Hegel said that only if a nation has some people who pay attention to the sky, they will have hope; if a nation only cares about the things under its feet, it will have no future.
University is a place for character development, the cradle of humanistic spirit, and the support of reason and conscience. Cai Yuanpei said that a great scholar is one who studies advanced knowledge. In order to include the grand ceremony and attract all the schools of learning.
By this standard, today’s universities need to reflect. In some places, vulgarity, utilitarianism, and nihilism have eroded the minds of university students and faculty. Bureaucracy, rigid academic mechanisms, and obsession with business and technology have dried up the source of university creativity. Some people say that Chinese universities have lost their backbone and spirit, leaving only the naked pursuit of fame and fortune. Some people even say that China has had no universities at all for more than 20 years, and all it has is a "pre-job training institution for migrant workers."
The rise and fall of universities and university spirit is related to the future of a country and nation.
The United States is much richer than Latin America, and it is still prosperous today. In fact, the conditions in Central and South America at that time were much better than those in North America. North America did not even have advanced Indian civilization, while Central and South America had the brilliant Inca civilization, Aztec civilization, and Mayan civilization. But what makes North America so powerful? Today, people all know that the earliest immigrants in North America were the 103 Puritans on the Mayflower. In fact, when the Mayflower arrived in North America, there were already more than a thousand immigrants there, but all American history books begin with the Mayflower. Written. Why do historians favor these 103 people so much? That's because the beliefs of the people on the Mayflower represent the source of the American spirit and formed what Weber called the Protestant ethics of capitalism. Only 16 years after these Protestants landed, and before they had fully established themselves, they established the earliest university in North America. The next year, it was named Harvard after the largest donor. From this point of view, North American immigrants were special from the beginning. First, they were Puritans; second, they established universities. This is the secret why the United States is so powerful today. Scholar Qin Hui also studies the differences between Latin America and North America. He believes that the reason why the United States is superior to South America is because it has a good system. I don't object to this statement, but I want to emphasize that when the American system was not yet clear, the Puritans were different from the Iberians as soon as they landed. They only established universities in 16 years. 160 years later The United States and the United States Constitution were founded. Do you think culture is more important or system is more important? Which came first, the university or the constitution?
Today Israel is very powerful. It was founded only one year earlier than New China. The war started the day after the founding of the country. It is surrounded by a hundred times the hostile population, but today there are almost no equals. It is a rival, and no country dares to take the initiative to challenge it. Why is Israel so awesome? Because Israel has universities, and universities are more important than anything else. When it was impossible to establish a country at all, Jewish wise men established the Hebrew University, and the founding president Weizmann later became the founding president of Israel. Hebrew University was 25 years ahead of their country.
Look at Japan again. Such a small island country has been shrouded in the shadow of Chinese culture since ancient times, but today it is stronger than China. Why does it exist today? When the Meiji Restoration began in 1868, Japan's level was far from that of China, but there was a key figure named Yukichi Fukuzawa. Today, the maximum denomination of Japanese banknotes is 10,000 yen. The portrait on it is neither the emperor nor any political or military figure, but just a man who only wrote a few books, founded a newspaper, and founded the first university in Japan. Fukuzawa Yukichi, such a person has become the soul of the modern Japanese nation. He said that for a nation to rise, it must change in three aspects. The first is the change of people's hearts, the second is the change of the political system, and the third is the change of artifacts and economy. The order of these three aspects should be the soul first, then the political system, and finally the economy. Reversing this order may seem like a shortcut on the surface, but in the end it won't work. Modern Japan basically followed Fukuzawa's path, and it succeeded.
During the same period, China took a path that Yukichi Fukuzawa predicted would not work.
The earliest way to open the country was to engage in the Westernization Movement and engage in economic construction. We bought strong ships and cannons from the West and started building them. Only then did we realize that we needed to change the political system. More than a hundred days after the Reform Movement of 1898, a farce has ended, and it has even gone backwards. The sharp conflicts in society necessitated revolution. After the Revolution of 1911, it seemed that there was no problem in eradicating the old and replacing the old with the new. However, the entire society fell into dire straits and warlords were fighting. After one emperor was overthrown, countless local emperors emerged. When people were in despair, Liang Qichao discovered that the Japanese had long said that this road would not work, and Liang Qichao initiated the New People's Movement. Culture builds a country, education builds a country, and the New Culture Movement is the real beginning of China in the 20th century. The most iconic event is that Cai Yuanpei came back from Germany and used the Berlin University model to govern Peking University. In just a few years, he turned it into a real university and the cradle of the entire national spirit.
A few years later, the entire country was on the verge of collapse, and Peking University’s New Culture Movement turned into a political movement. So a compromise emerged, which was Whampoa Military Academy. We know that Sun Yat-sen's life was characterized by repeated defeats and defeats. Later, he used the Leninist model and the ideology of the Three People's Principles to reorganize the Kuomintang and established the Whampoa Military Academy. Whampoa Military Academy is different from warlords. Warlords fight for territory and direct benefits, while Whampoa Military Academy fights for a nationalist belief. It has a higher concept than getting promoted, getting rich, eating, drinking and having fun, uniting a group and forming a Organize and establish a system. Chiang Kai-shek's authority throughout his life came from his being the principal of Whampoa Military Academy.
Therefore, when there were no universities in China, a quasi-university appeared between universities and warlords. This was the Whampoa Military Academy.
The Communist Party did the same later. The secrets of Chairman Mao's life are all in Yan'an. Yan'an is actually a military and political university, and of course it is also a quasi-university. Chairman Mao turned the ideal of communism into a belief that shines deep in everyone's heart, so the Communist Party quickly gained power and burst out with huge power in such a short period of time.
The wartime universities established in the rear areas during the eight-year Anti-Japanese War were represented by Southwest Associated University, and also included the five famous universities at that time: Wuhan University, Central University, Jiaotong University, and Zhejiang University*** At the same time, they cultivated a generation of national elites in the Anti-Japanese War. No matter how corrupt the Nationalist government was, in the past eight years it had placed the second largest financial expenditure after military expenditure on education. At that time, many people said that the university should not be established. Why should young people stay in school? Hurry up and fight to save the country. If we want to build a university, the Department of Chemistry should teach gunpowder, the Department of Physics should teach guns, the Department of Mechanics should teach bridges, the Department of Foreign Languages ??should train translators, and the Department of Philosophy should train political instructors. However, at that time, Chiang Kai-shek actually listened to the opinions of a few people and decided to do whatever should be done with the university. Throughout the Anti-Japanese War, universities not only did not shrink, but the number of people doubled. A large number of young people went to the rear to go to university, which consolidated the cultural foundation of the Chinese nation. Although Chiang Kai-shek did not receive any benefits and most of them were taken over by the new regime, they contributed to the glory of New China.
I can come to the conclusion that all the pride of China in the 20th century comes down to the fact that when China was most desperate, there were only a few Chinese people who were able to run a few universities or quasi-universities to support the culture of the entire nation. China's greatest pride in the 20th century was due to the wartime universities represented by Peking University, Huangpu, Yan'an, and Southwest Associated University; and all the misfortunes, all the sorrows, and all the stupidities of China in the 20th century were that in normal times there were almost no A real university is not a training center for complete personality. It is only a talent training institution and a place for cultivating tools.