On Strengthening the Humanities in Higher Education

Abstract

Since the founding of the republic, we have undertaken a number of reforms and adjustments with regard to the departments and faculties, specializations, curriculum, and contents and methods of teaching in the humanities in our institutions of higher education (by this we mean, in this essay, such subjects or departments as language, literature, history, philosophy, financial and economic studies, law, political science, and library science). In general, humanities education at that higher level has developed as an enterprise. Up to 1978, the number of baccalaureate-level humanities specialists trained nationwide was 314,796, and there were 7,500 graduate students. At present there are 78 higher institutions of humanities learning in the country (including universities that have humanities in their curriculum and special institutes for financial and economic studies and for legal and political studies). There are 89 separate specialization programs, and 336 research organs. A total of 101,400 students are enrolled, and there are more than 43,600 faculty members and research personnel. This is a base for the advancement in the development of socialist humanities higher education in our country. However, owing to the fact that for a rather long period of time in the past we had not had an adequate understanding and acknowledgment of the significant position and role of humanities higher education in the construction of socialism and, on top of that, because of the influence of the Left-deviationist ideology, in particular the severe damage caused by Lin Biao, Kang Sheng, and the "Gang of Four," the progress of humanities higher education in our country has been circuitous and sluggish. There was a severe shortage of accomplished people in many disciplines such as financial and economic management, law, and administrative service, for whom there was a great and urgent demand on the part of the state, and in some disciplines, there was even a complete blank. The ranks of qualified teachers were seriously ravaged and the standards of teaching and research fell behind considerably. A1 though our humanities higher education has experienced a relatively rapid recovery and undergone development since the smashing of the "Gang of Four," it is still currently far from adequate to meet the needs of socialist construction.