Highlighting the Humanistic Spirit in the Age of Globalization: Humanities Education in China

Abstract

The essay first describes the Chinese intellectual condition in the age of globalization and the necessity of liberal arts or humanities education, and then deals with the function of humanities education in China’s institutions of higher learning with Tsinghua University as the particular case. Since current Chinese universities are divided into three types: (1) research universities; (2) teaching-research universities; and (3) teaching-oriented universities, liberal arts education always plays an important part in students’ comprehensive schooling although in most of the research universities priority is given to science and technology. As China has a long tradition of humanities education, even long before the establishment of those Western type universities, offering humanities education to all the university students as a major educational task has never changed. Even during the Cultural Revolution when all the universities stopped teaching and research work, students and faculty members were still educated with Mao’s instructions. Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy, traditional humanities are suffering more or less. But the author argues that no matter how rapidly the Chinese economy has been developing and how well Chinese people are pursuing the so-called Chinese Dream, it is necessary to pay attention to the humanities and to offer humanities education to young students. The author also offers his reconstruction of Neo-Confucianism as an alternative discourse to various postmodern discourses in the new framework of global culture.