Compared to the 1980s, a landscape on campus was that many graduate students called their supervisors "bosses" rather than "sirs." From the background of the times, this commercial title is called on campus, perhaps influenced by the tide of "all people are businessmen" in the early 1990s. At that time, didn't universities scramble to "break the wall and open a store"? And "boss", as the most respected and most conspicuous title, is used by graduate students to call their mentors, perhaps with some respect.
However, this situation is no longer there today, but the name "boss" is still heard, the reason is not in society, but in the role of the mentor himself has changed. After all, what has long been ignored is that although too many topics and academic works in today's academic circles are signed by supervisors, the actual finishers are graduate students, so the replacement of "sir" by "boss" is not just a joke of students, but the nature of employment/employment, purchase/sale in the teacher-student relationship.
Professors in the 1920s and 1930s were also called "bosses" by students, but that was only for a few big-name professors who had prestige and status in society, such as Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang, Fu Sinian and others. Mr. Wang Zhonghan recalled: In the early 1970s, he was seconded to the Zhonghua Bookstore to participate in the collation of the punctuation of the "Qing History Draft", Gu Jiegang was the editor-in-chief of the "Twenty-Four History", once visited everyone at the bookstore, someone introduced him to Mr. Gu, and Mr. Gu said: "No need to introduce, we are old guys!" It means that when Mr. Wang was studying at Yenching University in the 1930s, he took two courses on Spring and Autumn History and Warring States History taught by Mr. Gu, and had a teacher-student relationship (Wang Zhonghan: "Me and < History Manuscript> and the > of the history of the < Qing Dynasty", "Xuelin Chunqiu", the first edition of "Xuelin Spring and Autumn", page 502 of the second volume).
In fact, the word "old guy" here shows that although there were also students in the teacher-student relationship at that time who collected materials for Mr. and did teaching and auxiliary work, the nature was like the east guy in traditional society - the owner funded, the guy contributed, worked together, and the interests were equal. At that time, Luo Ergang threw himself under Hu Shimen after graduating from Shanghai China Public School, initially to help transcribe Mr. Tiehua's posthumous collection, eat and live in Hu Shi's home, and be taught by him to be unspeakable, what made Luo Shi most grateful was that Hu Shi always introduced him whenever a guest visited him in order to maintain the self-esteem of a young man, and praised him a sentence or two. Sometimes, when a special banquet is held at home, the cousin is notified in advance to invite him to be a guest and let him play happily for a day outside (Luo Ergang: The Five Years of the Shimen, p. 18). And this has long been like a world apart today, so there is no direct inheritance relationship between this "boss" and his "boss".
Yenching University (Source: China Digital Bookstore Library)
This change is probably consistent with the development of modernity. The modern university established at the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, unlike the monasteries that also carried out intellectual activities from the beginning, did not rely on the donations or real estate of believers to maintain, but operated according to the buying and selling principles of the market economy, and the teacher-student relationship was naturally no exception.
By the time of Adam Smith, the initial stage of capitalist development in the eighteenth century, the income of university professors was directly linked to the number of students attending lectures. What bothers professors the most is said to be that too many students pay tuition in counterfeit or underserved currency. In order to reduce losses, even the great chemist Blake, when teaching chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, had to place a balance on the podium, and after receiving the tuition, he weighed the weight of the currency one by one, while explaining: "For the new students, I have to call them coins, because there are many students who listen to the lectures with insufficient coins, and if they do not deal with them in this way, they will cheat me of a lot of money every year" (John Ray: "Adam Smith's Biography", translated by Hu Qilin et al., The Commercial Press, 1983 edition).
Of course, the university tutors in today's developed countries have long been less expensive than Adam Smith's time, but in the generally implemented subject system, graduate students in the laboratory as mentors of the project, or in the library to find information for the tutor, the results by the tutor signature, graduate students receive bursaries, scholarships and degrees, which is more like modern enterprises, especially in high-tech enterprises in the boss and employees, the relationship is so simple that both sides can directly use each other as a tool to achieve their own goals. Students no longer have to use deception to deliver counterfeit or insufficient amounts of money, and teachers no longer have to set up balances on the podium. From this point of view, the replacement of "sir" by "boss" reflects the inevitable logic of the market economy to reorganize all interpersonal relations.
18th century European university
According to Marx, when everything can be exchanged, those professions that have been revered and awe-inspiring in history will lose their former aura, and teachers should naturally be included. From the perspective of traditional Chinese, this means that "the master's way is not passed on for a long time."
