【Academic Archives】
Liu Fonian (1914-2001), educator. A native of Liling, Hunan. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy education of Wuhan University in 1935. In 1937, he studied abroad and studied for graduate studies at the University of London, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Paris (October 1938). In early 1940, he returned to China and successively served as an associate professor at The National Northwest University, a professor at the National Normal College (located in Hunan) and Jinan University. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he successively served as president of Shanghai Normal School and professor of Fudan University, professor, provost, vice president, president and honorary president of East China Normal University, member of the education group of the first and second discipline groups of the Degree Committee of the State Council, the first and second vice presidents of the China Education Society, the first vice president of the Shanghai Philosophical Society, the deputy editor of Cihai, and the encyclopedia of China. Editorial Board Member and Deputy Director of The Education Volume. He was elected as a deputy to the Fifth and Sixth National People's Congresses. He has been engaged in educational theory research and educational experiments all his life. His major works include Russell's Treatise (translation), Pedagogy (editor-in-chief), and Selected Writings on Education of Liu Fo Nian.
He is the compiler of the first socialist pedagogical textbook in New China, he is the second president of East China Normal University and the first principal after the reform and opening up, he is the founder of the construction of socialist pedagogical theory and discipline system, he is Liu Fonian - a famous educator and educational theorist in China, and the standard-bearer who integrated Chinese and Western educational theories to promote educational practice innovation after the reform and opening up.
A campus, half a century
In April 1914, Liu Fonian was born in Dalin Township, Liling County (now Liling City), Hunan Province, a scholarly xiangmendi, ranking "Nian", because his father immersed himself in Buddhism, so it was named "Year of Buddha". His father, Liu Youzhen, graduated from the Hunan Excellent Normal School in the first year of Xuantong, and participated in the "Nanshe" activity of the progressive literary society initiated by the League association and Liu Yazi. After the Xinhai Revolution, he participated in the founding of Changsha Daily. Liu Fo lost his mother at the age of 4 and began to study at the National Primary School in His hometown at the age of 6. Two years later, he went to Liquan Primary School in Liling County. He then transferred to Changsha to complete primary school. During this period, he studied books such as the Analects and Mencius with his father. In 1925, Liu Fonian was admitted to Changsha Mingde Middle School, a famous school in modern China. The founder, Hu Yuanyi, "decided to take education to save the country, cultivate intermediate social talents, and revitalize the nation as his mission", and the modern democratic revolutionary Huang Xing once taught here.
Four years later, Liu Fonian was admitted to the preparatory department of Wuhan University. During the two years of preparatory studies, he immersed himself in "Zuo Zhuan", "Lao Tzu", "Zhuangzi", as well as Korean and Du Shi, laid a solid foundation in Traditional Chinese studies, and began to read the works of Plato, Hume, Russell and other philosophers. In 1931, Liu Funian entered the Department of Philosophy and Education of Wuhan University for undergraduate studies, systematically studied the philosophical ideas of Rock, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, LaoZi, Zhuangzi and other Eastern and Western philosophers, and studied Dewey's "Democracy and Education", Gates's "Introduction to Education", Kandel's "Comparative Pedagogy", and the psychological theories of Sanddek, Koehler and others.
After graduating from university, Liu Fonian was admitted to Guangzhou Xuehai College, under the guidance of Dean Zhang Junjie, and continued to study Hegel and ancient Chinese dialectics. In October 1937, he studied philosophy at the University of London and the University of Cambridge. He then transferred to the University of Paris in France to study ancient Chinese dialectics. In the summer of 1940, he went to Berlin, Germany for a short-term educational investigation, and due to the turmoil of the times, he took the road back to China, and during his stay in Germany, he came into contact with relevant works of Marxism.
