in Ancient Greece and Rome," discusses why the ideal society was never realized. I was struck by the recitation of excerpts from Hume's "On Human Nature" and Rousseau's "On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality" by several old gentlemen of the defense committee. I am ashamed to think that I am now so busy with projects and assessments that I can't even remember the last time I had a conversation with a great mind in the dead of night.
Mr. came to work in the Department of Education of Beijing Normal University in 1979, and compared with other gentlemen, he is both a latecomer and an outsider. Although he has the highest academic qualifications and no need to say much about his knowledge, he is relatively late in obtaining doctoral enrollment qualifications, and only Professor Xiao Chuan is a close doctoral student. At that time, the personnel department of the school ignored the actual situation and treated the aged professors blankly, which made the gentlemen uneasy. It is not uncommon for policymakers to take into account the specifics of each discipline by considering the development of disciplines, and policymakers often think about the macro level. Of course, as a senior intellectual who stayed in the Soviet Union and obtained an associate doctorate, Beijing Normal University also cared for Mr. Cheng, and Mr. Cheng was arranged to live next to Mr. Qigong in the Little Red Building.
Mr. is not only highly educated, but also has a happy family, Mr. and his wife love each other, and the son is quite accomplished. My husband's lover suffers from congenital heart disease, but he still ventures to give birth to his son, Cheng Hui. My husband's lover told me that Cheng Hui was delivered by Dr. Lin Qiaozhi from Peking Union Medical College Hospital. Of course, my lover also occasionally complained about Mr., thinking that Mr. was "dirty" - he couldn't dance when he came back from Liuyang. Although he can't dance, he thinks freely, and even young people often feel that he is the conservative in front of him. In his later years, he worked hard to learn typing, but the standardized Hanyu Pinyin scheme was only available in 1958, and to learn typing, he first had to learn Hanyu Pinyin, which was not easy for his generation.
Influenced by his grandfather, Cheng Hui liked calligraphy and painting since he was a child, and went to the United States to study when he grew up. Mr. Cheng and his lover lived in California in the United States in their later years, during which they occasionally returned. My husband is not hearing as well as he used to be, and he is still very concerned about my personal life and academic development. When I was a student, I was a well-known "poor family" when I was old and alone, and now I am married and have children, and I am crawling in the academic world, and I am getting more and more nostalgic as I get older. In this world, there are not many people we can know and understand, and even fewer of them are worth staying and remembering, and it is an unavoidable fate to learn and interact with senior masters like Mr. I would like to use this article to remember Mr. Cheng who drove the crane to the west!
The content of this article is from the 4th issue of China Teacher magazine in 2024.
The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Faculty of Education of Beijing Normal University
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Supervisor: Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of ChinaSponsored: Beijing Normal University Publishing: Beijing Normal University Publishing GroupEditor: Editorial Department of "Chinese Teacher" Submission email: [email protected] Email subject: name + author's affiliation + submission column + manuscript title