After all, in historical China, the relationship between teachers and students was positioned and expressed by the "teacher's way", and the significance was that from the aspect of the teacher, he was earnest and seductive, and tireless; from the aspect of life, he was diligent and inquisitive, and he was determined to learn. In the pre-Qin Dynasty, Tang Shi Xiaochen, King Wen, Wu Wang, Lü Wang, Zhou Gongdan, Confucius consulted officials Yu Tanzi, visited Le Yu Canghong, learned the piano in Shi Huan, asked For The Gifts to the Old Man, retired to practice "Poems", "Books", "Rituals", and "Music", and the disciples were numerous and far away.
These are all used in the spirit of Chinese culture as a model of respect for teachers and eagerness to learn, and will be taught to future generations. The study of the two Han Dynasties is the most important "teacher's way", if "Swen has a tradition, scholars have a teacher" will certainly be praised by the times, and the teacher-student relationship has also been given the new meaning of "keeping learning without losing the teacher's method". During the reign of Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty, Kuang Heng, who was known for his poetry, was appointed as the head of taichang for his archery, and was later transferred from Jingshi to supplement ping (southwest of present-day Pingyuan County, Shandong), and the scholars of Jingshi thought that his departure would cause academic losses, and they wrote to the imperial court to request that chengsheng be taken back, on the grounds that "Heng Jingjing is a master, and it is said that there is a teacher, which can be viewed" (Hanshu Kuangheng Biography, vol. 81).
At the time of Han Yu in the Tang Dynasty, although people benefited from the teacher, he dared to brave the world and write the article "The Sayings of the Teacher", emphasizing "My Teacher Daoye", positioning the teacher-student relationship on the inheritance and development of the cultural spirit.
Evening Laughing Hall Painting Biography - Han Wengong (Han Yu) (Source: China Digital Bookstore Photo Library)
Han Yu's influence is undoubtedly far-reaching. Mr. Chen Yinke, in his article "On Han Yu", compared it with the contemporaries Bai Juyi and Yuan Shu, and believed that at that time, the works of Bai and Yuan were more widely disseminated than Han Yu, and han Yu's officials were lower than Yuan, and their lifespan was shorter than Bai's, and after his death, those who continued their literature continued to be in the world, and although the wind of Yuan and Bai was still circulating, it was not cut off, but compared with Han Yue, it was not the same as Han Yue, because "his life reward was to advance later, to open up to study, which was not done by other ancient literary activists, or occasionally did not specialize, so' HanMen was thus established, and Hanxue was also circulated for this reason" ("The First Edition of the Jin Mingguan Series", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1980 edition, p. 296).
But then again, Han Yu may have been able to do so because he believed more in the way of learning than "teaching the book and learning the reader.". As for the word "learning", an American scholar who tried to understand Qian Mu's inner world believes that there is no relative word in English that can be translated (Deng Erlin: Qian Mu and the World of Qifangqiao, Social Science Literature Publishing House, 1989 edition, p. 29), in fact, there is no exact corresponding word in modern Chinese.
If, according to Zhang Xuecheng, the study is "to explain the subtlety of the ancients, and to catch the people of the lower qi, in which the subtle can be used as a metaphor, but it is difficult for others to speak" ("Again and Zhengfu Papers", "New Edition of Literature and History tongyi", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1993 edition, p. 678), then it will certainly not be the teaching of knowledge in today's classroom, nor can it be resolved into many parameters such as teaching attitudes, teaching methods, teaching methods, and teaching methods, scoring and evaluating, and reporting to special organs for the evaluation of professional titles Its basic significance lies in the exchange of ideas and spirits between teachers and students in questioning and difficulties—in the words of Mr. Luo Ergang, it is as thick as a warm spring sun.
It is worth mentioning that in history, China's "Shi Dao" attached great importance to the "dignity of the Shi Dao". When Song Ruhu was slowly lecturing, in the middle of the summer, he would serve in the hall, and the gifts of The disciples of Master Yan, Xu Ji's first sight, the head was biased, and Mr. Hu shouted: "The head is straight!" "Accumulation is introspective. In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, Xu Qian lived in Dongyang Bahua Mountain (in present-day Jinhua, Zhejiang) to teach science, far and far away, You, Ji, Qi, Lu, and near Jing, Yang, Wu, and Yue, and scholars followed it. Shi Zai, who taught people, was also sincere and sincere, and exhausted inside and outside, but he did not teach people with the art of examination, and his explanation was: "This righteousness and profit are divided into different ways." Because of this, although qian has not been a lu forty years, "the people of the four directions are ashamed of not being able to reach the door, and those who have passed the squire over their country will be their family"(Yuan Shi Confucianism I, vol. 189). Therefore, "Shi Yan" lies more in "Dao Zun". According to today's understanding, there should be no relationship between teachers and students other than academics, especially the actual relationship of interests.