At a time when the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression was in a stalemate period, the domestic situation was difficult. In 1940, he went to Northwestern Union University as an associate professor to teach the history of philosophy. In September of the same year, he was appointed professor at the National Normal College, and the dean at the time was Liao Shicheng. Liu Fonian taught introductions to philosophy at the school, and since there was no suitable teaching material, he changed the introduction of philosophy to an introduction to science, introduced the principles of natural science, and derived from it Marxist materialist dialectics. In 1943, the Ministry of Education of the Nationalist Government secretly ordered the National Normal College to dismiss him. Liu Fonian had no choice but to return to Liling and taught English in middle school.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Liu Fonian came to Shanghai and participated in the Shanghai University Professors' Association to further study Marxism. In the autumn of the following year, he was hired by Jinan University to teach introductions to philosophy and philosophy of education. In the class of Introduction to Philosophy, he taught communism as an important school, actively propagated Marxist materialism and dialectics, and carried out academic research around social and educational issues, and wrote articles such as "Re-understanding of Dewey's Educational Thought", "Progressive Education and Democratic Politics", "Materialism and Education", and made great progress in politics and scholarship.
After the liberation of Shanghai, Liu Fonian threw himself into the tide of the construction of new China with full enthusiasm and served as a member of the Standing Committee and Secretary General of the School Affairs Committee of Jinan University. In August of the same year, Jinan University was discontinued, and Liu Fonian was appointed president of Shanghai Normal School, professor of Fudan University, and vice chairman of Shanghai Education Union.
In the spring of 1951, he participated in the preparation of East China Normal University (hereinafter referred to as "East China Normal University"), served as a standing committee member, and later served as the provost and head of the Department of Education of East China Normal University. From then until his death in 2001, Liu Fonian worked and lived on the campus of East China Normal University for 50 years.
In 1956, Liu Joined the Communist Party of China. A year later, he was appointed Vice President and Provost of East China Normal University. In August 1978, Liu Fonian was appointed president of East China Normal University.
In terms of teaching, Liu Fonian advocates the infiltration of arts and sciences and the cultivation of compound talents. The school explores general education, experiments with liberal arts and sciences and science literature in some departments, first in the 78th grade of liberal arts students to open higher mathematics, natural development history and other science courses, and then in some science departments to open university language, writing and other liberal arts courses. In terms of scientific research, Liu Fonian put forward the idea of paying close attention to key disciplines and identifying a number of high-level and distinctive key disciplines to promote the overall improvement of the level of running schools. In 1984, he was appointed Honorary President of East China Normal University.
It injected a new voice into the development of educational science in the 1960s
In the early 1960s, in order to improve the long-term backwardness of China's liberal arts textbooks, under the presidency of Zhou Yang, then deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, a number of backbone academic forces began to be organized nationwide to compile "sinicized" textbooks for humanities disciplines including literature, philosophy, history, and education.
At that time, the academic circles began to reflect on Dewey's educational theory and the practice of Kerov's educational thought in China, and criticized them extensively and profoundly, while many educational ideas and opinions on reform and development had not yet formed a unified understanding. As a result, pedagogy has become a key part of the entire liberal arts textbook. At that time, most of the editors-in-chief of liberal arts textbooks had been selected, but only the editor-in-chief of pedagogy had not yet been finalized. On February 19, 1961, Zhou Yang finally proposed to ask Liu Fonian to edit "Education" at a meeting of party secretaries of colleges and universities held in Shanghai.
