|
Can more teachers be like Yan Caihong?
China Daily Updated: 2005-04-12 06:47
In an era when celebrities make frequent headlines, the death of an ordinary college teacher has shocked the country.
Yan Caihong, 57, an electronics lecturer in Shanghai Jiaotong University, passed away last month. Within three days, more than 1,000 articles had appeared on the campus bulletin board mourning his death. Most surveyed students who attended his lectures said he was the best and most respected teacher they had ever met.
Thanks to modern media, talk about and praise for Yan has erupted across the country.
Unlike known political, business, entertainment or sports figures, Yan was a humble lecturer.
Teachers are widely respected in China. Still, it is rare for a lecturer to receive such high honours from the general public, who expressed their respect from their own accord.
China has a long tradition of respecting knowledge. However, the respect, to a large extent, has sadly been diluted down to favour certain academic titles. Such titles have a vital say in determining the fame, social status and income of college teachers.
Professors, who are deemed the most knowledgeable by the public, receive more respect than common lecturers, who are on the lowest rung of China's academic ladder.
The high esteem Lecturer Yan enjoyed is thus a phenomenon.
Yan's students said listening to his lectures was a pleasure.
"He was emotional and his lectures were as arresting as a blockbuster," wrote one student. "I don't know whether people study electronics in heaven. If they do, they will be lucky (to learn from Yan)."
Yan was considered an excellent lecturer.
But his teaching skills were not what brought him the fame. It was the way he cared for his students that moved them and other people.
He devoted most of his time and energy to teaching and tutoring. He even made one of his living rooms a lecture room for free and private tutoring.
Yan deserves the high praise the public bestowed on him.
But his death and the mourning may have further implications.
China's colleges and universities have tried hard to reform their traditional teaching-oriented management in recent years. They claimed they would become research-oriented institutes.
Many professors misunderstood, or manipulated, the claim. They spend less time directing students' studies. In some cases the students hardly have access to their professors. The centre of the professors' daily work has shifted from teaching to research, publishing papers and even making use of their academic advantages to do business.
Seriously preparing for undergraduate classes or tutoring students are low on their agenda.
Against this backdrop, it is not strange Yan won so much respect.
The rare are often more worthy.
This raises a vital question for our education policy-makers: What kind of research-oriented higher-learning institutes should we build?
Being a professor does not merely mean doing research. Professors have an obligation to help students, especially undergraduates, do well in their lessons.
This also exposes a serious problem in the academic title evaluation system: evaluators pay little attention to a professor's teaching performance while academic papers and related research work are the only compulsory prerequisites.
It is time for a systematic change to ensure our top academics spend more time with undergraduates, and teachers like Yan should no longer end their career as a mere lecturer.
(China Daily 04/12/2005 page6)
|