Qian Daxin, a great examiner of the Qing Dynasty, concentrated on writing and lecturing after middle age, and successively served as the president of Nanjing Zhongshan Academy, Songjiang Loudong Academy, and Suzhou Ziyang Academy, with more than 2,000 disciples. External elegance and internal customs, public and private. What the master asks for is for the disciple, li ye; preaching and solving puzzles, there is nothing. Shu Xiu's question, the day and night to forget. The disciple who borrows from the teacher is also the potential; questioning is difficult, there is nothing, today he has the ambition and tomorrow he will betray his teacher" ("On the Book of the Teacher" with Friends, "The Collected Writings of the Hidden Research Hall", vol. 33).
At the end of the private school in the Qing Dynasty, students saluted the teacher
Of course, the "teacher's way" in the spirit of traditional culture has many limitations. Fan Ye said very clearly when talking about the scholarship of the Eastern Han Dynasty, some scholars did not seek penetration because they were careful to abide by the teacher's teachings, and were keen on the dispute between the portal and the faction, resulting in "apprentices who worked in vain and did little work, and who were suspicious and mozheng" ("Later Han Shu Zheng Xuan Biography", vol. 35). In fact, what is more serious is the rejection of heretical ideas by the "Teacher's Tao", and even those like Chen Yinke who insist on academic freedom all their lives are inevitable.
According to Lu Jiandong's "The Last Twenty Years of Chen Yinke", in 1953, Mr. Chen Yinke was furious and said to Wang Ji, who had come to Sui to persuade him to return to the north: "You are not my student. One of the reasons for this was that Wang Joined the Political Party after the founding of the People's Republic of China and used the ideology prevailing at the time to study historiography. Judging from the specific historical context, this certainly reflects Chen Yinke's lofty sentiments as a generation of Guoxue masters who denigrate power and promote integrity; but this tone and willingness are probably not much substantively different from the reality at that time. But in any case, when a cultural value collapses, some good things in human nature will also disappear.
The Later Han Shu Ru Lin Biography records that the Eastern Han Dynasty scribe Ouyang She was imprisoned for the crime of embezzlement and bribery, and that more than a thousand people were mourning for him, to the point of self-inflicted hair (髡, the punishment of shaving their hair), of which the seventeen-year-old Pingyuan Lizhen, who was only seventeen years old, went to Hanoi to get Jia County (north of the Yellow River in present-day Henan, west of the Beijing-Han Railway), "self-ties, and wrote to ask for death" (Later Han Shu Ru Lin Biography, vol. 79). Although there are many such examples in China's history, during the Cultural Revolution, only Chen Yinke's student Liu Jie was alone. Jiang Tianshu's record is that when Liu Jie was escorted to the criticism meeting in place of the teacher, someone asked him how he felt, and replied: "I feel very honored to be criticized on behalf of the teacher" (Jiang Tianshu: "The Chronicle of Mr. Chen Yinke", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, p. 168).
The resilience of the Chinese cultural spirit is well known. Although , "the teachings of the tao have not been passed on for a long time", but in history, they have been constantly revived, and the fire has been passed on, until the 1920s and 1930s, it is still endless, and even in the 1980s, it may still be faintly recognizable, so the title of "boss" in the 1990s and the corresponding teacher-student relationship may not necessarily be the end of the traditional "teacher's way". Moreover, the real "boss" is only those who have the most academic resources in their hands and the least amount of learning, and for most ordinary teachers who are students, the title of "boss" has its name but no truth.
As an example, when I read a paper in a certain journal, the bottom page of the page contained the information provided by a certain teacher, and a certain guidance teacher's gratitude for the correction of the manuscript and the final text approval (Yang Xingmei: "The Efforts of the Nanjing Government to Ban Women's Foot Binding and Its Effectiveness", "Historical Research", No. 3, 1998), and the article was signed by the author alone, which could not help but make people feel that academia is still a business of Leaf Lantern Transmission and Winning Bottle Diarrhea in some places and some scholars. But I don't know if the author, who is still a graduate student, also calls his mentor "boss" in private; if so, what worries people is that if the teacher does not exist, the Tao will exist?