This was completely unexpected for Liu Fonian, who had planned to deepen his cultivation in the field of educational intellectual history research in his early years. Moreover, it was required to complete the compilation of teaching materials within half a year to solve the urgent need for the vacancy of domestic educational textbooks, and Liu Fonian immediately said that if he did not conduct sufficient investigation and research and make empty comments, I am afraid it would be difficult to convince the public. Zhou Yang's reply is very clear: "First compile a book, the teaching materials are always 'good' first, and the teaching materials can be changed later." The number of words in the textbooks compiled at present should not be too large, and they are outline-style. ”
In this atmosphere of "only racing against the clock", Liu Fonian began to preside over the compilation of "Pedagogy". To this end, East China Normal University agreed that Liu Fonian would leave the administrative work, go all out to do a good job in compiling teaching materials, and dispatch key teachers of teaching and scientific research in pedagogy to form a writing team. The writing team went to Beijing to close the work to concentrate on the writing work. In order to get rid of the traditional trap of "policy data compilation", Liu Fonian and the writing team positioned the pedagogical textbooks to not only follow or not violate the current education policy, but also to keep the statements of educational theory at an appropriate distance from the policy, so that they are close to the professional research of education. Based on this positioning, he realized that the compilation of "Pedagogy" must break through the established box and face the basic problems of Chinese education. These questions can be roughly divided into four parts: the disciplinary status of pedagogy and its relationship with other basic disciplines; the theoretical nature of pedagogy; the pedagogical problem domain and its research objects; and the pedagogical research methods.
Less than half a year after his appointment, the "Outline of Teaching Pedagogy" led by Liu Fonian was completed. The following year, the discussion paper was also written. The first book of Pedagogy in New China consists of three parts: the first volume, the second volume and the appendix. The first volume covers 7 chapters, including "The Relationship between Education, Politics and Economy", "The Relationship between Education and Children's Physical and Mental Development", "Educational Aims and Educational Policies", and "School Education System"; the second volume includes 7 chapters, including "The Meaning, Tasks and Contents of Ideological Education", "The Process and Principles of Ideological Education", and "The Ways and Methods of Ideological Education"; while the appendix introduces education and economic development (supplemented by the 1979 edition), electrified education (supplemented by the 1979 edition), and aesthetic education. After the first draft of the textbook was completed, it was used for internal printing four times from 1962 to 1964, and was revised before each printing. In 1978, the "Pedagogy" was reprinted internally according to the needs of teaching, and it was officially published in 1979 under the name of "Shanghai Normal University "Education" Writing Group".
Written in 1963, "Pedagogy" is China's first socialist pedagogy textbook, which has changed the situation in which China continues to use or even copy Western pedagogical textbooks, re-overturns the framework formed by Kerov in the Soviet version of "Pedagogy" and the long-term habit of "policy compilation" of domestic pedagogical textbooks, and laid the basic framework and principles for the preparation of socialist pedagogical textbooks in New China.
As the editor-in-chief, in the process of compiling "Education", Liu Fonian broke through some ideological forbidden areas that had not yet been dabbled in at the time, put forward some valuable theoretical ideas, and injected a new voice into the development of educational science in the 1960s. For example, in the discussion on the nature of education, the problem of education is not completely superstructured is raised for the first time and affirms the independence of education itself, and it is also determined that "pedagogy mainly studies the laws of education work from the aspects of the relationship between education and social life, and the relationship between education and children's physical and mental development."
"The group of sages is the best", natural "peach and plum fragrance."
In 1977, Liu Fonian, then president of East China Normal University, went to find Wang Zhiliang. In those years, Wang Zhiliang was "busy" repairing air raid shelters, moving steel plates in small factories on the street, and carrying wood by the Huangpu River, and in the eyes of others, he was just a temporary worker who relied on the strength of his shares to support his family, but Liu Fonian knew that the person he was looking for was the translator who graduated from the first Batch of Russian majors at Peking University and insisted on translating Pushkin's famous work "Yevgeni Onegin" for more than 20 years.
When the principal came to the door, the situation of Wang Zhiliang's family was "tight". "Our family was so poor that we sold our beds, and our family of five slept on the floor, and that day I saw a pair of legs and then a man walk in." In an interview with the Journal of Literature in his early years, Wang Zhiliang said so. Liu Fonian invited Wang Zhiliang to teach at East China Normal University, and all the formalities were personally supervised by him, and gave the other party three choices: one was to teach in the department of Chinese, the second was to teach in the department of foreign languages, and the third was to go to his own department of education to engage in research on the history of foreign education. Wang Zhiliang did not hesitate to choose the Department of Education to engage in the study of the history of foreign education. The reason is simple, he said: "The first thing I want to do is to repay Principal Liu Fonian. ”
"The best of the best", and then the natural "peach and plum fragrance".
In the words of a professor in the History Department of East China Normal University, "the students of this east China Normal University can be described as an elite gathering", "Later, a group of well-known scholars in the country also appeared, such as Yang Guorong, an expert in the history of Chinese philosophy, Tong Shijun, an expert in the history of Western philosophy, Feng Shaolei, an expert on international issues and dean of the Humanities College of East China Normal University, and so on." Why is "talent" so "abundant"? The chairman of the Shanghai College Entrance Examination Admissions Committee was Liu Fo nian. It is said that when the enrollment was held, East China Normal University arrived half an hour earlier than other schools. As a result, among the best of the Shanghai liberal arts candidates and the young writers who were well-known in the society at that time, not a small number of them were robbed of east China Normal University.
In the summer of 2011, mathematician Zheng Wei'an completely resigned from his tenured teaching position at the University of California for 20 years and returned to his alma mater, East China Normal University, full-time. As a typical self-taught person, Cheng Wei'an's story of becoming a mathematician from a small carpenter in the house repair team was a household name in the 1970s.
At that time, for Zheng Wei'an who did not pass the unified examination and admitted Zheng Wei'an as a graduate student in advance, there was no shortage of opposition voices inside and outside East China Normal University that "did not conform to the rules and regulations". President Liu Fonian proceeded from the overall situation of early talents and good talents, resolutely approved the report of the Department of Mathematics, quickly arranged for Zheng Wei'an to take the examination, and passed the examination to absorb him into the school as a graduate student. After the Spring Festival in 1978, Zheng Wei'an came to East China Normal University to report. It is said that at that time, Su Buqing recruited promising graduate students in Fudan, and Zheng Wei'an's name was also in the shortlist, how could it be expected that Liu Fonian had preempted it.
If the "headmaster's wit" here is only a rumor, his master's vision and wisdom are also truly written in the memory of history.
Later, Zheng Wei'an graduated early, and the school sent him to study in France. At the end of 1998, Liu Fonian wrote in Wen Wei Po that he believed that Zheng Wei'an would soon become an original talent under the guidance of creative teachers, and "hoped that the education community would study more laws and methods for the cultivation of creative talents."
Good teachers should teach poor students well
As a pioneer in introducing international advanced educational concepts in the early stage of reform and opening up and using them to guide China's educational practice, Liu Fonian was a pioneer in expanding the autonomy of universities, a strong practitioner of promoting education research to the front line of basic education, carrying out and promoting the results of educational experiments, and an advocate and practitioner of the unity of teacher-training and academic nature of Normal University. Its concept of "seeking truth and refinement, seeking life and seeking innovation" has set an ideological benchmark for the reform and development of basic education.
At the end of 1985, the second national lecture of the China Education Association was held in Wuhan. At the closing ceremony, during the speech he called "free speech", Liu Fonian raised two important educational theoretical questions in one breath: First, how much potential does people have to learn? The potential is very large, and the limit is not found now, so it is impossible to believe that there are any fixed poor students, and good teachers should teach poor students to be good; second, what is the determination of academic performance? Education and the environment play a decisive role, but people's subjective factors and subjective energy are also very important, so for the mastery of knowledge, attitude is very important, and even play a role beyond expectations.
After the Wuhan conference, Gu Lingyuan, a middle-aged man who later grew up to be an honorary professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences of East China Normal University, often had the opportunity to meet Liu Fonian at the meetings of the China Education Society and the National Education Science Planning Leading Group, and gradually became acquainted with each other.
One early summer day, Principal Liu and his wife invited Gu Lingyuan to have a light meal at home, and the topic on the dinner table was still inseparable from "education". On that day, Liu Fonian's interest was particularly high, and he said to Gu Lingyuan with a heavy heart: "The experience accumulated by primary and secondary school teachers is much, and some people say that it is called 'Sweat Cow Filling'. However, have you seen that with the passage of time, those who have not made theoretical generalizations can often only be lively for a while, and the flowers bloom without results, and some people say that it is called 'passing through the clouds'. So the new teacher had to touch it from scratch. What a waste, what a pity. What is the solution to this dilemma? First, theoretical workers go deep into primary and secondary schools, and second, primary and secondary school teachers can do some teaching and research work. ”
In 1986, the Ministry of Education wanted to train front-line educators and proposed that Gu Lingyuan go to Normal University to study for a master's degree and a doctorate. Liu Fonian led a group of tutors to teach, and since then he has formed a relationship between teachers and students.
The winter in Shanghai is cold enough to make people panic, Liu Fonian has a very "praise" brazier at home, so his home has become a classroom. Liu Fo Nian's home is upstairs, and every time he finishes a lecture, he has to send the students downstairs, and he can't stop it. Sending you downstairs and asking where to go next. Once, Gu Lingyuan told the teacher that he was going to go to the office of the school's Academy of Education. Who expected that soon after arriving at the Academy of Education, it would rain heavily. Then, Gu Lingyuan saw the teacher, who was more than seventy years old, take a pair of rain boots in one hand and an umbrella in the other, and enter the office. He deliberately came to bring rain gear to the students, and the teacher was like a father, probably so.
The basic theories of pedagogy must be rooted in primary and secondary schools, in living classrooms. To break the artificial gap between educational theory and primary and secondary education, Liu Fonian urged researchers to go deep into reality and spend great efforts to penetrate the barrier between theory and practice. In order to promote the teaching experiments of basic education and summarize the laws of education and teaching, he took the lead in practicing what he preached, and in the rare years of the ancient world, he also came to Qingpu County, where Gu Lingyuan was working at that time, not only to listen to the introduction, but also to go to school and enter the classroom, talk to teachers and students, and then give in-depth and simple theoretical analysis and guidance. He pointed out that China's research on the basic theory of education is relatively weak, and many disciplines can only introduce foreign research results. In order to produce our own results, we must combine theory with practice and vigorously strengthen applied research.
Discerning changes at the source of the Ming Dynasty is a prominent style for Liu Fonian to guide students to learn educational theories. He often said that the educational theory system is complex and diverse, and it is necessary to distinguish which are the sources and which are the streams, what kind of era background they are produced in, what changes there are between the sources and streams, why there are such changes, and so on.
He said that from the international to the domestic, from the old society to the new China, there are two ways of teaching in schools, that is, acceptance and activity, and many other ways are nothing more than their flux. The receptive formula is conducive to teachers to impart knowledge and carry out simple skills and skills training, but it is not conducive to students' original learning. The activity style is conducive to exerting students' initiative and spirit of exploration, and acquiring skills and skills that come from needs and purposes, but it is not conducive to students learning systematic knowledge. The main advocates of the former ranged from Comenius to Hurlbut to Kerov of the Soviet Union, and the latter were advocated by Rousseau and Dewey. These are two different educational currents, two different sources. Educational reform and innovation are inseparable from an objective analysis of the two teaching methods. Different rheology occurs in both ways, and there is a clear tendency between them to approach and absorb each other——— truth is often between the two extremes.
Liu Fonian once said that although the current teaching reform has made some achievements, it is still not enough in terms of creative education. "We emphasize the teachers in the class, and the foreign teachers do not talk much, and the focus is on discussion. Students read the materials themselves, think independently, and speak freely. And when we engage in an academic discussion, we always appoint a person in advance, prepare the center to speak, and then everyone talks around the center. To create, you can't be too constrained, there are too many boxes. Create the atmosphere that should be created. I bring graduate students, and if there are different views on the concept, we will fight, and I will not force them to accept my ideas. As long as they make sense and think boldly, I support it. This allows them to run in the sea of thinking, free to think, stimulate their creative spirit, and improve their creative ability. ”
Author: Liu Di
Editor: Liu Di